Trying to do a few things in Calibre

[nerys]

Right now I use calibre to convert my books to lrf. thats about it.

once I make the conversion I delete everything from calibre.

I would like to make a greater usage of calibre though as it is a very nicely done program. I am hoping it can do these things and I am just brain dead and don't see it :-)

First news feeds. They are annoying. Is there a way I can make thema SEPARATE list.

Calibre SEEMS to want to do what I want. I mean it has that EMPTY bar right below the button bar with one icon that says Library XX books

is there a way to make MORE so I can have news feed stuff in its OWN library separate from my books? I tried everything and can not figure out how to add more entries their.

Second can I arrange it so if it downloads a news feed it DELETES the old one? Right now I "move" them to the memory stick but the ENTRIES remain in calibre. so I have to whack them each time or pretty soon it has hundreds of redundant entries.

would love to make my MEMORY card the "store" location for news feeds (only for news feeds) to skip all these steps and have it DELETE the old entries and copy over the new entries (especially since invariably the new entry will have almost all the old entry stuff.

something to make it more automatic. ?? am I missing an obvious setting somewhere?

what about MERGING the entire set of news feeds into a SINGLE file that I choose the name of. (this way I can name it 00 - News so its FIRST on the sony reader and only takes up one line. Then I won't have to keep swapping memory cards to organize them.

the first "menu" when you open it could be a list of the feeds that link to them (like it currently does with articles)

Keep up the great work!

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by nerys

Right now I use calibre to convert my books to lrf. thats about it.

once I make the conversion I delete everything from calibre.

I would like to make a greater usage of calibre though as it is a very nicely done program. I am hoping it can do these things and I am just brain dead and don't see it :-)

First news feeds. They are annoying. Is there a way I can make thema SEPARATE list.

Method 1 99% accurate:
type "not news" on searchbar

Method 2 100% accurate:
type not tag:news on searchbar

Method 3:
Lower right, click luggage tag, on left click Tags, then click the News tag twice to change it to a minus sign.

Method 4 (after any of the above), just grab the last one of any of the 3 searches above from your search pulldown bar.

is there a way to make MORE so I can have news feed stuff in its OWN library separate from my books? I tried everything and can not figure out how to add more entries their.

Yes, but you should learn to use tags and wait until you are certain they don't meet your needs.

Second can I arrange it so if it downloads a news feed it DELETES the old one? Right now I "move" them to the memory stick but the ENTRIES remain in calibre. so I have to whack them each time or pretty soon it has hundreds of redundant entries.

Preferences will let you set how many/how old to keep.

[nerys]

Yeah I know about the tags and they are a royal pain in the a.....

They would work great for segregating the NEWS stuff but are useless for any other segregation since I would have to "alter" the tags multiple times to allow the tagging to work.

Ideally I wanted to add more "Libraries" 3 actually.

a Working Library
a DONE Library
a News Library

I would add a book to Working. Work with it till I get it displaying properly and then "move" it to the "done" library once its finished and viewable on the reader properly.

Once I have it done later on I will migrate the new txt and lrf files to my books library outside calibre on my external drive since I hate the way it organizes them :-)

The problem with tags is its not a drag and drop. I have to actually individually edit each title. Cumbersome and Time Consuming.

I will check on the preferences for the news feeds. I may try to run 2 version of calibre and see if it lets me run 2 simultaneously. then I can use one just for news feeds and the other for my conversion processes.

It would still be nice to make all my news feeds into a SINGLE lrf file so I don't have to use 2 memory cards for the reader.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by nerys

Yeah I know about the tags and they are a royal pain in the a.....

I needed all books without a cover, that had an author last name that started with a letter from L-Z and which I hadn't marked as a book I'd finished working on. Later I needed all books that had a period in the name after a single letter. Then I needed all naval fiction fiction books I hadn't read. Tags let me find them all. Tags are great!

They would work great for segregating the NEWS stuff but are useless for any other segregation since I would have to "alter" the tags multiple times to allow the tagging to work.

