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Calibre is good, but last time I checked, it didn't let you organize books in a tree-like directory structure, does it still just dump all your books in one "fo

Calibre is good, but last time I checked, it didn't let you organize books in a tree-like directory structure, does it still just dump all your books in one "folder"?

freddie_mercury 7y ago
https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#why-doesn-t-calibre-let-me-store-books-in-my-own-directory-structure https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#why-doesn-t-calibr... "If you are still not convinced, then I’m afraid calibre is not for you. Look elsewhere for your book cataloguing needs. Just so we’re clear, this is not going to change. Kindly do not contact us in an attempt to get us to change this."
aasasd 7y ago
In my experience, if a management tool provides good tagging, search and sorting, it doesn't matter how the items are organized inside. Dump an item into the collection, assign tags, it joins the rest in the search and sorting. Over time, you grow and nurture your set of tags. (The exception is an outliner structure, however books wouldn't benefit from it. And directories aren't an outliner, they simply don't match the speed and convenience.) Notably, tags themselves can use a hierarchy.
majkinetor 7y ago
Its better then having folders. Folders are meaningless in organization of multimedia. Better to use tags as they are more flexible. Then you create virtual folders via tag search. You can show them as tabs or have them in the menu to select. Single book can be in more then one virtual folder that way - for example in Biology and Programming. But no trees of any kind.
- groby_b 7y ago
  Folders aren't "meaningless", they provide relational information (in form of a hierarchy), something that tags are really bad at. It's not folders that are important, it's subfolders. Many fields have an implicit hierarchical organization, and reflecting that in some way is extremely helpful. As are tags. Ideally, you want both.
  - majkinetor 7y ago
    Folders are special case of tags. Tags can be organized better - its easy to create tag exclusion groups, something that for example Gitlab recently added in the form of tag1::tag2 so when you put one of those any existing one gets removed You can get folders from tags within VFS, for examle TMSU does this ( a x-platform file tagging system).
    - groby_b 7y ago
      As a user? I don't care a lick. Of course we can map any kind of relational system into a series of strings. What matters is support to do it in an intuitive way. Nested folders are intuitive, in terms of organizing, browsing, and highlighting the existing structure when adding new items. Tags fail at least at the last two without UI support.
- solarkraft 7y ago
  Slightly OT: I want to use tags for my files (general, not books) - is there a good manager out there for that (Linux, but preferably cross-platform)?
  - majkinetor 7y ago
    There isn't. I search for one for years. Here are some FYI: https://tmsu.org/ https://tmsu.org/ https://www.tagspaces.org/ https://www.tagspaces.org/ http://www.tagflow.ch/en/ http://www.tagflow.ch/en/
jpindar 7y ago
Calibre does have full support for multiple libraries, but they're not tree-like since there's only one level.

Calibre is good, but last time I checked, it didn't let you organize books in a tree-like directory structure, does it still just dump all your books in one "folder"?

freddie_mercury 7y ago

https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#why-doesn-t-calibre-let-me-store-books-in-my-own-directory-structure https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#why-doesn-t-calibr... "If you are still not convinced, then I’m afraid calibre is not for you. Look elsewhere for your book cataloguing needs. Just so we’re clear, this is not going to change. Kindly do not contact us in an attempt to get us to change this."

aasasd 7y ago

In my experience, if a management tool provides good tagging, search and sorting, it doesn't matter how the items are organized inside. Dump an item into the collection, assign tags, it joins the rest in the search and sorting. Over time, you grow and nurture your set of tags. (The exception is an outliner structure, however books wouldn't benefit from it. And directories aren't an outliner, they simply don't match the speed and convenience.) Notably, tags themselves can use a hierarchy.

majkinetor 7y ago

Its better then having folders. Folders are meaningless in organization of multimedia. Better to use tags as they are more flexible. Then you create virtual folders via tag search. You can show them as tabs or have them in the menu to select. Single book can be in more then one virtual folder that way - for example in Biology and Programming. But no trees of any kind.

groby_b 7y ago
Folders aren't "meaningless", they provide relational information (in form of a hierarchy), something that tags are really bad at. It's not folders that are important, it's subfolders. Many fields have an implicit hierarchical organization, and reflecting that in some way is extremely helpful. As are tags. Ideally, you want both.
- majkinetor 7y ago
  Folders are special case of tags. Tags can be organized better - its easy to create tag exclusion groups, something that for example Gitlab recently added in the form of tag1::tag2 so when you put one of those any existing one gets removed You can get folders from tags within VFS, for examle TMSU does this ( a x-platform file tagging system).
  - groby_b 7y ago
    As a user? I don't care a lick. Of course we can map any kind of relational system into a series of strings. What matters is support to do it in an intuitive way. Nested folders are intuitive, in terms of organizing, browsing, and highlighting the existing structure when adding new items. Tags fail at least at the last two without UI support.
solarkraft 7y ago
Slightly OT: I want to use tags for my files (general, not books) - is there a good manager out there for that (Linux, but preferably cross-platform)?
- majkinetor 7y ago
  There isn't. I search for one for years. Here are some FYI: https://tmsu.org/ https://tmsu.org/ https://www.tagspaces.org/ https://www.tagspaces.org/ http://www.tagflow.ch/en/ http://www.tagflow.ch/en/

jpindar 7y ago

Calibre does have full support for multiple libraries, but they're not tree-like since there's only one level.