Closed leocordis27 closed 1 year ago
ThePromidius
commented
2 years ago Two things here:
leocordis27
commented
2 years ago Two things here:
- Different file formats can't be mixed. (Use reading list to group them)
- The rest of the pdfs not grouping is because the filenames differ too much. The filename parser can't really find what series it's from so it creates a new series. Also, Kavita itself doesn't really use folder names for parsing, only filenames.
Let me play around with the file name for other case
VegethB
commented
1 year ago
- Different file formats can't be mixed. (Use reading list to group them)
Why?
Some LN get translation by fans and some times they release PDF or eBook (short and side stories majority).
This entails having a library with the same series repeated 18 times. Again, I don't understand why it so difficult to implement virtual collections (in the database) instead of having to mess with the end user and his files to get a simple result: Collection1, folder with the name I want > all the "series" I want inside the folder. End. Of course the collection is seen and sorted in the main library view (and all library). And don't tell me: use the "reading list". 1) NOT THE SOLUTION; 2) IT IS NOT A COLLECTION. The concept is a virtual series which contains different series inside. A list is a list and is not put into the library as a series. I don't want to offend but I would like to understand why in any manga/comic/ebook server this concept is considered complicated and difficult. Where is the problem? I have 18 spin-off series scattered across the main library, I want to put them all into one series which will have the name of the main series and "spin-off's" at the end. What makes this simple thing difficult?
In this specific case I'm not referring to collections for the same file types (those work). In this specific case, why can't I make a collection of PDF and Ebook files together in one set? Since the series name is created from the file name, if they all have the same name, why make me 2 series, 1 for pdfs and 1 for ebooks?
Series1 = UUID XXXX Series1-Vol1.pdf = UUID xxxxyyyyxxxx1 Series1-Vol2.epub = UUID xxxxyyyyxxxx2 Series2 = UUID YYYY
Collection1 = UUID XYZ Series inside = XXXX
Content of Series XXXX: Book with UUID xxxxyyyyxxxx1, Book with UUID xxxxyyyyxxxx2,
MyCustomLibrary1: Collection1; (inside I see the series with UUID of XXXX) SeriesYYYY; SeriesZZZZ; Collection2; ...;
Seriously, I don't understand why. I'm not referring to the difficulty of writing the code to make this work... I wonder what's so hard about understanding this simple concept of "collection" that always gets translated into useless playlists that ARE NOT collections. Out of 4 manga servers, all and 4 don't support collections 100% of their concept.
Take plex and emby as an example. I create a collection in my movie library called Marvel, inside there will be the 23 marvel movies that were scattered in the main view. When I browse the movie library, I'll have a movie with 23 movies in it (that movie is actually a collection). On emby I can also make a mixed collection of movies and tv series and view the collection in both libraries (2 types of different libraries, like manga and comic).
majora2007
commented
1 year ago Hi @VegethB, I understand you want an encapsulation of one series with a set of different files and not them being split up into different series for each format.
Have you tried Ubooquity? I believe it works the way you want it to. Kavita is not a good solution for you based on your comment.
You need to understand difficulty vs vision. My vision for Kavita is not to have all formats to group into the same series as it doesn't make sense to me or for my needs.
Best of luck in your search to find the software that meets your needs. If you can't, you should build your own. That's why Kavita exists, nothing met my needs.
VegethB
commented
1 year ago Best of luck in your search to find the software that meets your needs. If you can't, you should build your own. That's why Kavita exists, nothing met my needs.
I have been browsing manga servers from the web for 4 years (those few that are not in Gamma release)... I'll put some money aside to have software made for it in the future.
Have you tried Ubooquity? I believe it works the way you want it to. Kavita is not a good solution for you based on your comment.
Ubq is the worst, it does that well and 99% of the rest doesn't.
Finally I'm here and as soon as I start to get serious... some problems arise (fortunately the only real problem are the x.5 chapters that keep being placed at the bottom or at random). Of the top 4 software (that you can use in production), this is the only one that works 90% as expected. I apologize but it was a small outlet, after 4 years, that for collections there really is no software of this type that implements them at 100% of their concept. I'd rather keep 18 things scattered or throw away other hours of my life converting things unnecessarily to epub / pdf than still changing software.
