How to get rid of old comments

mdietz39 · 06-03-2012, 11:06 AM

I have used Calibre to classify several hundred books. During that process I put my own description of the book in the comment field. I have since "found" the download metadata function and have started replacing (I thought) the comments I had entered previously. However I have discovered that if I happen to click on the "Set metadata for the book from the selected format" the new metadata is replaced by my old data. How do I get rid of that old comment?

The same situation applies to the cover also.

Thank you
Mike

davidfor · 06-03-2012, 08:59 PM

Calibre stores metadata in it's own database. There is also metadata in the ebooks. Calibre does not update the metadata in the ebook unless you tell it to. A common way to do this is by doing a conversion. My guess is that you have done this after putting your comments in. The fix for this, other than not pressing that button, is to get calibre to update the metadata in the book again. Another conversion will do this. Also, if you are talking about ePubs, then the Modify ePub plugin will do it as well.

JSWolf · 06-03-2012, 10:00 PM

Doing a conversion just to update the metadata is asking for trouble. Don't do it.

Gunnerp245 · 06-06-2012, 10:46 AM

The modify epub plugin has a metadata update selection, which will not re-convert the book, if epub.

BeccaPrice · 06-09-2012, 09:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Doing a conversion just to update the metadata is asking for trouble. Don't do it.

Why? this is my standard way of making the metadata change 'stick' and if I'm risking corrupting my books or something else dire, I need to know.

I can't use the modify epub plugin because most of my books are in mobi.

kiwidude · 06-10-2012, 05:23 AM

As a general rule to be safe you should only convert when you "have" to, such as shifting format. A lot of the time, the changes calibre makes during a conversion are not going to be visually noticeable when you read the book, which is all the majority of people care about.

There are a small number of purists like JSWolf who will post ultimatums of thou shalt not convert with calibre. Bear in mind that many of the reasons given for this are things that no reader of a book cares about in the slightest. People do not care what a cover image gets renamed to, what a style is called, or the file structure inside the ePub. These things have zero impact on readability. The only people who might care are people authoring an ebook, but they would have no need to do a calibre conversion.

However like any software calibre does have bugs, gaps in handling certain edge cases and on rare occasions conversion regressions in a new release. Kovid kindly stomps on bugs when reported of course, I've recently fed him a whole bunch of examples of issues i found with cover identification leading to broken images and broken TOC links which have been fixed in 0.8.55. However there are still other issues that can come up that do visibly affect the book, some of which are dependant on what your default calibre settings are (like losing margin based sub paragraph indentation) and others you cannot (splitting pages between images and heading styles, creating extra page turns in your book where there shouldn't be any). Doubled up cover images, multiple TOC pages, i am sure there are other examples I have forgotten, and that is all assuming you haven't done something really dangerous like enabling heuristics or changing various other default settings.

There will always be edge cases where *visually* bad things might happen. Risking a conversion just to put metadata inside the book is really not a sensible thing to do - most of the time you will ge fine, but why take the risk? Calibre already has a different mechanism to update the metadata when you save to disk or send to device exporting from calibre. The Modify ePub plugin came about as a way to apply such a change to books in your library in place, just so people could use the calibre viewer to read them.

No such in place option currently exists for mobi though to be honest I think there is less of a use case for it. Someone who only keeps mobi formats is presumably only doing this because they own a Kindle, in which case they will be reading their books on that device. However the Kindle ignores all metadata except cover, title, author and published date anyways, and calibre will update those when you send to device. Due to its limitations, no one should be keeping mobi format instead of ePub if they dont have to for device purposes, ePub is a far superior format.

BeccaPrice · 06-10-2012, 10:32 AM

Quote:

However the Kindle ignores all metadata except cover, title, author and published date anyways, and calibre will update those when you send to device.

do I understand you correctly that, if you change a cover in calibre, and then send the file to the device, the cover is changed without doing a conversion? because that's not what I've found happens, although I last experimented on this several months ago and it could have changed.