Why?

Ideally I wanted to add more "Libraries" 3 actually.

a Working Library
a DONE Library
a News Library

A week or month from now you'll be heading off to Madagascar or the Antarctic and think, "Gee wouldn't it be great to be able to have access to my books and news, like Starson17 can. But you'll have your books all cut up into different libraries, so you can only get books from one of them. Leave them in the one library. How would you like it if you went to your local library and asked for a book and a newspaper and they told you the books are across town in library building 2, but you can get the newspapers here in building 1 if you want?

I would add a book to Working. Work with it till I get it displaying properly and then "move" it to the "done" library once its finished and viewable on the reader properly.

Then a week from now, you'll think, "Gee, those books by Author "John Smith" really ought to be labeled as being by "John Q Smith" and you'll have to swap between libraries again, and you won't be able to see the books you're working on with the books you think are done. Just use the tags - please. Just for a while? You really will like it better in the long run. I was like you at the beginning, but it's only because we aren't familiar with tags that we don't like them ... at first.

Once I have it done later on I will migrate the new txt and lrf files to my books library outside calibre on my external drive since I hate the way it organizes them :-)

Calibre doesn't "organize them" - you do, with tags and sorting the columns. You should never ever ever have to go to the folder that Calibre keeps the books in. Just ask it for the books you want to be sent to your device or your disk, and it puts the books you want, named the way you want, in the folders you want, and you can change all of the above whenever you desire.

The problem with tags is its not a drag and drop. I have to actually individually edit each title. Cumbersome and Time Consuming.

Why?
You can have it automatically create tags, get tags by fetching online, globally add and delete tags from groups of selected books, etc. They really are extremely flexible. If you don't want tags, don't do them - News are already automatically tagged as "News" for you, so that's no effort. "Cumbersome" is when you can't find what you need, and have to manually go through all your books to find something. Tags and Calibre's superb search system avoids all that.

[ATimson]

Originally Posted by nerys

The problem with tags is its not a drag and drop. I have to actually individually edit each title. Cumbersome and Time Consuming.

Select multiple titles, right-click, choose Edit Metadata Information, then Edit Metadata in Bulk. You can bulk add/remove tags this way.

[nerys]

>>>>Why?

I guess you stopped reading the part you quoted with a WHY? exactly in the middle since if you had continued reading I IMMEDIATELY then stated exactly "why"


>>>>A week or month from now you'll be heading off to Madagascar or the Antarctic and think, "Gee wouldn't it be great to be able to have access to my books and news, like Starson17 can. But you'll have your books all cut up into different libraries, so you can only get books from one of them. Leave them in the one library. How would you like it if you went to your local library and asked for a book and a newspaper and they told you the books are across town in library building 2, but you can get the newspapers here in building 1 if you want?

You know its amazing how easy my system is. Say I want to read Kress's Probability moon.

its so easy I click Start then click Search. I select my external drive and type kress or moon and WOW half a second alter their it is. I drag and drop the file onto my reader's mem card and away I go.

or I click on My computer goto external drive click books click kress drag and drop probability moon. time consumed? less time than it takes to OPEN Calibre (NOT a cut on calibre mind you its a VERY nice program just not efficient for the way I read)

Second I would never put a madagascar book on an e reader. I would bring the full color book with me (though I guess it depends on what kind of book it is) nor is it likely to be available to me in ebook format.

>>>Then a week from now, you'll think, "Gee, those books by Author "John Smith" really ought to be labeled as being by "John Q Smith" and you'll have to swap between libraries again, and you won't be able to see the books you're working on with the books you think are done. Just use the tags - please. Just for a while? You really will like it better in the long run. I was like you at the beginning, but it's only because we aren't familiar with tags that we don't like them ... at first.

No actually I would just click the John Smith Folder to enable "edit" of file name mode and ADD the stinkin Q. :-) again in half the time it would take to even EXECUTE the Calibre icon not to speak of load it and find the book after it loaded.


