[GUI Plugin] EpubMerge

[Pachuqismo]

Hi JimmXinu,

First of all my appreciation for your long-term commitment to open source. You've started this thread more than seven years ago and, I can see, that you're still going strong. Many thanks for that!

My issue is that I'd like to extract my Tags from my 6,000 books Calibre library. I'm often using a mini-PCs connected to my TV to add books to my library and it has insufficient space to contain a copy of the whole library (it's also too slow).

Would it be possible to add a feature to your plug-in that would merge only the Tags and present it in an ePub format (i.e. the content would be an alphabetic listing of the Tags and the metadata would also include all the Tags). It would be neat with a Table of Content, but that's just an added convenience.

I guess it could be an option under "Basic" in the "Configure Plugin".

I think it would be an excellent added capability allowing to: (1) use several devices for input/modification of data; (2) start a new library with already defined tags ; and perhaps (3) share with other uses.

Thanks again for all your efforts.

Cheers!

[JimmXinu]

Pachuqismo,

Thank you for your kind words.

I'm not 100% sure I understand your request, but I don't think the EpubMerge is the place for it. EpubMerge is all about combining epubs.

For adding new books to your Calibre library, I suggest you look at Calibre's 'Automatic Adding' feature.

For recording all of the tags in your library in one ebook, I suggest Calibre's builtin Catalog generation feature.

For managing Calibre from a computer without the resources to run Calibre directly, I suggest you consider using Calibre's server feature on the computer you keep the full library on and access it from your mini-PC.

[Pachuqismo]

@JimmXinu

Let me try to explain myself, though I fully understand if you don't find it appropiate to add (other) features to your nice plugin.

In our Calibre library we have a significant number of books (as mentioned more than 6,000) and, as with any sort of extensive database, tags are important to find specific data.

To facilitate work with tags it would be useful to be able to export these (I've mentioned a few benefits in my previous posting). No such mechanism is built into Calibre.

Referring to your plugin, then this it is about 'combining epubs' but only their tags and put them in one single epub file.

Anyway, I did it manually using (as some have suggested) DB Browser for SQLite, copied the tags from the Calibre database into Word, replace line-return with a comma and a space, and put the content into an epub. I still think it would be useful to have such a feature built into Calibre, but the perceived requirement likely depends on the size of database one has and there aren't really all that many posting with this subject.

Anyway, you have a good one and cheers to you!

[JimmXinu]

@Pachuqismo,

You want only a list of all the tags in the library? Without any link back to the books they are attached to?

I believe I ran across a way to get that a while back, but it's manual and a little weird:

1. Go into Calibre's Preferences -> Adding Books -> Adding Options(tab) -> Rules to Filter tags read from metadata(button).
2. Add Rule(button)
3. Click the button to the far right of the dialog, tooltip is "Edit the list of tags with the tag editor"
4. Select all tags in left list(ctrl-a), click the arrow in the middle to add them to the right list
5. Click ok
6. Now copy the list of all tags in your library from the text edit field
7. Cancel the Edit Rule to not save it and back out of preferences.

Regardless, I will not be adding such a feature to this plugin. I don't believe it fits with the plugin's function.

If you haven't, you should also look at Job Spy plugin, which has a ton of features beyond what it's name suggests, including lots of metadata management functions.

If nothing else, DaltonST is apparently more open to adding unrelated features to a plugin.

[Pachuqismo]

@JimmXinu

Thanks for your response.

It sure would be neat to get the job done within Calibre - however, the suggested procedure doesn't work for me with 3,478 tags - it will only transfer, what I estimate to be, two-thirds.

I've tried several things to pass on the whole lot, but it doesn't seem possible - that includes the obvious of selecting the remaining batch and add it to (6) in a second step, but nothing gets added so I guess the buffer is full.

This could be a symptom of using Calibre to its (developer) perceived limits and now we users accrue far more books than what was initially expected. However, it also underlines why efficient management of metadata is crucial to find anything useful at all in large datasets...

Another related barrier I've highligted (a while ago) is that it would be useful to have Manage Tag open while preparing/adding books to the main Calibre - presently I often end up closing one to use the other and then back and forth several times.

I totally agree that the above doesn't belong in your plugin, and will check out the Job Spy you mention. Otherwise, I'll do it manually as mentioned in my previous post.

It has been nice to chat with you so all the best!

Cheers!

