Marvin 3 Not Showing Custom Columns in User Collections

[noirverse]

Hi everyone, I have been having a problem recently with Marvin 3. I've been using FanFicFare to sort my fanfiction and making custom columns to list complete/incomplete stories along with groups. I polished the books I wanted to read on Marvin, but when I go to download them, they don't display anything that I've put in my custom columns on Calibre which is an issue. I assume they're supposed to be listed in user collections (which is blank). Is there any way that I can make sure that the custom columns are displayed correctly when I swipe left on the stories? Thank you for any help!

[Turtle91]

Calibre's 'Custom Columns' are for use in managing the books in Calibre, they do not make other apps recognize that non-standard metadata. The metadata is properly stored in the ePub by using the Polish option you mentioned (or the save-to-disk option) but Marvin doesn't know all the possible custom options users could think of, in order to display them.

Marvin's User Collections must be created in Marvin then assign the books to the respective collection.

There was at one time someone working on a link between Calibre and Marvin to automatically do what you would like...and it was quite promising... but then Apple changed their policy on how apps communicate with the outside world?? and it didn't work anymore.

You can manually process your books, though, and it's fairly simple. Just sort Calibre on your custom column, transfer all the books in that column/category to Marvin, then use Marvin's multi-select to add that whole batch of books to the User Collection. Repeat for each category.

Cheers!

[noirverse]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

There was at one time someone working on a link between Calibre and Marvin to automatically do what you would like...and it was quite promising... but then Apple changed their policy on how apps communicate with the outside world?? and it didn't work anymore.

That's a shame! I was hoping for an easy way to search for my custom metadata within Marvin as I have a lot of books, but it looks like I'll need to download in batches and sort my books into the collections on Marvin like I've been doing before. From what you've said, it doesn't sound like there's any iOS based app that would be able to read the metadata. Thank you for the help!

[Turtle91]

No worries. I don't know if there is a reading app that can read non-standard metadata, but who knows??

Cheers,

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by noirverse

That's a shame! I was hoping for an easy way to search for my custom metadata within Marvin as I have a lot of books, but it looks like I'll need to download in batches and sort my books into the collections on Marvin like I've been doing before. From what you've said, it doesn't sound like there's any iOS based app that would be able to read the metadata. Thank you for the help!

Calibre Companion does but it has no built-in reader. You have to export books from CC to another reader.

Problem when paired with Marvin is (especially for fanfics that are frequently updated) Marvin doesn't have an easy way to overwrite existing books so you pretty much have to read then delete. The only delivery method in Marvin that allows overwrite is Dropbox.

What I've done to accommodate is to dump custom columns into hierarchical tags (e.g. Fandom.Marvel, Fandom.Buffy, Buffy.Ship.Buffy/Spike) via metadata plugboards and Save to Disk to my Dropbox.