You need to understand difficulty vs vision. My vision for Kavita is not to have all formats to group into the same series as it doesn't make sense to me or for my needs.
So: if you have a series of cookbooks... for example a series called "The Secrets of Eggs" (randomly invented name). 12-volume series; The first 8 in .epub and the last four released on the author's website in pdf (because for X reasons the last 4 have not been officially released by the publisher). Now you would find yourself 2 "Secrets of the Eggs" series on Kavita... Explain to me why you don't think such a situation is feasible? You don't need to answer me, but think about it... it's not so different from a folder with .jpg and .png photos that windows still creates a single album and not 2 albums with the name "holiday photos xxxx" where the 1st album has the .jpg photos of the old cell phone and in the 2nd album the .png photos of the professional camera...
ThePromidius
commented
1 year ago Because they're different format they need different readers and due to pdfs not having proper metadata, the parsing is done differently.
What i think its the main limitation is pdfs parsing is extremely limited.
And you'd probably say... Then use folder structure for grouping... The answer is no. The reason is how Kavita was build initially. Changing it now would require a whole rewrite of kavita which likely won't happen.
Hope this answers some of your questions.
majora2007
commented
1 year ago So: if you have a series of cookbooks... for example a series called "The Secrets of Eggs" (randomly invented name). 12-volume series; The first 8 in .epub and the last four released on the author's website in pdf (because for X reasons the last 4 have not been officially released by the publisher).
This is an edge case that you are wanting designed around. Think about this more common situation; I have KonoSuba which are archives acting as the Manga and I have KonoSuba which are eub, which represent the Light Novel. I would want these separated.
Your edge case is valid, however, I do not have a solution for you nor can I offer a solution without changing the core of how Kavita functions. In addition, think about features of Kavita, where Kavita estimates time to read a series. When mixing different media together, the code has to handle all those different logic and the code becomes needlessly complex.
Ubooquity is the only one that maps the folder because it's very limited what you can move onto. In order to drive these further enhancements, like the other software you quote, you need to set up certain rules.
I would suggest perhaps using Calibre/Calibre-web for your book library or using Calibre to convert your epubs->pdf or vice versa or re-acquire when you run into these situations.
VegethB
commented
1 year ago our edge case is valid, however, I do not have a solution for you nor can I offer a solution without changing the core of how Kavita functions. In addition, think about features of Kavita, where Kavita estimates time to read a series. When mixing different media together, the code has to handle all those different logic and the code becomes needlessly complex.
In fact I'm not asking you to implement (you could tell from the answers that it's programmatically that kavita doesn't support mixed content). I asked for an explanation as to why it is not being implemented and was provided. end. But that is a different matter than telling me that they are borderline assumptions... I'm not edge, because if you are passionate about KonoSuba, and you are looking for translated spin-offs, you will surely find spin-off media in PDF and media in Epub. Lots of anime LNs have fan translated and or official translated shorts, SS and Spin-offs, logically what do you do? Put all the files into a "Series X - Spin-off & SS" folder. Or are you telling me that you create 18 folders with the various names of the spin-offs (which most of the time don't have the name of the series in front of them but only the title of what they tell) in the main library?
I have more than 500 series and GB of LN and Manga (that need to be transferred to a decent manga/novel server). They are not extreme cases but very common. The fact is that they go through extreme cases because the majority of people ignore the side stories (ss) and shorts and only read full-bodied spin-offs like Konosuba's Bakuretsu. Forgetting that 90% of the Shorts and SS are in PDF and the main series in "regular" Kindle / ebooks.
Look for the SS and Shorts and Spin-offs of A certain magical index and railgun... You find on reddit a madman who has wasted hours making the double PDF and ebook versions... but before him it was painful, 50 files between pdf and epub at random and therefore I had from 133 series on kavita to 164 (then I put all epub and belong-to-collection and I went down to not having to scroll the library for 12 seconds to see other series as well as 43 repeated Railgun/Magical )
I would suggest perhaps using Calibre/Calibre-web for your book library or using Calibre to convert your epubs->pdf or vice versa or re-acquire when you run into these situations.
that's what I'm going to do in future days.
