Getting My eBook Act Together - Finally

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by John F

I guess it depends on what you consider "break". Maybe not calibre itself, but when a new model Kobo comes out, doesn't the plugin need to be updated to get the full plugin functionality?

Nope. If you check the Attempt to support newer firmware box on the Metadata, on device & advanced tab for either Kobo driver, you should be okay. If there are any issues seen, you would see posts about them well before the firmware gets to public release.

[maddz]

Originally Posted by leebase

Do you have a better alternative? I'm all ears

I'd say LibraryThing, but there's no plug-in. There's been talk of one, but I think the LT API is currently borked until the LT upgrade is complete. Still, it's no big deal to manage series info manually; it's part of my work flow when adding new books to Calibre.

• Add book(s) to Calibre, converting if necessary (I usually do as it helps with bloat - Tor.com, I'm looking at you).
• Log added book in LibraryThing, update series metadata as I do so.
• Export to the Forma.
• Read

.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by leebase

Do you have a better alternative? I'm all ears

Author websites, google searches, StoryGraph

[John F]

Originally Posted by Quoth

There is a check box "[ ] attempt to use newer firmware". That will work with a newer unknown Kobo if the database aspects used are unchanged.

Originally Posted by DNSB

Nope. If you check the Attempt to support newer firmware box on the Metadata, on device & advanced tab for either Kobo driver, you should be okay. If there are any issues seen, you would see posts about them well before the firmware gets to public release.

Guess I was wrong. I was aware of the firmware workaround, but I was under the impression when new Kobo hardware comes out, the plugin needs to be updated.

Apologies for the mistake.

And I guess I will need to update calibre even less often now.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by John F

And I guess I will need to update calibre even less often now.

WOT!

Are you an Antique collector?
Seriously, Other than the first few days (or your HW/OS is also an Antique) would you not. OK, I can see it if you are on a metered (or Dialup) Internet connection and you need to manage your usage. (I can't even imagine downloading Calibre sized install files over dialup )

[Ghostcat]

Originally Posted by John F

Guess I was wrong. I was aware of the firmware workaround, but I was under the impression when new Kobo hardware comes out, the plugin needs to be updated.

It does! The Kobo and KoboTouch drivers contain a list of Product IDs, which they use to identify the device when connected to USB. When a new Kobo device is released this list needs to be updated. As these are built-in plug-ins, this is usually done in the next Calibre release.

[haertig]

I use "Download Metadata" to get basics only. After reading this thread, I added the add-ons for Goodreads, Baen and Fantastic Fiction. That just gives me more choices of retrieved data than I had before. But I always curate it.

Most comments/descriptions come down with a whole bunch of extra junk that I don't want. Like "The latest book from New York Times #1 Best Selling Author!" (is there anybody who is not a NYT #1 best selling author???) Or like praise from some publisher I don't care about telling me how great the author is. All's I want is the description of the content of the book, plot synopsis, etc. So I strip out all the excess junk (and there is a lot of it!), clear any font changes or use of bold/italics, etc. so I have a plain text clean looking description.

The series info is either wrong or not to my liking. e.g., Jean Auel's "Earth's Children" series. I changed that series name to "Clan of the Cave Bear" because I like that better, even though this is the title of the first book in the series rather than the actual series name. Tough - I like it as the series name. Or I'll see a series name of "The Amazing Adventures of Detective John Doe". I'll change that series name to simply "John Doe". Also, some sources may list a series with books numbered 1 through 10. But there are actually only six novels and four short stories the author threw in between novels to entice readers. I personally like to number my series with novels getting a whole number, and short stories getting a fractional number. Like 1, 2, 3, 3.5, 3.6, 4, 4.5, 5, 6, 6.5. So I know what is a longer book and what's a short one. I could not care less about publisher or ISBN number, so I wipe those out when curating. You always have to look at the author(s) and make sure they are consistent. I don't want entries that are by "John Doe", "Doe, John" and "John C. Doe" when those are all the same person. And for co-authors, sometimes the metadata and/or the book covers might come down as "Jim & Bob", and sometimes they may come down as "Bob & Jim". So that needs to be curated and made consistent too. Lots of times a series will have several different sets of cover art. I want my series artwork to have a similar design/theme throughout the entire series if possible (often it is not), so I do a lot of work comparing and picking the style of cover that is available for the majority of books in the series. Sometimes I will manually go searching for artwork with a Google query of, say, "image cover art book Jean Auel Clan of the Cave Bear". Searches like this will often turn up artwork that Calibre does not find directly itself. I use GIMP to fix up cover art that is not to my standards of clarity, cropping, size, color saturation, etc.

