Best way to search inside ebook library?

fufu42 · 06-28-2012, 08:00 AM

Hi, I've been searching for a while on all kinds of places and decided to ask here for the following problem.

I have a collection of ebooks in many different formats from txt over pdf to epub, mobi etc. all inside a calibre directory. Now calibre unfortunately has ebook viewing capabilitey but no full-text search function.

From my point of view the least requirements of search functionality would be:
- regular expressions in full text search
- search inside all common ebook formats
- unicode support

optional but not vital:
- pre indexed file content
- search inside archived files
- on the fly indexing

I collected the following info up to now:

- The program Beagle fur Linux seems to have met my needs but isn't maintained any longer. I didn't try to install the latest version, did anybody lately?

- Google Desktop is discontinued - but probably had no regex but only boolean operators

- Copernic Desktop search seems interesting but the developer site states nothing about regular expressions. I haven't tried it. Has anyone?

-Agent Ransack which i just tried seems interesting but probably can't search inside epub (and other formats) though is does fast regex in fulltext with pdf, archived and other plain text-like files. (If I'll decide to use that program it would somewhat oddly mean that I'd have to convert all non-pdf files to pdf...) Agent Ransack does no indexing ahead of search.

- I wouldn't hesitate to use command line tools. Basically grep can do all I need for now. The Question then would be how to extract a corpus with the necessary file information from the library including pdf and epub formats.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

Earthlark · 12-17-2013, 09:32 PM

Did you ever find a solution to your problem? I have some dense ebooks with repeating terms related to different applications so I've been trying to figure out how to do boolean or regular expression searches within a text (I suppose within sentences... or paragraphs.), but haven't found anything good yet. I guess I can figure out how to use grep with them, but it'd be nice if there were some sort of ebook viewer that allowed for easily doing this kind of search... Find anything?.

Cheers.

HarryT · 12-18-2013, 04:55 AM

There's no point in asking a question to someone whom you can see for yourself hasn't visited MR for over a year.

latepaul · 12-18-2013, 05:09 AM

There's a Calibre plugin called "Quality Check" that has a search epubs option. Last time I checked it only worked on epubs but that was a while ago

Earthlark · 12-20-2013, 05:58 PM

Thanks, latepaul. I checked it out a bit, and it looks pretty useful, especially if one needs to search across multiple volumes for related terms/concepts. My regex skills are too little, so once I figure out the correct input, it should work fine. In the meantime, I'll probably also post something else to see if there are any other options that fit my purposes in a more user-friendly way--without too much regex and allowing me to directly jump to locations, etc. Thanks again. Merry Christmas.

06-28-2012, 08:00 AM	#1
fufu42 Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2012 Device: Kobo Touch	Best way to search inside ebook library? Hi, I've been searching for a while on all kinds of places and decided to ask here for the following problem. I have a collection of ebooks in many different formats from txt over pdf to epub, mobi etc. all inside a calibre directory. Now calibre unfortunately has ebook viewing capabilitey but no full-text search function. From my point of view the least requirements of search functionality would be: - regular expressions in full text search - search inside all common ebook formats - unicode support optional but not vital: - pre indexed file content - search inside archived files - on the fly indexing I collected the following info up to now: - The program Beagle fur Linux seems to have met my needs but isn't maintained any longer. I didn't try to install the latest version, did anybody lately? - Google Desktop is discontinued - but probably had no regex but only boolean operators - Copernic Desktop search seems interesting but the developer site states nothing about regular expressions. I haven't tried it. Has anyone? -Agent Ransack which i just tried seems interesting but probably can't search inside epub (and other formats) though is does fast regex in fulltext with pdf, archived and other plain text-like files. (If I'll decide to use that program it would somewhat oddly mean that I'd have to convert all non-pdf files to pdf...) Agent Ransack does no indexing ahead of search. - I wouldn't hesitate to use command line tools. Basically grep can do all I need for now. The Question then would be how to extract a corpus with the necessary file information from the library including pdf and epub formats. Any other suggestions? Thanks in advance! Last edited by fufu42; 06-28-2012 at 09:57 AM.

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12-17-2013, 09:32 PM	#2
Earthlark Member Posts: 13 Karma: 2386 Join Date: Nov 2012 Device: Kindle Touch	Did you ever find a solution to your problem? I have some dense ebooks with repeating terms related to different applications so I've been trying to figure out how to do boolean or regular expression searches within a text (I suppose within sentences... or paragraphs.), but haven't found anything good yet. I guess I can figure out how to use grep with them, but it'd be nice if there were some sort of ebook viewer that allowed for easily doing this kind of search... Find anything?. Cheers.

12-18-2013, 04:55 AM	#3
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383099 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	There's no point in asking a question to someone whom you can see for yourself hasn't visited MR for over a year.

12-18-2013, 05:09 AM	#4
latepaul Wizard Posts: 1,270 Karma: 10468300 Join Date: Dec 2011 Device: a variety (mostly kindles and kobos)	There's a Calibre plugin called "Quality Check" that has a search epubs option. Last time I checked it only worked on epubs but that was a while ago

12-20-2013, 05:58 PM	#5
Earthlark Member Posts: 13 Karma: 2386 Join Date: Nov 2012 Device: Kindle Touch	Thanks, latepaul. I checked it out a bit, and it looks pretty useful, especially if one needs to search across multiple volumes for related terms/concepts. My regex skills are too little, so once I figure out the correct input, it should work fine. In the meantime, I'll probably also post something else to see if there are any other options that fit my purposes in a more user-friendly way--without too much regex and allowing me to directly jump to locations, etc. Thanks again. Merry Christmas.

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