Title sections

[Allerwertester]

Hi there,

this is mainly a suggestion for adding maybe non w3-standard title tags into calibre resp. the metadata section of epubs. I'm new here and this forum is linked from the calibre web site, so I do hope that this is the right place to add a suggestion like this.

I understand that – according to the w3-markup-code – I can add multiple <dc:title></dc:title> tags within the metadata section of epubs, but they will not be read other than a book's main title (when alone) or as a main title with sub title(s), according to their appearance within the metadata section, read from first to last.

Other than that, there seems no way to include specific title information within an epub (that can be read by calibre). Also, calibre only reads and shows the first <dc:title></dc:title> tag of a metadata section, as far as I have found out. I don't know if any ebook reader device or software understands more than just one <dc:title></dc:title> section. My kobo does not.

I know that I can manually add a user defined field into calibre that shows up in a second calibre metadata tab plus in the right window plus as a quite big calibre-only entry within the ebook's metatags, but it's odd to have a second calibre tab for information that to me seems to be important. It's also not elegant. I do think there should be additional unique title-description tags for adding more and specific title information.

The title information I would like have included are
- the original title of a book, when this is the translated version of it (something like <dc:title_original></dc:title_original>);
- the titles of stories, texts, articles, etc. if the book is a collection of those with it's own title (something like <dc:title_included></dc:title_included>).

Thanks for reading! As a not native English speaking person I do hope I could make myself somehow understandable.

[kovidgoyal]

calibre is never going to map multiple dc:title tags to a single title field. That way lies chaos. And if you dont like having custom metadata in a separate tab, in the edit metadata dialog you can change it to all be on one tab in preferences.

[Allerwertester]

Thanks, Kovid, for your fast reply - and thanks for calibre, which is a great tool for ebooks. I really enjoy organizing my collection with it!

Sorry, if I obviously was unclear about the additional title-fields I suggested. I didn't mean to merge various title fields into one calibre field. Just the opposite: I think it's not a good idea to only have the one tag <dc:title></dc:title> for the many titles that could be addressed in one book. So, my suggestion is to add specific title tags, so they can be read and displayed accordingly in seperate fields within calibre.

And for the Edit metadate dialogue: I guess I need to have a closer look to all the preferences. Thanks for the hint!

[Allerwertester]

Sorry, I totally forgot: The reason for more standardized varieties of title fields is to be able to work with them as title fileds. So, searching a title, for example, will include all those title fields. If there are only custom made fields, this might not be able.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by Allerwertester

Sorry, I totally forgot: The reason for more standardized varieties of title fields is to be able to work with them as title fileds. So, searching a title, for example, will include all those title fields. If there are only custom made fields, this might not be able.

You can do that with grouped search terms under Preferences->Searching.

[Allerwertester]

Thanks again, Kovid!

I wrote to the epub group of w3.org about my idea of having more and specific titles identifications. I think that's the way to go. Maybe one day there will be an update of the OCF specification, addressing this.