Edit Metadata date field

BeccaPrice · 02-06-2012, 06:19 PM

Playing around with the "Edit Metadata" screen and fields, I looked at the Date field in the tags/publishing data area... I thought that date was the date the book was added to Calibre, but it's not apparently. Also, I tried to change the date, and just got a calendar function with the year 101 - how do I change that to 2012? Where does the Date information come from, and what does it mean?

theducks · 02-06-2012, 06:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

Playing around with the "Edit Metadata" screen and fields, I looked at the Date field in the tags/publishing data area... I thought that date was the date the book was added to Calibre, but it's not apparently. Also, I tried to change the date, and just got a calendar function with the year 101 - how do I change that to 2012? Where does the Date information come from, and what does it mean?

Click in the title bar area of the calendar where it says 101 (or any year).
Or if you are a glutton for punishment, click the green arrow, 12 times for each year you want to add/remove

BeccaPrice · 02-06-2012, 06:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theducks

Click in the title bar area of the calendar where it says 101 (or any year).
Or if you are a glutton for punishment, click the green arrow, 12 times for each year you want to add/remove

What does the date entered mean? If it has some meaning, I don't want to mess with it. Otherwise, I'll try to find a way to change it to date added or something. Or just hide that column altogether.

theducks · 02-06-2012, 07:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

What does the date entered mean? If it has some meaning, I don't want to mess with it. Otherwise, I'll try to find a way to change it to date added or something. Or just hide that column altogether.

You are allowed to change anything on the Metadata screen. Kovid will not have you flogged

Date entered, usually means the date the record is created.
In my case, I create empty books to document my paper Library. or as a place holder for a missing book in a series. If I add an e-copy, I may want to now make that date the date of the event. I can change it.

BTW I have no idea how you managed to get a blank date (year 101 is a no-date default)

BeccaPrice · 02-06-2012, 07:53 PM

I was just playing around, not sure what I did... I think I hit the "recycle" button to the right of the field. That changed the field to "unspecified" Then when I tried to enter today's date I got the year 101. I wish that there was a way to enter the date directly rather than through the calendar feature.

theducks · 02-06-2012, 07:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

I was just playing around, not sure what I did... I think I hit the "recycle" button to the right of the field. That changed the field to "unspecified" Then when I tried to enter today's date I got the year 101. I wish that there was a way to enter the date directly rather than through the calendar feature.

There is: DON'T highlight the entire Date
highlight just the month (MM/DD/YYYY) (actually a single click on the Mothh will highlight it)
type a 2 digit month (02) it will move to Day

I think you should be able to handle it from here

BeccaPrice · 02-07-2012, 06:09 PM

Ah, that does it. I think the date is DD/MM/YY order, though. And I had to spell out the month (or at least give a three letter abbreviation for it.

Thanks again, theducks - you are, as always, a big help.

chaley · 02-08-2012, 04:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

Ah, that does it. I think the date is DD/MM/YY order, though.

The date format is controlled by the locale of the computer running calibre. Normally, people in the US see MM/DD/YYYY while people in Europe see DD/MM/YYYY.

BeccaPrice · 02-08-2012, 05:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chaley

The date format is controlled by the locale of the computer running calibre. Normally, people in the US see MM/DD/YYYY while people in Europe see DD/MM/YYYY.

how odd. I'm definitely in The States (in Michigan, to be precise) and I see DD/MM/YY. This doesn't bother me at all, though.

dmcd · 02-08-2012, 06:04 PM

So glad you asked this question. Being unable to alter that stupid date and crummy calendar without developing RSI has been driving me nuts.

Does it work on the book publishing date too? This is the one that is often wrong depending on which cover you choose when hunting metadata and not on the earliest publishing date for a book. At the moment, when it will not allow me to correct an auto input date I just delete the date leaving unspecified.

Why the silly calendar anyway? Why not just allow direct typed input of a full date if we do not like what turns up automatically? I like to arrange an author's full collection of books by the date of the first edition in the country of origin, not necessarily by the date some US publisher bought the US rights and published it in that country.

I'm also a bit tired of having to delete the Amazon or Barnes and Noble proprietary in house code appended to the ISBN numbers. After all, the "I" in the ISBN stands for "International". I don't buy books from either of these companies.

These little niggles might not matter if you are just buying one book a week, but right now I'm trying to sort out an enormous library of many thousands of books and append all the correct metadata to them. The above glitches plus regular sudden crashes by Calibre, really slow down the work flow.

Dale

chaley · 02-09-2012, 06:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chaley

The date format is controlled by the locale of the computer running calibre. Normally, people in the US see MM/DD/YYYY while people in Europe see DD/MM/YYYY.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

how odd. I'm definitely in The States (in Michigan, to be precise) and I see DD/MM/YY. This doesn't bother me at all, though.