Metadata downloads just give me most of the raw material to work with as I then manually input that into the books Calibre page. Sometimes the metadata comes down just as I want it. In those rare situations I say "Yippee!" and take a second swig of my coffee before moving on to the next book.

[John F]

Originally Posted by John F

I guess it depends on what you consider "break". Maybe not calibre itself, but when a new model Kobo comes out, doesn't the plugin need to be updated to get the full plugin functionality?

Originally Posted by Quoth

There is a check box "[ ] attempt to use newer firmware". That will work with a newer unknown Kobo if the database aspects used are unchanged.

Originally Posted by DNSB

Nope. If you check the Attempt to support newer firmware box on the Metadata, on device & advanced tab for either Kobo driver, you should be okay. If there are any issues seen, you would see posts about them well before the firmware gets to public release.

Originally Posted by Ghostcat

It does! The Kobo and KoboTouch drivers contain a list of Product IDs, which they use to identify the device when connected to USB. When a new Kobo device is released this list needs to be updated. As these are built-in plug-ins, this is usually done in the next Calibre release.

So which is it?

Or did i need to be more specific "... when a new model comes out, and you want to use the new model Kobo with calibre ...".

[Quoth]

It usually works check box "[ ] attempt to use newer firmware". The ID upgrade means the check box can be empty, and also an ID won't be added without making sure FW is compatible or any changes for database are added.
So Quoth, DNSB and Ghostcat are not conflicting.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Quoth

It usually works check box "[ ] attempt to use newer firmware". The ID upgrade means the check box can be empty, and also an ID won't be added without making sure FW is compatible or any changes for database are added.
So Quoth, DNSB and Ghostcat are not conflicting.

Just to make sure I understand...

So if I get a new Kobo model, and the plugin hasn't been updated for it (the new hardware id), the reader will still show up in calibre as a Kobo (and not something else, like a mass storage device)?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by John F

Just to make sure I understand...

So if I get a new Kobo model, and the plugin hasn't been updated for it (the new hardware id), the reader will still show up in calibre as a Kobo (and not something else, like a mass storage device)?

Once the device is pre-announced, in past, Kobo has been willing to supply the USB IDs. This means that most of Kobo's new devices have worked with calibre out of the box.

[John F]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Once the device is pre-announced, in past, Kobo has been willing to supply the USB IDs. This means that most of Kobo's new devices have worked with calibre out of the box.

So if I currently have calibre and plugins installed, and in a month Kobo announces a new device (a Sage 2E), my current calibre and plugins will function and not need to be updated when I purchase and use the new Sage 2E?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by John F

So if I currently have calibre and plugins installed, and in a month Kobo announces a new device (a Sage 2E), my current calibre and plugins will function and not need to be updated when I purchase and use the new Sage 2E?

No. The USB ID goes into calibre and you will need to update calibre to support it. The other option is to run your calibre from source and manually add the USB ID.

So say, the new Sage 2E goes public with a release date of April 1, 2024. The USB ID will be requested and likely added to a calibre release before that date.

At one time, davidfor who was the last maintainer for the Kobo driver and KoboUtilities plugin backported several newer Kobo devices for calibre 3.48 but since he passed in August, 2022, that is not likely to be repeated.

[JSWolf]

Where does one go in the Kobo drivers to update them for newer devices and also for newer firmware?

[DNSB]

Around line 1388 for the dbversion and around line 1445 for USB IDs in the driver used in calibre 7.4.0.

Do you want a detailed tutorial on how to make the changes as well?