Book Titles

[dhbailey]

I've searched the forum but can't find an answer to this question:

When using files such as from Project Gutenberg or from the BlackMask DVD, the file names are very cryptic and not of any help to know what the book is inside. When these files are loaded on the Reader, will the reader show the file name or does it somehow extract the title from inside the file?

I have downloaded a couple of utilities which I've seen suggested on this forum and when saving from them, the title field is one option to fill in.

I can't see trying to find my way through a bunch of "1ddc809a.txt" sorts of listings in the reader Contents, but then again I can't see going through 20,000 PG book .txt files and renaming them.

[Hadrien]

In this case you should use manybooks.net.
We provide e-books with TOC and that are formatted a lot better than those at feedbooks.com too, but we don't have as many books yet (we're not dumping a single text file like PG or manybooks, but adding a book to a DB and dividing the book in chapter/parts/etc...). But you can pretty much get what you want from feedbooks too since it's possible to upload a book on the website (it'll take a little longer than just downloading one, but once someone made it for a book, it's available for everyone both for the Sony Reader and iLiad).

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by dhbailey

I've searched the forum but can't find an answer to this question:

When using files such as from Project Gutenberg or from the BlackMask DVD, the file names are very cryptic and not of any help to know what the book is inside. When these files are loaded on the Reader, will the reader show the file name or does it somehow extract the title from inside the file?

I have downloaded a couple of utilities which I've seen suggested on this forum and when saving from them, the title field is one option to fill in.

I can't see trying to find my way through a bunch of "1ddc809a.txt" sorts of listings in the reader Contents, but then again I can't see going through 20,000 PG book .txt files and renaming them.

If you use text files, the "title" listed by the Reader is the first line of text in the file; the "author" is the file date. If you use RTF or LRF, the title and author are "embedded" in the file and the Reader uses them - the file name is irrelevent in that case. I don't know about PDF - it's not a format I like or use.

With PG text files, your best bet is to save as RTF, and use Word's "File/Properties" menu to set the author and title. There's a great Word macro on the forum Wiki which does all the work for you. No need to do all your 20,000 PG files at once - just do them one at a time as you load them onto the Reader to read them.

[RWood]

PDF files' title and author are also set in their property box. This requires a full product like Adobe Acrobat Pro rather than the free Adobe Reader.

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by RWood

PDF files' title and author are also set in their property box. This requires a full product like Adobe Acrobat Pro rather than the free Adobe Reader.

Not really, LaTeX with the hyperref package can handle this too. That's what we do on Feedbooks (and unlike Sony/manybooks, we write the author's name in the right order).

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Hadrien

(and unlike Sony/manybooks, we write the author's name in the right order).

Isn't it ghastly, listing authors as "firstname lastname" - whoever wants to see a catalogue of authors sorted by their first names?

Whenever I enter an author's name in the properties of an RTF file, I always enter it as "lastname, firstname" so it sorts properly in Reader.

[UncleDuke]

I just love books by the "Robert" family.

[NatCh]

I put my authors' names in the meta data firstname lastname. But I don't ever look at them on the Reader sorted by author.

On the other hand, when I'm sorting the books on disk for cataloging/storage I do sort them into sub-dirs by LastName, Firstname, so I guess that more proves the point that not.