copy all books?

[alexandrubenza]

why on earth would it be a good idea to copy all books added to calibre library as it says in the setup screen?

can't i just have it manage a library? like an itunes setup?

i have all my books on an external, and i don't wanna copy nearly 100GB to my SSD.

[theducks]

http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq....ary-management

[alexandrubenza]

oh thank you so much for pointing me to something that i found a few clicks after the screen that allowed me to download the install file! what would the internet do without your infinitely useless helpfulness.

http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq....k-files-stored

that's where i read the blurb that prompted me to post. obviously there's something i was still confused about and needed clarification on. but thanks for perpetuating the 'internet people are jerks' myth.

i can't tell you how helpful "go read the internet" is.

[PeterT]

Sigh.... Ignoring the obvious point on people are jerks, you need to understand that calibre is designed as an all inclusive cataloging . management program.

One of the overall design decisions made was that the safest way of ensuring that content being managed by it was only managed by it was by ensuring that all content was stored in one consistent location, namely the calibre library.

While yes, some people have issues with this, many MANY people have accepted that design choice and seen the benefits of it.

See Want to change the folder structure of the Calibre library? and Why doesn’t calibre let me store books in my own directory structure?.

[alexandrubenza]

no i get that part, it is actually nice, and probably even better if i just let it sort everything all out and then delete my originals... but the problem i have with that is i've moved all my ebooks across a few hdds over the years and sometimes ran into the problem of "filename too long..."

i can only imagine what kinda fuss it would give me if it was as heavily nested as calibre's library makes it.

i guess my real confusion is the mention of the db that keeps all the info relevant: i understood that it copies over everything, such that if you have 100 GB of ebooks on your external, you'll have 100 GB of the same ebooks wherever you define the calibre library folder. is that right?

i got a little confused reading the manual because it mentions a sql db that keeps track of all the titles/authors/etc... so in my head that's a much smaller, single file, that doesn't NEED copies or specific folder structures or moving files to provide useful information.

[PeterT]

The problem is that if you leave media external to a central location, many people will willy-nilly start doing maintenance of those arbitrary locations, dropping files, moving stuff to different locations, and then complain that their books have gone missing.

By leaving ALL content in one, well defined location, then, if material goes missing it is due to people messing around under-the-covers of the library.

calibre actually takes steps to ensure that file names / directories are not buried with filenames / paths longer than the underlying O/S supports.

Remember; one should treat the calibre directory structure / file naming standards as a blackbox; while it is possible to browse it using the underlying O/S file browser, and while the names appear to be what you would expect, really if you want a copy of the contents in a manner you want to see it (ie author names, series, full book title etc) you need to "export" the data from calibre to the structure you want.

See the Preferences for Saving books to disk, and then the actual Save to disk command.

Nothing by the way says you need make the Calibre Library on internal storage; it can reside on any non-networked drive on your system.

If under Windows you make use of the Calibre Portable installation, you can leave all of calibre (including executables and library) on external storage, which you can then move to any other Windows computer.

If you really want, you can leave the calibre books on an external device, and relocate the database to a faster SSD. See Customizing calibre for info on environment variables.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by alexandrubenza

oh thank you so much for pointing me to something that i found a few clicks after the screen that allowed me to download the install file! what would the internet do without your infinitely useless helpfulness.

http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq....k-files-stored

that's where i read the blurb that prompted me to post. obviously there's something i was still confused about and needed clarification on. but thanks for perpetuating the 'internet people are jerks' myth.

i can't tell you how helpful "go read the internet" is.

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[eschwartz]

Ah, yes, THIS again.

I need to start keeping an index of all the "calibre won't let me use my own folder structure" threads...

[EowynCarter]

If there is so much of these threads, maybe that's because there is a real need. Just my 2 cents worth...

To the OP, don't take this personally, it's just a touchy subject.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

If there is so much of these threads, maybe that's because there is a real need. Just my 2 cents worth...

To the OP, don't take this personally, it's just a touchy subject.

In case several years worth of discussion wasn't enough to get the point across...

No. There is no "need". There is a "want".

Many people would beg to differ with you about what is necessary. Many people consider this to be a superior system.

At the end of the day, it currently works for most people. The few who seem to find it to be an issue are under no obligation to use calibre.
There are ways of getting calibre to integrate with whatever other system you like.
The developer (Kovid) has followed this explanation (linked above, in the FAQ) with a personal declaration of active disinterest in hearing future discussion about his reasonable choice, on the grounds that either way he will upset people and he prefers it this way but mostly because he simply doesn't care, and you can write your own ebook program if you don't like it.
With an installed userbase of 26 million (current users 3.5 million) the number of complainant threads would have to be correspondingly noticeable (say, a hundred thousand active users, for a roughly one-in-thirty impact seems reasonable) before it would sound like any sort of real "need". But it's a good excuse for

Since no one has yet taken him up on it (even with all the recyclable backend calibre code freely available under the GPL3) I can only assume that it isn't quite as much of a "need" as you seem to think.

I don't mean to denigrate anyone's desire for a more customizable management system. But the idea that calibre must be that system, and that calibre is required to change to meet your needs, is a bit much...
No software project will ever meet the needs of everyone. There will always be mutually incompatible goals, and features that require more work than is worth the outcome.

The prognosis isn't all bad, though. Kovid said it would require a major rewrite of calibre (due to underlying assumptions in the library handling), but it could be done... if you are willing to put in the work. I am sure Kovid would merge the code if it was as robust as the current code and provided a choice (obviously the default would be to stay the same) and didn't come with performance hits.
But don't try to say Kovid has a "need" to do a major rewrite of calibre, which will result in people having a high likelihood of losing their files just like in the exalted iTunes, and provoking the same endless complaints that iTunes provokes, in order to implement something very few people are interested in.
For a net gain in people criticizing his choices.