Save to Disc - Folder name / Filename Problems

[Distorted Vision]

I'm only got my Kindle yesterday and installed Calibre today. I'm having problems with the folder names / file names when using 'Save to Disc'.

In calibre->Preferences->Saving books to disc I have save template:

{title} - {authors} [{publisher}, {pubdate}]/{title} - {authors} [{publisher}, {pubdate}]

I have two issues as you can see below:

1. A colon is replaced by an underscore
2. Some of the folder names aren't named correctly

I appreciate the issue wth the colon is because it isn't allowed in filenames but is there a way for it to insert a dash instead or just ignore the colon?

I don't understand why some folders aren't named correctly, I had even greater problems when I was trying to use Author_Sort to create a directory etc. Eg, I have

"Quants_ How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Waloyed It, The - Scott Patterson [Crown Business, 2010]"

instead of

"Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It, The - Scott Patterson [Crown Business, 2010]"

I really can't work out why it does this. Can anyone please help?

Also I want it to create a directory with the category name so I would have e.g.:

Finance\Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis [W. W. Norton, 1989]

I tried the following but it didn't work:

{category}/{title} - {authors} [{publisher}, {pubdate}]/{title} - {authors} [{publisher}, {pubdate}]

Is there any way I can implement this?

Many thanks for your help!

[BookJunkieLI]

Originally Posted by Distorted Vision

I don't understand why some folders aren't named correctly, I had even greater problems when I was trying to use Author_Sort to create a directory etc. Eg, I have

"Quants_ How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Waloyed It, The - Scott Patterson [Crown Business, 2010]"

instead of

"Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It, The - Scott Patterson [Crown Business, 2010]"

I really can't work out why it does this. Can anyone please help?

For this issue I believe the problem is the rather long title. I had a similar issue with a couple of titles that were even longer but once I shortened the title the problem disappeared.

Originally Posted by Distorted Vision

Also I want it to create a directory with the category name so I would have e.g.:

Finance\Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis [W. W. Norton, 1989]

I tried the following but it didn't work:

{category}/{title} - {authors} [{publisher}, {pubdate}]/{title} - {authors} [{publisher}, {pubdate}]

Is there any way I can implement this?

Many thanks for your help!

For this I'm going to assume that {category} is a custom column that you created. In which case you need to list it as {#category}. Any custom column needs to have the # in front of the column look-up name otherwise it can't be called correctly. Once you fix that you should get the following returned to you - Finance\Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis [W. W. Norton, 1989]\Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis [W. W. Norton, 1989]

[Distorted Vision]

Many thanks BookJunkieLI. I tried:

{#category}/{title} - {authors} [{publisher}, {pubdate}]/{title} - {authors} [{publisher}, {pubdate}]

but it doesn't work. I created the categories with 'Manage User Categories' as in the screenshot:



Any ideas how to get this to work? Since I will be creating many categories to organise my ebooks.

Also with regard the long titles, is this a bug in Calibre? I don't see why it can't handle folder names that length. I edited the metadata in bulk and this is one of the main reason I decided to use Calibre. I really don't want to have to started manually editing folder / file names.

Do you have any suggestions re: colon / underscore issue?

Many thanks!

[wallcraft]

In Windows, there is a 260 character limit on the entire path. So that might be why Calibre shortens the filename. A way to test this would be to "Save to Disk" into a folder very close to the root, e.g. C:\eBooks. If this allows longer filenames, the Windows limit is your problem.

[BookJunkieLI]

Originally Posted by Distorted Vision

Many thanks BookJunkieLI. I tried:

{#category}/{title} - {authors} [{publisher}, {pubdate}]/{title} - {authors} [{publisher}, {pubdate}]

but it doesn't work. I created the categories with 'Manage User Categories' as in the screenshot:



Any ideas how to get this to work? Since I will be creating many categories to organise my ebooks.

Also with regard the long titles, is this a bug in Calibre? I don't see why it can't handle folder names that length. I edited the metadata in bulk and this is one of the main reason I decided to use Calibre. I really don't want to have to started manually editing folder / file names.

Do you have any suggestions re: colon / underscore issue?

