Filtering tags from the jacket metadata

[ramnagel]

I have examined the files for the css and template that produce the metadata jacket. It is pretty simple to edit those to include or exclude certain jacket metadata when converting to an EPUB, for example.

But how about filtering which tags get included? Most of my tags represent genres like Fiction, Non Fiction, History, Crime/Mystery, Reference, Humour, Thriller, and so on. But some of them represent administrative tags like _NEW, _RECOMMENDED, _IMPROVE, and others I do not want to appear in the book jacket for various reasons. Is there any way to exclude certain tags from the metadata during conversion or polishing, or do you have to either include all the tags, or none of them?

The way I work and manage my library makes the inclusion of various non-genre admin tags VERY useful (you can easily combine them with the normal genres in searches or virtual libraries in order to work with a particular set of books), so to be able to filter these behind-the-scenes tags from the jacket metadata would be really useful.

[BetterRed]

It's this sort of thing that lead me to create a separate custom column for admin tags.

Maybe you could create a 'composed' column that excludes the admin tags - e.g. by excluding those that start with '_' and put that column in the book jacket. It would probably have to be a program mode template.

BR

[ramnagel]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

It's this sort of thing that lead me to create a separate custom column for admin tags.

...sadly that was exactly the kind of kludge I wanted to avoid. Imagine having admin tags like I do. I can so easily add or remove them right in the standard metadata editor screen. I can right-click and remove them in the preview pane when a book is highlighted. Wherever tags appear, I can do admin functions without customizing the hell out of my calibre. I just imagine the nightmare of setting it all up again if I have to re-install ! It is sooo convenient and simple and powerful having admin tags along with your genre tags. Calibre is usually so tweakable but when it comes to the jacket it is a bit of a lumbering beast...

IMHO, what ends up in the jacket should be able to be tweaked without limit. It would save so many people so much hassle. Ah, well.

[theducks]

I also run 'admin' tags.
It does not make sense to add code bloat, to cover a tiny percentage of users for something that tere is a easy work around (a custom field that can be excluded)

[BetterRed]

@ramnangel - Adding custom columns to calibre is not a 'kludge' its one of its major features. If you want to see how big a book is in terms of words and/or pages you have to add custom columns. If you want a Yes/No for Have Read/Not Read you have to add a custom column. If you read Fan Fiction you'll probably have a boatload of custom columns . . .

I do all my editing in the book list, where it's just as easy to edit a custom column as it is a standard column. Whatever can be done to Tags in the Book Details panel (what you call Preview) can be done to a similar custom column.

If you have to reinstall you won't lose anything, and providing you take regular backups (e..g daily incremental) of your libraries and calibre's configuration folder(s) then in the event of a catastrophic system failure you'll only lose books and settings added/changed since last backup.

If you wanted to create an Admin Tags/#admin_tags column you could use Bulk Edit Search and Replace to: a) copy the values starting with '_' from tags to #admin_tags, b) remove the values starting with '_' from tags.

Based on how few issues are raised about 'jackets', I suspect they are not widely used.

BR