>>>Calibre doesn't "organize them" - you do, with tags and sorting the columns. You should never ever ever have to go to the folder that Calibre keeps the books in. Just ask it for the books you want to be sent to your device or your disk, and it puts the books you want, named the way you want, in the folders you want, and you can change all of the above whenever you desire.

NO it organizes them into a DB and then expects me to conform to its DB methods in order to access my data. This is the same difference as with an IPOD that forces you to make all your ID3 Tags right and then forces you to access VIA id3 tags which is a royal fraking pain in the butt versus going to SD card Artists Album and your frelling done.

I guess it depends on what kind of person you are and HOW you consume your media. I tend to know exactly what I want and know precisely how to go get it.

some people like ala carte ie give me all "blues" or all "jazz" I simply NEVER listen to music like that. I don't know why. My way is not better or worse but for me my way is fast and easy while the DB way is a royal pain in the butt because I simply do not consume my media that way.

This is not a BAD thing it just means we are not a perfect match. Calibre is still a truly awesome program. The easiest I have ever used at getting my content into a convenient CLEAN sony reader format. ie I use it as a converter pretty much only as a converter.

so off course it way of "managing" the library for me gets in my way. Not a big deal I was just hoping I could make contort it a little to make my life easier. I won't whine about it. Its good software and its FREE. but no harm (usually) in asking.

>>>Why?
You can have it automatically create tags, get tags by fetching online, globally add and delete tags from groups of selected books, etc. They really are extremely flexible. If you don't want tags, don't do them - News are already automatically tagged as "News" for you, so that's no effort. "Cumbersome" is when you can't find what you need, and have to manually go through all your books to find something. Tags and Calibre's superb search system avoids all that.

I CAN find what I need. in Calibre I can NOT find what I need without running through its design parameters (ie using the search bar that I do not want to use because it takes more time than it needs to take when a simple drag and drop from one library to another would solve my problem in less time than it takes you to move your mouse to the search bar and type your search parameter.

When you think "structurally" like I do one system tends to work well the other "wastes time"

when you think "browse and explore" the calibre system works GREAT and my system sucks.

[kovidgoyal]

Allow me to summarize your problem for you

"I have a great system to manage books. I have a small set of tasks this system is good for and I've spent donkeys years setting up the system to optimize those tasks. I refuse to spend any time trying to figure out how to do those tasks efficiently in calibre. Nor do I want to spend any mental effort trying to understand the far larger set of tasks that calibre's system enables. I can't do my pet tasks efficiently in calibre, therefore, calibre needs to be changed so that I can do my tasks my way."

[theducks]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Allow me to summarize your problem for you

"I have a great system to manage books. I have a small set of tasks this system is good for and I've spent donkeys years setting up the system to optimize those tasks. I refuse to spend any time trying to figure out how to do those tasks efficiently in calibre. Nor do I want to spend any mental effort trying to understand the far larger set of tasks that calibre's system enables. I can't do my pet tasks efficiently in calibre, therefore, calibre needs to be changed so that I can do my tasks my way."

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by nerys

When you think "structurally" like I do one system tends to work well the other "wastes time"

when you think "browse and explore" the calibre system works GREAT and my system sucks.

I don't want this thread to degenerate and I don't want to sound like a fanboi of Calibre. I find it works well for me, but if you need something else, I'm perfectly happy with that.

Multiple libraries are easy. Just copy your library into two more folders, use the Preferences first page or the Preferences Wizard to point to the 3 different libraries and delete books you don't want in them. Use the command line option --with-library \path\to\library to start up with any selected library. Changing between them takes a few seconds with the Wizard.

News will autorun in the current library if you aren't careful, so you may need to change the configuration directory. The attached batch file will allow complete control of all. Good luck.

[nerys]

Hmm might be easier to just run news for caliber on a separate machine.