Many thanks!

The colon / underscore issue is a Windows issue. You can't use the followinf marks in file/folder names \ / : * ? " < > | Calibre automatically replaces it with the underscore. There might be a way in Tweaks to change what it automatically changes it too but I'm not overly familiar with that. The other method would be to do a Bulk Edit Search And Replace to either simply remove it from your titles or change it to something like the = sign.

On the Title length as Wallcraft said, again this is a Windows issue. Most of the time it wouldn't be an issue but you have it appearing as both part of the folder name *and* the filename therefor effectively doubling the length. My suggestion would be to drop it out of the Folder name if you don't want to edit the title.

Since you created the category using the User Categories Editor if you change the # to @ that should work. I don't use the User Categories Editor myself so I'm not 100% sure that will fix it for you.

Hope that helps.

[Distorted Vision]

Thanks. I tried:

{@category}/{title} - {authors} [{publisher}, {pubdate}]/{title} - {authors} [{publisher}, {pubdate}]

and it didn't work. I'm not sure where I'm going wrong.

[theducks]

deleted

[BookJunkieLI]

Originally Posted by Distorted Vision

Thanks. I tried:

{@category}/{title} - {authors} [{publisher}, {pubdate}]/{title} - {authors} [{publisher}, {pubdate}]

and it didn't work. I'm not sure where I'm going wrong.

I did some playing around and I'm going to guess that the result you got gave you Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis [W. W. Norton, 1989]\Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis [W. W. Norton, 1989] but not the category (Finance), correct?

I'm not a programmer so someone with more technical know-how can probably give you a better answer but I think that the categories created using the User Category Editor are essentially internal categories only, they're not exportable from Calibre.

I think what you want/need to set up is a custom column that either uses a single level tag system or one that uses a hierarchy system. Using option A you'd create a custom column called Categories by going to Preferences->Add Your Own Columns. Name your new column categories in both fields and then select (Text, column shown in the tag browser). Each book would then be labelled with a single tag - Finance, Economics, etc. You would then use {#categories} in your save to disk template and it would return Finance\Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis [W. W. Norton, 1989]\Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis [W. W. Norton, 1989].
Or if you wanted option B follow the same steps - Preferences->Add Your Own Columns, name the column Categories, only choose (Comma-separated text, like tags, shown in the tag browser). Click Okay, Apply, Close, and then restart Calibre. Go to Preferences -> Look and Feel -> Tag Browser and enter the lookup name #categories into the “Categories with hierarchical items” box. Press Apply, and you are done with setting up. You would then give your books tags like - Finance.Textbook. This time when you do the Save To Disk export it will return Finance.Textbook\Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis [W. W. Norton, 1989]\Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis [W. W. Norton, 1989]
If you're concerned at this point about having to go in and populate this custom column it's actually pretty easy. Once you have the column setup just select all books that you want to have a particular tag then click Edit Metadata and it will bring up the Bulk Edit screen. Click Custom Metadata at the top and then enter the tag into the correct column field. Click Okay and all of those books will now have that tag.

Hope that helps.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Distorted Vision

Many thanks BookJunkieLI. I tried:

{#category}/{title} - {authors} [{publisher}, {pubdate}]/{title} - {authors} [{publisher}, {pubdate}]

but it doesn't work. I created the categories with 'Manage User Categories' as in the screenshot: [screenshot removed]

Any ideas how to get this to work? Since I will be creating many categories to organise my ebooks.

User categories are not metadata, they are containers of other categories. There is currently no way to obtain by which user categories a book is referenced. (It would be possible to add this capability, but I am not convinced that it is generally useful.)

I am not sure what you want to have happen in your template but I (think I) agree with BookJunkieLI: it is similar to assigning books to one or more genres. The document Managing subgroups of books, for example “genre” might help you.

[Distorted Vision]

BookJunkieLI, I fixed the issue with the underscores in the filenames by following your suggestion and dropping the foldername from the save template. I decided to abort trying to get the categories / columns to create the directory since its alot of effort to do something which I can do manually. I just do save to disc rather than send to device and copy it to the Kindle in Windows Explorer.