I mostly use mobi because I do have a kindle (a k3, if that matters). I like having the metadata comments (a book description) up front in a book, so I can tell what the book is about before i get into it - I have so many books on my k3 that I forget why I have which books. I do have a lot of my books in both files formats, though. Are you saying that when I get a mobi file, I should convert it to epub for archive reasons, because that's a superior format?

If I have a book in both mobi and epub (and I do have a lot that way) do I need to convert or use Manage Eputbs to make the changes twice, once in each format?

kiwidude · 06-10-2012, 11:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

do I understand you correctly that, if you change a cover in calibre, and then send the file to the device, the cover is changed without doing a conversion? because that's not what I've found happens, although I last experimented on this several months ago and it could have changed.

If calibre can identify what the existing cover is, then yes it will replace it - it depends on the book. If you want to *guarantee* that calibre can identify it, then a conversion or Modify ePub is the only way, beyond manually editing the opf manifest yourself. I'll be honest and say that replacing covers in MOBI files isn't a high personal priority, because on the Kindles you and I have Amazon does their best to make it difficult to see them anyway.

Given the Kindle is b&w, and it is just another page I would otherwise click past I think they have it right - I save the pretty cover browsing time for when perusing my books in calibre.

Quote:

I mostly use mobi because I do have a kindle (a k3, if that matters). I like having the metadata comments (a book description) up front in a book, so I can tell what the book is about before i get into it - I have so many books on my k3 that I forget why I have which books. I do have a lot of my books in both files formats, though.

You are talking about a metadata *jacket* being a page you can insert into the book using calibre, which is different to what the OP is referring to, which is the *internal* metadata stored in the book. You are absolutely correct that inserting a metadata jacket page is the only way to see your book comments on a Kindle. And the only way of doing that is via a calibre conversion (unless you were working with an ePub for Modify ePub of course). But this is all very different to the internal metadata stored inside an ebook (which is what calibre reads to put in the title bar of the calibre ebook viewer, and your Kindle reads to display as the title/author on the device).

Quote:

Are you saying that when I get a mobi file, I should convert it to epub for archive reasons, because that's a superior format?

No point, unless you plan on editing the book to restore formatting that was lost when the MOBI was created. A MOBI file due to the nature of its format has less options available for the formatting of the HTML it contains inside it (e.g. no right margin capability and issues with tables). Converting back to ePub cannot magically "restore" formatting that gets lost by converting to MOBI.

However if you are downloading/buying a book and have a choice of formats available then all things being equal an ePub version is a better long term bet. Amazon is trying to up their game of course with the new KF8 standard, but that doesn't help you and me as Kindle 3rd gen owners

.

Quote:

If I have a book in both mobi and epub (and I do have a lot that way) do I need to convert or use Manage Eputbs to make the changes twice, once in each format?

As Modify ePub only works on ePub books, I would make the change once to your ePub, and then reconvert to MOBI. That is what I do - I use ePub as my master format for every book, that I do any editing on using Sigil, Tweak ePub or the Modify ePub plugin to get it formatted exactly as I want it. Then I convert to MOBI to prepare it for sending to my Kindle at a later point.

However if you are looking to keep your life incomparably simple, are perfectly happy with the limitations in the formatting of the MOBI books you have believe it will take death to have the Kindle pried out of your hands then don't fuss yourself bothering about ePub and conversions

BeccaPrice · 06-10-2012, 11:51 AM

Thanks for explaining all this. I've also got a Sony 350, so I'm not wedded to my kindle as a kindle per se - it's just the one I tend to use the most, because I don't like touch interfaces.

I mostly read linear fiction, so I haven't run into any examples of exotic formatting that caused problems for the mobi limitations.

