Edit Metadata - Download only series info

[nickdma]

Any chance of adding an option to download only series info for bulk metadata?

Along those lines, I was thinking it would be nice if the metadata types were split out onto a new tab in the bulk edit metadata interface, each with an option to update/ignore and overwrite/merge.

This would allow you to easily update just the summary information, or tags, rating, or series, etc, without overwriting any other metadata you may have.

As Calibre has enhanced it's metadata fetching, many of my older entries are lagging behind. Many are missing series data, many lack the nicer HTML summaries, etc.

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by nickdma

Along those lines, I was thinking it would be nice if the metadata types were split out onto a new tab in the bulk edit metadata interface, each with an option to update/ignore and overwrite/merge.

This would allow you to easily update just the summary information, or tags, rating, or series, etc, without overwriting any other metadata you may have.

Huh. That's a can of worms... Who is to say in what way these types should be defined? What you would like to see on one page might differ wildly from what others would want to se on one page.

[nickdma]

I guess I didn't make myself clear in my description.

If you choose to edit metadata in bulk, you get a form with 2 tabs. The first lets you define new values, the 2nd is the new search and replace.

I'm proposing a 3rd "fetch metadata tab", for times when you need/want to bulk update metadata from the internet sources Calibre currently uses.

However, as you said, you might not want your tags overwritten, whereas I might. So, for each field of metadata, there should be two options. An Update checkbox, to decide if you want to update that field for each book. For each field you choose to update, you should be able to decide if you're going to replace or merge the values. Maybe you want to replace your tags with the social results, or you'd prefer instead to merge your tags with the results.

So the end user gets to pick and choose what data to update in bulk.

Similar to the current context menus of "edit metadata -> download only ..." options, but with finer granularity.

Right now, unless I'm missing something, it's an all or nothing proposition with social metadata. You update the tags/summary/series at the same time.

[Manichean]

Oooh, never mind then. Actually, what you are proposing is somewhere on the roadmap, though I can't say when we'll get it. From what I remember reading, though, it's gonna be a new dialog of its own when you fetch metadata from the net.

[nickdma]

Thanks for the info, glad to hear it's on the roadmap.

I did a bit more searching, and if I read Kovid's description of metadata fetching correctly, is it safe to assume that if I use Edit Metadata - Download Only Social Metadata from the context menu, it will only overwrite my Comments, Series, Tags, and Ratings?

If so, that's good enough for now. I'm mostly interested in refreshing my Comments and Series data. I don't want my Title, Author and sorts touched.

[comox]

This feature would be very useful.

Published date is almost always wrong when downloaded. If you manually edit published date to make it accurate, then do an auto metadata update, the published date is overwritten with bad data. It would be nice to be able to disable any updates to published date.