Jobs Queue, Merging, Metadata, I think that's it....

[rabidrobot]

Hi!

I've been using calibre a couple weeks, and I like it very much. Thanks to all involved!

It seems like when I first started using it, Calibre would queue up my requests as jobs, and tackle them in order. Maybe I'm using it differently now, but I no longer interact with the Jobs panel.

Which is a shame, because I would much prefer to queue up jobs, preferably to run in background, keeping the GUI responsive, to my current experience which is to stop in with the application a couple times an hour and see if I can make another edit or metadata download.

I'm typically working on several hundred files at a time, and want to do everything with them: Merge similar books, Edit series, Edit or Download Tags, Clean up author & title, Download other metadata (cover,summary,isbn,...). As it stands, adding books to the library shows one progress panel, downloading metadata shows another working graphic, and other changes cause simple unresponsiveness until they complete.

If actions could be queued, presumably locking certain files in the meantime, while allowing for further use of the application in the meantime, I think the user experience would be greatly enhanced. A uniform way of indicating work progress would also help, the progress bar with recent action of the Files Added panel is the best of the existing means (Jobs Queue aside).

Also, I have one bug report & one additional feature request (which I will also add to the Developers Tickets if not already there). First the bug: if you select a large number of files and begin a metadata download, parts of the GUI are still responsive (namely the listview), while others are not. If, while the download is ongoing, another title is selected, and Ctrl+D hit to initiate download for it, it will interrupt the original ongoing queue, and pop up an error message for every one of the files originally selected--hundreds to thousands conceivably.

A feature I would find helpful is to Save to Disk from the library, and remove from the library when complete. I find myself saving files to be edited with other tools and reimported, or to be stored outside main catalog, and each require the files be removed from the calibre library after saving. Personally, I would make this my default behavior, as I don't recall saving to disk and NOT removing from current catalog.

Thanks again to developer(s) and friendly forum folk!
XL

EDIT: Oh yeah, I had a question, can I automatically merge similar books /after/ I have added them to the library? Perhaps I didn't have the preference checked to merge on import, or perhaps the files did not at first resemble each-other enough for the merge to happen, but now that I have cleaned them up, it should be evident....I know I can sort my list to get similar entries together and select and Merge, but can this be done on the library as a whole?

[Gwen Morse]

I'd like to second this request, and refine it (at least as far as what I'm interested in having Calibre do).

I'm working on importing, organizing, merging tagging/meta-data-updating, etc, several thousand books. What I'd like to be able to do is select a collection of folders on my computer and queue them to import them.

While queued up, I would first update the meta-data. If the meta-data matched another book, I would be given the option to merge it. Only then would it move on to the next import.

The pieces are all there, hopefully someone on the development side will think it's worth putting those pieces together?

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by rabidrobot

can I automatically merge similar books /after/ I have added them to the library?

No. The automatic sort option only works on initial import.