My bad. The format is controlled by the tweaks under "Control how dates are displayed". The default for the timestamp (the "date" field) is "dd MMM yyyy". If you change it to "MM/dd/yyyy" you will get dates like "12/25/2011" instead of "25 Dec 2011".

BeccaPrice · 02-09-2012, 04:52 PM

Thanks, chaley - I'll look at that feature, if I can find it. Where is it located? (I did a quick wander around the Preference pages, and didn't see it)

tilia · 02-09-2012, 05:38 PM

Preferences>Tweaks and then choose 'Control how dates are displayed'.

BeccaPrice · 02-10-2012, 12:38 PM

ah, there it is. Tweaks still scare me - since Calibre doesn't have an "undo" feature, I tend to be cautious about exploring and playing with options.

I have no problem with the DD/MM/YYYY format though, so I think I'll leave it be. Thanks for telling me how to do it though.

theducks · 02-10-2012, 01:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

ah, there it is. Tweaks still scare me - since Calibre doesn't have an "undo" feature, I tend to be cautious about exploring and playing with options.

I have no problem with the DD/MM/YYYY format though, so I think I'll leave it be. Thanks for telling me how to do it though.

many tweaks will not let you save until they are at least syntactically correct.

tweaks.py (in the configuration directory) is the file to remove if you really mess up

02-06-2012, 06:19 PM	#1
BeccaPrice Wizard Posts: 2,146 Karma: 11174187 Join Date: Jan 2011 Device: Sony 350, K3-3G, K4SO, KPW	Edit Metadata date field Playing around with the "Edit Metadata" screen and fields, I looked at the Date field in the tags/publishing data area... I thought that date was the date the book was added to Calibre, but it's not apparently. Also, I tried to change the date, and just got a calendar function with the year 101 - how do I change that to 2012? Where does the Date information come from, and what does it mean?

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02-06-2012, 07:53 PM	#5
BeccaPrice Wizard Posts: 2,146 Karma: 11174187 Join Date: Jan 2011 Device: Sony 350, K3-3G, K4SO, KPW	I was just playing around, not sure what I did... I think I hit the "recycle" button to the right of the field. That changed the field to "unspecified" Then when I tried to enter today's date I got the year 101. I wish that there was a way to enter the date directly rather than through the calendar feature.

02-07-2012, 06:09 PM	#7
BeccaPrice Wizard Posts: 2,146 Karma: 11174187 Join Date: Jan 2011 Device: Sony 350, K3-3G, K4SO, KPW	Ah, that does it. I think the date is DD/MM/YY order, though. And I had to spell out the month (or at least give a three letter abbreviation for it. Thanks again, theducks - you are, as always, a big help.

02-08-2012, 06:04 PM	#10
dmcd Enthusiast Posts: 35 Karma: 35544 Join Date: Jan 2012 Location: Northern Victoria, Australia Device: Kobo	So glad you asked this question. Being unable to alter that stupid date and crummy calendar without developing RSI has been driving me nuts. Does it work on the book publishing date too? This is the one that is often wrong depending on which cover you choose when hunting metadata and not on the earliest publishing date for a book. At the moment, when it will not allow me to correct an auto input date I just delete the date leaving unspecified. Why the silly calendar anyway? Why not just allow direct typed input of a full date if we do not like what turns up automatically? I like to arrange an author's full collection of books by the date of the first edition in the country of origin, not necessarily by the date some US publisher bought the US rights and published it in that country. I'm also a bit tired of having to delete the Amazon or Barnes and Noble proprietary in house code appended to the ISBN numbers. After all, the "I" in the ISBN stands for "International". I don't buy books from either of these companies. These little niggles might not matter if you are just buying one book a week, but right now I'm trying to sort out an enormous library of many thousands of books and append all the correct metadata to them. The above glitches plus regular sudden crashes by Calibre, really slow down the work flow. Dale

02-09-2012, 04:52 PM	#12
BeccaPrice Wizard Posts: 2,146 Karma: 11174187 Join Date: Jan 2011 Device: Sony 350, K3-3G, K4SO, KPW	Thanks, chaley - I'll look at that feature, if I can find it. Where is it located? (I did a quick wander around the Preference pages, and didn't see it)

02-09-2012, 05:38 PM	#13
tilia Evangelist Posts: 432 Karma: 1720909 Join Date: Mar 2011 Device: Voyage, K3	Preferences>Tweaks and then choose 'Control how dates are displayed'.

02-10-2012, 12:38 PM	#14
BeccaPrice Wizard Posts: 2,146 Karma: 11174187 Join Date: Jan 2011 Device: Sony 350, K3-3G, K4SO, KPW	ah, there it is. Tweaks still scare me - since Calibre doesn't have an "undo" feature, I tend to be cautious about exploring and playing with options. I have no problem with the DD/MM/YYYY format though, so I think I'll leave it be. Thanks for telling me how to do it though.

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