Let me summarize for you Kovidgoyal

I have a selection of over 22,000 ebooks on my external drive.

If you actually think I am going to spend what would likely consume the next 2 years of my available free time "REORGANIZING" all of those books with all the metadata and structure that calibre uses. 2 years of my LIFE (assuming 4-5 hours a week)

this is assuming 90 seconds and NO conversion of formatting. Since I am less than thrilled with how calibre converts the text many of the books require me to first rip to txt and input the proper structure so calibre does not butcher it (though from what you tell me this is not calibre but a limitation of the LRF format which is fine) take that 90 seconds and make it 250+ seconds or 4-5 YEARS of my life.

Well your delusional. Sorry. Since this is the way the books "CAME" to me organized it is the way they will stay organized. When I add new books it is logical to DO those books in the same manner as the 22,000 I already have rather than make a SECOND library completely difference from the first.

I just thought it would be nice to be able to do things a bit more efficiently and I was hoping maybe their was some options I did not see that might allow me to do this.

I think Calibre is a truly awesome program. NO complaints from me on that side of things. but its by no means perfect. If requests and constructive criticism is not compatible with your ego by all means let me know and I will never ask another question about it again.

I will still appreciate the excellent if less than perfect software. It BY FAR the most convenient method I have found to generate lrf's for my sony reader with the cover art.

if I did not want the cover art I would just toss txt files onto the reader. It seems to read those just fine.

[SimonSays]

Youare always free to create your own program nerys to keep your ebooks organized the way you want.

[kovidgoyal]

I'm afraid my poor ego is too fragile to be assaulted by you. Please, please don't give me any constructive criticism, I will just shrivel up and die.

:cowering in corner gibbering madly:

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by nerys

Hmm might be easier to just run news for caliber on a separate machine.

That's easy to do.

I have a selection of over 22,000 ebooks on my external drive.

If you actually think I am going to spend what would likely consume the next 2 years of my available free time "REORGANIZING" all of those books with all the metadata and structure that calibre uses. 2 years of my LIFE (assuming 4-5 hours a week)

Metadata is optional. It's in addition to what you have now. If you don't want that additional capability, don't use it. The only thing Calibre needs is author/title. If your books are well-named now or have valid internal metadata, Calibre will pick that info up automatically.

I think Calibre is a truly awesome program.

Agreed!

NO complaints from me on that side of things. but its by no means perfect. If requests and constructive criticism is not compatible with your ego by all means let me know and I will never ask another question about it again.

Take a look at the bug tracker. There are thousands of bugs, enhancement requests and criticisms there, not to mention the thousands here. They are all dealt with quickly. AFAICT, Calibre will do everything you want it to do. You want multiple libraries - it does that in 4 different ways I can think of (command line, Wizard, Preferences and Tags). You want automatic deletion of old news - it's on page 1, lower right corner of the News dialog. You want the news to start with "00" - just modify the "title" of the news recipes.

Heck, you can even have the single file for news you asked for, but you'll have to modify/combine recipes to do that.

Unfortunately, I was probably too forceful in my comments trying to explain the advantages of tags and a single library. It's just that I hate to see others go down the same wrong road I went down. I now love tags, the content server and the way Calibre can offer up all my books and news over the internet whenever I want it, wherever I am. When I was in the hospital, my wife and I could pull copies of everything. If news was separated into another library, that would not have been possible.

You have stepped into the shoes of the user who started the "Thanks, but no thanks!" thread. He hated the way Calibre "organized" books, and like you, took a lot of friendly heat when he insisted that Calibre was organizing books poorly. Calibre doesn't do the organizing. It simply stores the books in a black box, and releases them with any name and in any folders the user wants. Months later that user finally saw the light. Perhaps Calibre will never meet your needs, but it's not for lack of trying, and you have to meet it halfway. You really will be glad you did.

Go (or stay) in peace.

[ATimson]

Originally Posted by Starson17

Calibre doesn't do the organizing. It simply stores the books in a black box, and releases them with any name and in any folders the user wants.

