Where does "genre" metadata come from

[KamiGreen]

Hi all,

I asked this question on the Calibre sub-forum and the creator of Calibre told me I needed to ask the Pocketbook team

I like my library sorted a certain way and have remove all the metadata that is not "author, "title", and "series". I removed ALL the tags from ALL the books, several times! And yet when I look at my library on the Inkpad and sort by genre, I get a million different genres and sub-genres... which drives me crazy.

Anybody here can tell me where that metadata is drawn from? I'd like to get rid of this mess!

Hope everyone is staying safe !

Kami

[kiwibelgian]

For Epub books the data comes from the "<dc:subject>some tag name</dc:subject>" entries in the EPUB opf file.

I've been experimenting with this recently on my Inkpad 3 by:

1. Setting up "Genres" in Calibre as per https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/sub_groups.html
2. Adding my books to subgroups under 1. above eg. Fantasy, Science Fiction, Crime etc
3. In calibre adding a metadata plugboard with:
Format: epub,
Device: Pocketbook740 (for the Inkpad 3),
Source template: {#genre} - assuming you called the custom column lookup name from 1. above #genre,
Destination field: tags

The metadata plugboard then replaces the existing tag entries for the book with the entries from the genre sub groups in the epub file saved to the pocketbook.

The pocketbook library app then imports the book using these tag entries.

[KamiGreen]

Originally Posted by kiwibelgian

For Epub books the data comes from the "<dc:subject>some tag name</dc:subject>" entries in the EPUB opf file.

I've been experimenting with this recently on my Inkpad 3 by:

1. Setting up "Genres" in Calibre as per https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/sub_groups.html
2. Adding my books to subgroups under 1. above eg. Fantasy, Science Fiction, Crime etc
3. In calibre adding a metadata plugboard with:
Format: epub,
Device: Pocketbook740 (for the Inkpad 3),
Source template: {#genre} - assuming you called the custom column lookup name from 1. above #genre,
Destination field: tags

The metadata plugboard then replaces the existing tag entries for the book with the entries from the genre sub groups in the epub file saved to the pocketbook.

The pocketbook library app then imports the book using these tag entries.

Thanks! I'll give that a try at some point!

For now, I found that removing tags from Calibre if one thing, but the Inkpad will still get them from the pub file UNLESS I create new tags. So I've done that and my Inkpad library is pretty much cleaned up. Except for the occasional wrong title or author name, which stay the way they want even if I "polish" the file through Calibre...

[kiwibelgian]

If you try the metadata plugboard above and put say "x" in the source template box then when calibre copies the epub to your pocketbook the epub file will have all tag entries replaced with a single entry of tag "x" (that way you don't need to delete all the tag entries for your books in the calibre library).

Also, what i've found for the inkpad 3 (with the current latest version of firmware) is that it incorrectly takes the last title tag in the epub opf file and uses that - when it should take the first title entry in the opf file (i.e first title entry = main title, 2nd title entry = sub title and you end up with the sub title in the pocketbook library). Also it doesn't support epub3 format books which include additional info in the opf to designate the primary title tag. As far as i can tell calibre does not display/import the additional title tags when you add the book to calibre so you can't edit the metadata in calibre library and polish the book to fix this. I assume the same applies for additional author tags.

So if you want to fix the incorrect title / author edit the epub to place your desired title & author as the last title / author tags in the opf file or delete the additional title / author tags and re-add the epub to the pocketbook.

I'm hoping the new firmware version that is currently being developed (and which supports epub3 files) will fix this issue with epub2 files when it comes out for the inkpad 3 later this year.

[KamiGreen]

Right! Thank you, this did solve. my problem: the few instances where the wrong title was displayed were all based on title/subtitle order in the opf file. I've deleted them and now all is good.

Thanks a lot, my OCD has gone down a lot