Anyway, just end it here. I repeat, a virtual file system (like the final result of an HFS) would be enough where I virtually create a collection and put the series I want inside. This after kavita did what it had to do on the pdfs and ebooks (separating etc.). From the library I create a collection that contains the Series I select. If you read carefully, I'm talking about series that are already in the library. It means that they have already been processed by the server and ended up where they should be (therefore pdf series1 and ebook series1) but then hides them and displays them inside the collection.
If you take plex as an example, the collection it creates is not a pre-existing folder in the end user's FS. They are two complete and finished series that are put into a collection which is then put on view in the main library. But the two movies are 2 different folders in the FS. The user didn't touch anything in the FS or .mkv/mp4 video. He did everything in the server WebUI (or rather in the Database). What plex did was add 2 library items to a collection and show it in the library (hiding the 2 items). The 2 elements have already been processed and populated with metadata. You just created a collection that encloses them and shows in the main view VIRTUALLY (in the database).
But all this is useless to explain, because you have confirmed to me that it is not part of Kavita's vision. So ok, thanks and have a good day 👋.
ThePromidius
commented
1 year ago It means that they have already been processed by the server and ended up where they should be (therefore pdf series1 and ebook series1) but then hides them and displays them inside the collection.
This is actually interesting and there's a feature request for it. I'd like to have this as well. Ideally, in library view, it'd show the collection card and hide the individual series card.
Related: https://feats.kavitareader.com/posts/163/library-collection-view-options
VegethB
commented
1 year ago It means that they have already been processed by the server and ended up where they should be (therefore pdf series1 and ebook series1) but then hides them and displays them inside the collection.
This is actually interesting and there's a feature request for it. I'd like to have this as well. Ideally, in library view, it'd show the collection card and hide the individual series card.
Related: https://feats.kavitareader.com/posts/163/library-collection-view-options
Yes, but this is already a hypothetical part 2 of what I wrote. Part 1: Select library items to add to a collection (including books within series). Part 2: Hide items already within a collection from the library.
The problem is that there is no part 1. Because in my case, the collections should contain the mixed contents. Collection 1 (KonoSuba - Spin-off) would be:
LN library: Series1 Series2 Collection 1 > SS1.pdf Collection 1 > Spin-off1.epub Series3 ...
That in kavita, at the moment, 2 series are being created under the name "KonoSuba - Spin-off". Solutions: 1) Scan-level mixed content (not feasible); 2) Create a collection that contains the books or series that I select from the UI. The latter is simply a mini virtual filesystem that uses UUIDs to create a display hierarchy of the elements (Plex, Emby, Komga, etc.). By assigning a UUID to "SS1.pdf" and saying that UUID is in collection 1, I can make a mixed "KonoSuba - Spin-Off" collection with "SS1.pdf" and "Spin-off1.epub" inside. Because at the moment this is NOT possible. Right now, you would have: "KonoSuba - Spin-off (collection)" > KonoSuba - Spin-off > SS1.pdf ------------------------------------- > KonoSuba - Spin-off > Spin-Off1.epub
Yes, "KonoSuba - Spin-off" is repeated because I have a collection of 2 series with the same name because you can't have mixed content. You could get around it with Plex, Emby, Komga style mini FS... 🤷♂️
majora2007
commented
1 year ago I'm going to close this issue. It's become divergent of the original opener's request. @leocordis27 feel free to open another thread if you still need support.
@VegethB It is very clear Kavita isn't the solution for you, best of luck on your search for a software that meets your needs.
Putting books in a may or may not group them in the same series in Kavita?
Expected behavior Putting ebook file in a specific folder will put them under the same series.
Screenshots I created a new folder "Cactus & Succulents" in the root ebook folder
There are 6 books inside the "Cactus & Succulents" folder
Kavita made 1 series "Cactus & Succulents" and 3 individual series (books?)
There are 3 books inside the "Cactus & Succulents" series
Desktop (please complete the following information):
Additional context I did not touch any metadata or rename any of the ebook file.