Command Line problems: ebook-convert, ebook-meta with tags: --series, --series-index

[omnivorous]

I think I have found bugs in both ebook-convert.exe and ebook-meta.exe relating to the --series, --series-index and --index tags.

I'm using calibre version 0.7.26 on Windows XP

I tried to create a mobi file with all the meta data, but the series data is not stored.

Here is what I did first :
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"C:\Program Files\Calibre2\ebook-convert.exe" "C:\Temp\eBookScan.htm" "C:\Temp\eBookScan.mobi" --cover "C:\Temp\Cover_Gray16.jpg" --output-profile kindle --isbn "0552083879" --authors "Louis L'Amour" --title "Mustang Man" --publisher "Transworld Publishers Limited" --pubdate "1985-11-15" --tags "Fiction, Westerns" --language "en"

This worked, and all the tags were stored.



Then when I added the tags for series and index:
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"C:\Program Files\Calibre2\ebook-convert.exe" "C:\Temp\eBookScan.htm" "C:\Temp\eBookScan.mobi" --cover "C:\Temp\Cover_Gray16.jpg" --output-profile kindle --isbn "0552083879" --authors "Louis L'Amour" --title "Mustang Man" --publisher "Transworld Publishers Limited" --pubdate "1985-11-15" --tags "Fiction, Westerns" --language "en" --series "The Sacketts" --series-index "6"

This seemed to have worked, but the series data is not stored:


I also tried adding the series data using the ebook-meta.exe program.
Note that the --series-index parameter in this program is actually --index.

Here is what I tried:

"C:\Program Files\Calibre2\ebook-meta.exe" "C:\Temp\eBookScan.mobi" --series "The Sacketts" --index "6"

This did not work, it showed the "Original metadata" and "Changed metadata" to be the same.

Finally, I just used the --comments tag to store the series information until this is fixed, as in:
--comments "The Sacketts Series, #6"

Later I can do a batch meta update script to automatically pull this out and write it correctly into the series fields.

[Manichean]

Are you sure that mobi actually supports series metadata? I've looked at the wiki entry, which seems to indicate that it doesn't.

[omnivorous]

Thanks Manichean for your response, and the great link to the wiki entry.

I was working from the online Calibre User Manual page for HTML to MOBI conversion, which has both --series and --series-index

But I agree with you on the wiki entry, I cannot see any mention of book series in the EXTH record types. However, there are a lot of unknowns in there and this wiki is unofficial. Perhaps a later version of the format will have the series.

So perhaps, for now, the Calibre User manual needs to be adjusted for Conversion to MOBI to exclude the mention of --series.

[Manichean]

Hm. My suggestion would be asking in the Mobipocket subforum if anyone knows for sure, or waiting until someone else chimes into this thread. You could also search for a program suite I remember from when I was using Mobipocket called Mobiperl. If that supports series metadata, then Mobipocket should as well.

[omnivorous]

Thanks again, I read the perl code in the MobiPerl program file exth.pm, as referenced in https://dev.mobileread.com/trac/mobiperl without finding any "series" information, so I have come to the tentative conclusion that it is not there in the mobi format.

I have written a Groovy program to clean up the html of my books and call the various calibre command line programs, so in the future I can easily come back to this problem and automatically read the series information I have stored in the mobi comment field and save it somewhere else, or use it in the book filename for sorting.