Guide to Collections Management with calibre (Touch / Glo / Mini /Aura)

[PeterT]

In the jobs display look for these jobs to appear

• Get device information
• Get list of books on device
• Send metadata to device

[vice-versa]

It's OK I saw those messages and sent a new PM

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by vice-versa

It's OK I saw those messages and sent a new PM

My apologies, it is my fault. You need to set "Metadata management" to automatic on the "Sending books to devices" page. I thought I had said to do this in my original instructions. Checking them I mention the preference but don't actually say what to do with it or why. Peter or one of the other beta testers did say I needed to spell it out, but I never did. I'll update that. And hopefully Peter will update his quick guide.

[PeterT]

Update done to document the Metadata Management options.

[vice-versa]

Great, I'll try this tonight when coming home

[Mrs_Often]

Originally Posted by PeterT

• In the Source Template the magic happens . Here you have a lot of options
  • To modify the book's title to <First Letter of Each word in Series> - <Number> - <Title> type

    {series:re(([^\s])[^\s]+(\s|$),\1)}{series_index:0>2s| - | - }{title}

How will the series number be displayed? Is it one or two digits? If one, is there a way to make it two digits? I'd really not like number 11 to come before number 2... So I'd like it to go 01, 02, 03 etc...

[PeterT]

Ah.... That is why the series index entry is series_index:0>2s.

This says to make the field two characters wide with leading 0's.

See http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/temp...ced-formatting for more info.

[Mrs_Often]

Yippee, thanks Peter! I thought as much, but I wasn't sure


Just a useless update to say: wooo it's all working and wonderful and Peter and David have made me happy

[Mrs_Often]

One thing though: books that already exist on the device aren't updated when I re-send them from Calibre with the new title settings... I have to remove from device first, then re-send. (Don't have to eject and process content between deleting and re-sending.) Is this expected behaviour, or should it be able to write over the existing book?

Also, I noticed, the new* sending of the cover "always" thing is just delicious, it gets rid of my most hugest pet-peeve of the ridiculous side margins for covers squishing the covers to a too narrow aspect ratio.




EDIT: actually, the latter is not *completely* true. For some reason the smallest thumbnails still have stupid margins, but only on *some* books. Sigh. Confusing system with the different images per size.

*or maybe it's not new, but anyway, it's the first time I've seen it

[vice-versa]

So far it works but... I'm to make some cleaning in my calibre library because it's a big mess

[Mrs_Often]

Originally Posted by vice-versa

So far it works but... I'm to make some cleaning in my calibre library because it's a big mess

Me too!

[Mrs_Often]

Originally Posted by Mrs_Often

One thing though: books that already exist on the device aren't updated when I re-send them from Calibre with the new title settings... I have to remove from device first, then re-send. (Don't have to eject and process content between deleting and re-sending.)

Okay, doing that with a bunch of books at once (6 to be exact) was not a good idea. It muchly confused my Touch (manual 2.1.1) to such an extent that after a couple of cycles of removing books via Calibre, ejecting, processing, Wifi syncing, connecting to Calibre, sending books etc, the series shelf of the books I was sending appeared in tact saying "6 books", but when opening the shelf Kobo told me "Your library is empty" (yeah right)... After a final Wifi sync and then restart, it wouldn't start up any more. Had to restore with it plugged in otherwise it wouldn't listen. It's currently square dancing. How fun! It's probably my own fault, so I'm not really bothered. And a proper reset will clean things up and have my messy library nice and fresh. I'll clean the kitchen first.

P.S. Before the last Wifi sync and switching off to not wake up again, I checked the Kobo disk from my computer: the books were indeed not on the device. I'd deleted the shelf from the Kobo, and Calibre had apparently put it back, without putting the books back... Something strange going on.

[PeterT]

I think it might have been the Kobo Sync returning the shelf. More than once I have dropped shelves from the Kobo, then, when doing a sync via WiFi seen them magically reappear.

[Mrs_Often]

Originally Posted by PeterT

I think it might have been the Kobo Sync returning the shelf. More than once I have dropped shelves from the Kobo, then, when doing a sync via WiFi seen them magically reappear.

Ah ok. I'll have to take this problem to a different thread then. (Fourth reset, square dancing for 14 minutes now...)

Update: seventh or eight reset worked.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Mrs_Often

One thing though: books that already exist on the device aren't updated when I re-send them from Calibre with the new title settings... I have to remove from device first, then re-send. (Don't have to eject and process content between deleting and re-sending.) Is this expected behaviour, or should it be able to write over the existing book?

That is expected. The way the Kobo readers work is to process a book the first time it is seen. It adds the book to its database. When doing this it extracts the title, authors, description, some other metadata and the TOC. But, if you replace the book later, it doesn't reprocess it for updates. This is good for performance, but annoying for this sort of thing.

Also, I noticed, the new* sending of the cover "always" thing is just delicious, it gets rid of my most hugest pet-peeve of the ridiculous side margins for covers squishing the covers to a too narrow aspect ratio.

I'm glad you like it. I nearly didn't add the option. In fact, I think one of the beta testers advised against it. But, when I looked at the code, it was a simple change and an obvious option. But, personally, I don't use any of the cover options. I'll rely on you to tell me if it is broken

EDIT: actually, the latter is not *completely* true. For some reason the smallest thumbnails still have stupid margins, but only on *some* books. Sigh. Confusing system with the different images per size.

I haven't checked if the image size have changed with the new firmware. That might explain this. Also, I don't have a Glo, so I don't know if they use different sizes.