I think the reason people have problems grasping that is because that's not how it works; it's not a black box, it's a transparent one. A truly black box would be keeping the files as binary blobs in the database.

It's also not how, say, music library software works. Yes, software like iTunes can keep your files organized on disk, but it doesn't force you to like Calibre does.

[nerys]

Itunes does the same thing. Its a horrid way to organize music. At least I think it is. I guess the thing is I never want to listen to a "genre" of music I never want to listen to a "type" of music.

I listen to 2 types of music. My favorites (random songs that really grab me so they go into my favorites list) or A specific Album.

When you listen to music that way Itunes is horrendous - Itunes actually leaves your DISC structure intact. It does not change or alter your file hierarchy at all.

What it does do is create a database and they DISPLAY that music to you via that ID3 Database.

The problem is this requires your ID3 tags to be PERFECT or its a house of cards that just collapses as soon as you look at it.

Took me forever to figure out how to get it to do it MY way. ie I wanted my favorites album to be ONE ALBUM but in doing that it "ignores" the album art and displays the art of the alphebetically first song in the album. Finally I found out about this OTHER ID3 tag that itunes and zune software (even worse than itunes) pays attention to CLOSELY but NEITHER Is obvious about it and NEITHER lets you EDIT IT.

You have artists. you have album. if you make an album logic says ALBUM tag defines this right? well you would be wrong.

there is another LITTLE used tag that only few editors are even configured to let you see because its so rare. ALBUM ARTIST 99% of the time this tag is EMPTY but thats not good enough for itunes or zune. NO they FILL that tag you never hear about and never see with whatever is in the ARTIST Field. 124 songs 124 artists. See the problem :-)

and THIS is how itunes and zune organize albums.

if you have 2 songs BOTH with ALBUM TAG XXX but they each have a different ALBUM ARTIST tag the software will treat them as SEPARATE ALBUMS even though they both have the same album tag.

Not only that but its KEY WORDED if you use the WRONG WORD in the album artist box it will have odd effect. The solution for me was to use Various as the album artists.

now it treats them all as one album AND shows each of their album art properly. took me a YEAR to figure that out by pure dumb luck.

now people say why not just make a playlist? sure thats easy if the favorites album with 124 songs in it is the ONLY THING I put on the player.

the problem is "I WANT" to use the album view for my other ALBUMS alas now its cluttered with 124 SINGLE SONG albums that make the list insane to navigate. thats why I needed the 124 songs from 124 different albums to show up at ONE album. :-)

Alas I need the meta tag data. For in order to use Calibre's TAG function it has to "HAVE" a tag :-) I assume this tag is either FROM the metadata or I have to enter it manually ?? (most of my ebooks are pdf and txt neither of which have metadata at least my files so far don't)

ie its faster and easier to let calibre find the metadata than to EDIT the tag data spot and if i am going to do that work I might as well go all the way get good cover art etc.. for it. This takes a tremendous amount of time.

When your talking a few hundred books this is fine. a couple days hard work and your golden. but when you talking 10's of thousands Literally. well its just too much work. Even if I spent an hour a day it would take YEARS to process all the files.

When I want to read Flux by Stephen Baxter I am 3 clicks away from that book or about 10 seconds max from having it. Calibre won't even load in 10 seconds time it won't even load in 20 seconds. My 3 clicks are "Books Shortcut" - "Stephen Baxter" - "Drag Drop" Flux to Memory Card.

I can find my book load it to my memory stick and be walking out of the room before calibre has even shown up on the screen.

Again its not a bad program quite the contrary. its just not very useful for organizing my books for me. I got it for its impressive conversion abilities.

I don't know why I rub him the wrong way. Some people are just like that I guess. Some people just don't mix. If you don't bow to their will immediately they get very defensive and angry with you for some reason they think you are attacking them. I learned to just shrug it off. Internet Battles are simply a waste of time and energy.