Introducing New tool: "Polish" Books

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by SquiddOhio

Not keeping the cover in your books seems to be to be short sighted.

The previous poster has already explained that the reason he doesn't want covers is that his "books" are actually business documents - reports, and so on.

[travger]

BetterRed explained in the post #4 that the books originally never had any covers. Just all kinds of documents and such. I can understand the wish for reducing the clicks in Kindle, especially in case of short documents.

But I am interested in possibility to leave the cover (optionally) untouched while updating metadata.
Sometimes I choose smaller but different cover from Calibre 'download cover' selection, mostly to remind myself to go and trawl in the net for art. Or when covers in the selection have better quality, but boring artwork, I prefer to have a reminder that something else is available.

[kovidgoyal]

@travger: You dont see the cover on the kindle at all when opening azw3 files.

However, since two people have asked, I'll change update metadata to only update non cover metadata and add a new option to update the cover.

[travger]

Thank you!

[jackie_w]

@kovid,

Whilst the subject of metadata update is hot, I would be interested in being able to exclude selected custom column data (some of the ones beginning <meta name="calibre:user_metadata:#...>) from ever updating the opf file, both in "polish" and "send-to-device" etc. The reason being that some custom columns only have meaning in the main library and are no use whatsoever on a device. All they do in the epub opf is make it look bloated and untidy when I'm trying to correct errors.

Something like the Prefs - Look & Feel - Book details would be nice.

[richreads]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

@kovid,

Whilst the subject of metadata update is hot, I would be interested in being able to exclude selected custom column data (some of the ones beginning <meta name="calibre:user_metadata:#...>) from ever updating the opf file, both in "polish" and "send-to-device" etc. The reason being that some custom columns only have meaning in the main library and are no use whatsoever on a device. All they do in the epub opf is make it look bloated and untidy when I'm trying to correct errors.

Something like the Prefs - Look & Feel - Book details would be nice.

Plus one on this from me

[kovidgoyal]

Unlike not updating covers, which was a single checkbox, this would be rather a lot of work, since I would have to implement some kind of dialog that would list all metadata fields and allow the user to choose which ones to exclude, and the setting would have to be saved per library since different libraries would have different sets of metadata, which would in turn mean that worker processes would need to be passed this information in all contexts, send to device/save to disk/polish.

And note that I personally dont think excluding metadata, for reasons of avoiding a few lines of bloat in an opf files is a good idea. It means that exported books cannot be re-imported, without loss of information.

As such it isn't something I am interested in doing, but, patches are welcome

[BeccaPrice]

The latest calibre release (0.9.19) has a new feature "Polish Books". To use it go to Preferences->Toolbars and add the Polish Books action to the main toolbar, then select the books you want polished and click "Polish books".

I've just upgraded to .9.20. I went to the Preferences screen, but didn't see any Toolbars option. Am I missing something?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

I've just upgraded to .9.20. I went to the Preferences screen, but didn't see any Toolbars option. Am I missing something?

Magic wand on top row

[BeccaPrice]

I found ti - thanks. Now to play with it!

[Sydney's Mom]

Originally Posted by Billi

I find "polish" very good. For me this implies the last and final cleaning. Perhaps "polishing" creates less confusion.

But maybe I just have the advantage of the "density" as a foreign language speaker.

For some reason I never thought of the language. In context, it was clear it was an extra process that would make books look better. Cant think of a better term.

[Ripplinger]

I'd go for "polishing" as a better choice. Like others here, I skipped right past it originally thinking it had to do with the Polish language (glad I don't have to be embarrassed alone that one! ).

I had thought of "Refine" also, but I think "polishing" keeps it along Kovid's original thought but avoids the language confusion.

[travger]

I, on the other hand, looked closer exactly because I was curious why Polish books deserve special plugin.

[MartyTX]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Subsetting embedded fonts
Subsetting fonts means reducing an embedded font to contain only the characters used from that font in the book. This greatly reduces the size of the font files (halving the font file sizes is common).

I'm regularly seeing reductions in size from at least 50% to a high of 85%.

Terrific tool !!

Thanks,
Marty

[kovidgoyal]

Glad to hear it