Library setup questions

[saitoh183]

So i have dabbled in calibre over the years but always at a very simple level. I currently have a library of books sorted into 2 folders English and French. They the layout they are in is

English-French/Author/series(if required)/series number - (if required)bookname/Bookname.ext

I managed to figure out that i can use templates to manipulate save to disk to achieve above format
{author}/{series:||/}{series_index:0>2s| [|] - }{title}/{title}

But here is my questions:

Can i point Calibre to my ebooks folder or do i have to add all my books again? because i would prefer not mixing the french and english books? As i use kavita and have them language separated via folder.

Can i get it that when i add a book, it automatically adds it to the Calibre, the metadate is retrieve and it is added to the library as English-French/{author}/{series:||/}{series_index:0>2s| [|] - }{title}/{title} based on if the book is french or english?

If it is not possible, can i make the save to disk add french or english to the path based on the metadata?

[capink]

Originally Posted by saitoh183

Can i get it that when i add a book, it automatically adds it to the Calibre, the metadate is retrieve and it is added to the library as English-French/{author}/{series:||/}{series_index:0>2s| [|] - }{title}/{title} based on if the book is french or english?

Check the GetFileName plugin. It enables you to store the book path when adding books to calibre to a custom column of your choosing. I have not tried it as it was not available yet when I moved my books to calibre. Would have been handy and would have saved my a lot of time. So if you have any questions about the plugin, you can ask in the plugin's thread.

Originally Posted by saitoh183

If it is not possible, can i make the save to disk add french or english to the path based on the metadata?

In calibre preferences there is an option that allows updating the metadata in a book when saving it to disk. You should make sure that this option is enabled, after that if you have the language specified it should be embedded to the books whenever you save to disk.

[saitoh183]

@capink Thanks. I managed to figure out some stuff while waiting for the post to be approved and i was able to achieve what i needed. I made a custom column that associates French or English depending on language retried when i retrieve the metadata.
Custom Column >

Column type: Column built from other columns
Template: program: if field('languages') == 'fra' then 'french' else 'english' fi
Sort/search column by: text

and set save to disk path to

{#language}/{author}/{series:||/}{series_index:0>2s| | - }{title}/{title} - {author}