[jackie_w]

@Pachuqismo,

It's quite possible I haven't correctly understood what you want but if all you need is a list of all the tags currently in use in a calibre library then that can be done quite easily with any SQLite utility. I used SQliteSpy.

• Take a copy of the file metadata.db from your calibre library and put it somewhere else.
• Open the copy with the SQLite utility.
• Open the table named tags. It has 2 columns (id, name).
• (In Windows) Ctrl-A to select the whole table contents. Ctrl-C to copy. Ctrl-V to paste it somewhere else (e.g. a spreadsheet or a .txt file)

[theducks]

I have DB browser for SQLlite
In that, you can right click the TAGS table and Export as CSV

(I believe a similar feature is in SQLlite Spy)

[JimmXinu]

New Version Released

Version 2.6.0 - 02 Dec 2019
- Update translations
- Update cover view as well as tags and library list on new book create.

[Brett Merkey]

Anyone notice a problem with update? Sometime after the latest update, I noticed that ePubMerge was no longer on the Calibre menubar. I accessed Preferences to put it back on and found that ePubMerge was not available as a choice for the menubar or any other area.

The plug-in was in the list of user-installed plug-ins. I clicked on enable/disable and got this response:

calibre, version 3.42.0
Plugin cannot be disabled: Disabling the plugin EpubMerge is not allowed

Never seen anything like that before. Then I clicked on Customize and received this error:

ERROR: Must restart: You must restart calibre before you can configure the EpubMerge plugin

After re-starting, no joy. Same response on clicking Customize. All very weird. I then uninstalled and reinstalled manually. Same responses all around. Any ideas?

There are no problems with ePubSplit. Still on the menubar, still in Preferences as a feature choice.

[JimmXinu]

@Brett Merkey,

EpubMerge is working fine for me in Calibre 4.5. Your Calibre version 3.42.0 is quite old.

None of the GUI plugins I tried allowed disabling, but file type plugins did--I'm not sure what the details of plugin disabling are.

If you run Calibre in debug mode (Calibre Preferences drop down), it might give some useful output.

[Brett Merkey]

Thanks for your attention. Debug does not seem to offer anything interesting...

Interface language: None
Successfully initialized third party plugins: DeDRM (6, 3, 4) && EpubSplit (2, 8, 0) && Hyphenate This! (0, 0, 9) && EpubMerge (2, 6, 0) && Diaps Editing Toolbag (0, 3, 5) && Modify ePub (1, 4, 0) && Reading List (1, 6, 6)
calibre 3.42 [64bit] embedded-python: True is64bit: True
Windows-7-6.1.7601-SP1 Windows ('64bit', 'WindowsPE')
('Windows', '7', '6.1.7601')
Python 2.7.15+
Windows: ('7', '6.1.7601', 'SP1', u'Multiprocessor Free')
Interface language: None
Successfully initialized third party plugins: DeDRM (6, 3, 4) && EpubSplit (2, 8, 0) && Hyphenate This! (0, 0, 9) && EpubMerge (2, 6, 0) && Diaps Editing Toolbag (0, 3, 5) && Modify ePub (1, 4, 0) && Reading List (1, 6, 6)
Turning on automatic hidpi scaling
devicePixelRatio: 1.0
logicalDpi: 120.0 x 120.0
physicalDpi: 72.035450517 x 72.0
Using calibre Qt style: False

And I got the same responses to both the actions I mentioned before. Just kinda weird. If no one else has noticed anything wrong, then I won't worry (or upgrade) until I actually have to do a merge.

Thanks.

[theducks]

You have W7, so the latest you can run is 3.48

I don't understand that message (Why you are seeing) you saw.

[Brett Merkey]

I don't understand that message (Why you are seeing) you saw.

The real head-scratcher is what I am NOT seeing: the ePubMerge option in the toolbar/menu configuration dialog in Preferences. ePubSplit is still there. ePubMerge reports as installed. But, at the moment, the Calibre UI cannot hook onto it.

A minor mystery to tickle the brain...

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by theducks

You have W7, so the latest you can run is 3.48

I don't understand that message (Why you are seeing) you saw.

I thought under Win7, you might be able to run Calibre 4.x.

[Brett Merkey]

I thought under Win7, you might be able to run Calibre 4.x.

"Might" is the operable word, as I understand it. Since important pieces of 4.x are specified as no longer supporting Win7, it is best to assume that the OS ice is too thin for a stroll with future Calibre with my best machine.