I have unchecked 'Save cover seperately' and 'Save metadata in OPF file' so I am just copying the pdf or mobi file. Am I correct that the cover image and .opf aren't used by the Kindle and so it serves no purpose in copying them onto the device?

Also still not been able to find a way to deal with the underscore in place of colon issue. I can rename the files easily all at once using Flash Renamer but the problem is that Calibre does not recognise that some of the books are on the device.

Also I had pretty disasterous results trying to convert all my textbooks to mobi format. I think this partly due to the fact that many contained complex mathematical equations, diagrams and tables etc.

The problem I have found is that the text in the pdf versions are too small to make reading anything more than a few paragraphs practical. Does anyone have any other suggestions. I read that there is a new PDF conversion for Calibre in development. Any news on this?

Many thanks for your help!

[BookJunkieLI]

Originally Posted by Distorted Vision

BookJunkieLI, I fixed the issue with the underscores in the filenames by following your suggestion and dropping the foldername from the save template. I decided to abort trying to get the categories / columns to create the directory since its alot of effort to do something which I can do manually. I just do save to disc rather than send to device and copy it to the Kindle in Windows Explorer.

True, you can do this manually once you export it from Calibre into Windows Explorer however if you get to a point where you have a large collection, more than 500 books, it's much easier to do it in Calibre. This way you don't have to worry later on if you did or didn't add the extra folder especially if you go to re-upload something. It's just easier to do it all in one place.

I have unchecked 'Save cover seperately' and 'Save metadata in OPF file' so I am just copying the pdf or mobi file. Am I correct that the cover image and .opf aren't used by the Kindle and so it serves no purpose in copying them onto the device?

Actually I *think* what you are doing by unchecking those options is causing Calibre to store that information within the PDF or mobi file rather than separately. I don't have a Kindle so I have no idea if it would or would not ignore the cover and opf files.

Also still not been able to find a way to deal with the underscore in place of colon issue. I can rename the files easily all at once using Flash Renamer but the problem is that Calibre does not recognise that some of the books are on the device.

If it's already on the device I wouldn't bother renaming it. At this point the only reason to rename a file already on the device would be if you were planning to update it in some way other than just the file name. If that is the case I would delete the original from the device then re-upload it.

Also I had pretty disasterous results trying to convert all my textbooks to mobi format. I think this partly due to the fact that many contained complex mathematical equations, diagrams and tables etc.

The problem I have found is that the text in the pdf versions are too small to make reading anything more than a few paragraphs practical. Does anyone have any other suggestions. I read that there is a new PDF conversion for Calibre in development. Any news on this?

I'd ask about this in the Conversion forum. I haven't run into this issue *but* I avoid PDF whenever possible as there are a lot of inherent formatting issues with it. Particularly if the original file it was created from wasn't an actual text document but image scans of the pages grouped together. Now that is a PITA to deal with.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by Distorted Vision

...Am I correct that the cover image and .opf aren't used by the Kindle and so it serves no purpose in copying them onto the device?...

Correct. The Kindle will not use them. Kindle (MOBI, AZW, ...) files contain their own internal cover and what metadata the Kindle device or app will use.

[Backi]

I have also a problem with inserting the character "+" into the file path.
Although it is a valid character for a folder name, Calibre replaces it with "_". I tried to escape or to quote it, but it didn't work.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Backi

I have also a problem with inserting the character "+" into the file path.
Although it is a valid character for a folder name, Calibre replaces it with "_". I tried to escape or to quote it, but it didn't work.

Plus is a special character in DOS
It means concatenate the 2 files
file1.txt+file2.txt>fileboth.txt
will result in a single (additional) file containing both

[dwig]

Originally Posted by Distorted Vision

...

Do you have any suggestions re: colon / underscore issue?

Many thanks!

While its not a true "fix" to calibre's behavior ...

If this is something you need/want to change in a large number of files you could use Bulk Rename Utility. It can process a whole folder full of files and replace any pattern of characters with any other set. It can also do a large number of other bulk renaming functions. Its a handy tool to have in your kit.