06-03-2012, 11:06 AM	#1
mdietz39 Member Posts: 19 Karma: 200 Join Date: Feb 2011 Location: New Mexico Device: Kindle v3.1	How to get rid of old comments I have used Calibre to classify several hundred books. During that process I put my own description of the book in the comment field. I have since "found" the download metadata function and have started replacing (I thought) the comments I had entered previously. However I have discovered that if I happen to click on the "Set metadata for the book from the selected format" the new metadata is replaced by my old data. How do I get rid of that old comment? The same situation applies to the cover also. Thank you Mike

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06-03-2012, 08:59 PM	#2
davidfor Grand Sorcerer Posts: 24,907 Karma: 47303748 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Sydney, Australia Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos	Calibre stores metadata in it's own database. There is also metadata in the ebooks. Calibre does not update the metadata in the ebook unless you tell it to. A common way to do this is by doing a conversion. My guess is that you have done this after putting your comments in. The fix for this, other than not pressing that button, is to get calibre to update the metadata in the book again. Another conversion will do this. Also, if you are talking about ePubs, then the Modify ePub plugin will do it as well.

06-03-2012, 10:00 PM	#3
JSWolf Resident Curmudgeon Posts: 73,983 Karma: 128903378 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3	Doing a conversion just to update the metadata is asking for trouble. Don't do it.

06-06-2012, 10:46 AM	#4
Gunnerp245 Gadget Freak Posts: 1,169 Karma: 1043832 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: US Device: EE, Note 8	The modify epub plugin has a metadata update selection, which will not re-convert the book, if epub.

06-10-2012, 05:23 AM	#6
kiwidude Calibre Plugins Developer Posts: 4,637 Karma: 2162064 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kindle Oasis	As a general rule to be safe you should only convert when you "have" to, such as shifting format. A lot of the time, the changes calibre makes during a conversion are not going to be visually noticeable when you read the book, which is all the majority of people care about. There are a small number of purists like JSWolf who will post ultimatums of thou shalt not convert with calibre. Bear in mind that many of the reasons given for this are things that no reader of a book cares about in the slightest. People do not care what a cover image gets renamed to, what a style is called, or the file structure inside the ePub. These things have zero impact on readability. The only people who might care are people authoring an ebook, but they would have no need to do a calibre conversion. However like any software calibre does have bugs, gaps in handling certain edge cases and on rare occasions conversion regressions in a new release. Kovid kindly stomps on bugs when reported of course, I've recently fed him a whole bunch of examples of issues i found with cover identification leading to broken images and broken TOC links which have been fixed in 0.8.55. However there are still other issues that can come up that do visibly affect the book, some of which are dependant on what your default calibre settings are (like losing margin based sub paragraph indentation) and others you cannot (splitting pages between images and heading styles, creating extra page turns in your book where there shouldn't be any). Doubled up cover images, multiple TOC pages, i am sure there are other examples I have forgotten, and that is all assuming you haven't done something really dangerous like enabling heuristics or changing various other default settings. There will always be edge cases where visually bad things might happen. Risking a conversion just to put metadata inside the book is really not a sensible thing to do - most of the time you will ge fine, but why take the risk? Calibre already has a different mechanism to update the metadata when you save to disk or send to device exporting from calibre. The Modify ePub plugin came about as a way to apply such a change to books in your library in place, just so people could use the calibre viewer to read them. No such in place option currently exists for mobi though to be honest I think there is less of a use case for it. Someone who only keeps mobi formats is presumably only doing this because they own a Kindle, in which case they will be reading their books on that device. However the Kindle ignores all metadata except cover, title, author and published date anyways, and calibre will update those when you send to device. Due to its limitations, no one should be keeping mobi format instead of ePub if they dont have to for device purposes, ePub is a far superior format.

06-10-2012, 11:51 AM	#9
BeccaPrice Wizard Posts: 2,145 Karma: 11174187 Join Date: Jan 2011 Device: Sony 350, K3-3G, K4SO, KPW	Thanks for explaining all this. I've also got a Sony 350, so I'm not wedded to my kindle as a kindle per se - it's just the one I tend to use the most, because I don't like touch interfaces. I mostly read linear fiction, so I haven't run into any examples of exotic formatting that caused problems for the mobi limitations.

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