mekk.calibre 1.0.2

Calibre helper scripts (ISBN guessing, RTF to DOC conversion, hanging books detection, ...).

Helper scripts for some Calibre tasks.

Script list

The following scripts are available:

calibre_guess_and_add_isbn

Checks books without ISBN (set in metadata) for ISBN-like string present in leading pages. If found, add it to the metadata (what makes it possible to download full metadata, covers, etc).

calibre_convert_docs_to_rtf

Convert any .doc to .rtf (unless already present) - using openoffice.

calibre_add_if_missing

Checks given directory tree for books not yet present in calibre, add them if found. Uses binary file comparison to check whether the file is identical (file name and metadata are not used, on purpose).

calibre_find_books_missing_in_database

Checks whether Calibre database directory contains some unregistered files and report them if found.

calibre_guess_and_add_isbn

Queries Calibre for all books without ISBN, then tries to locate ISBN inside (via scanning a few leading pages) and updates Calibre book metadata if ISBN is found.

Run it without parameters:

calibre_guess_and_add_isbn

Later on ISBN can be used to grab the book metatada and/or book cover inside Calibre GUI. Just spawn Calibre and look for books with ISBN set and missing metadata, for example using query like:

isbn:~[0-9] not publisher:~[a-z]

(above means: isbn contains some digit, publisher does not contain any letter), then - depending on your workflow - either update them automatically (mark them, right click, expand Edit Medatada Information submenu and pick Download Metadata) or review individually (right click/Edit Metadata/Edit Metadata Individually and use metadata download buttons, reviewing replies before applying them).

calibre_convert_docs_to_rtf

Queries Calibre for all books which have only .doc format, then uses OpenOffice to convert them to .rtf and add this format as an alternative.

OpenOffice (and pyuno libraries provided by it) are used in the process.

Run it without parameters:

calibre_convert_docs_to_rtf

Note: the script happens to crash on the end of the job (while finishing). I haven’t diagnosed the reasons (most likely the problem is in the libraries I use), but the crash is harmless and does not influence the actual conversion process.

calibre_find_books_missing_in_database

Reports the files present inside Calibre library directory but not present in the database (= not visible in the interface).

The files are reported to standard output. To add them all to calibre, pipe output. For example:

calibre_find_books_missing_in_database.py | xargs -d "\n" calibredb add

(but, better, review everything beforehand)

The problematic scenario may happen for example if Calibre is used from two or more machines over synchronized or networked directory and, by mistake two copies are run simultaneously.

calibre_add_if_missing

Scans given directory, adds to calibre all books which are not yet present there. Duplicate checking is done solely on file content comparison, file is skipped if identical file is already present in Calibre.

I wrote this script to handle I want to ensure everything is already imported and can be deleted scenario.

Example:

calibre_add_if_missing /home/jan/OldBooks

(and later remove OldBooks if everything is OK).

Installation and configuration

Prerequisities

Calibre must be installed, properly configured and has some database (otherwise it does not make sense to run those scripts). The:

calibredb

command must be in PATH (or calibredb variable inside .ini file must be properly set, see below).

Tools providing commands:

pdftotext
catdoc
djvutxt
archmage

should be installed and present in PATH (or properly configured in .ini, or disabled in .ini, see below). On Ubuntu Linux or Debian Linux those can be installed from standard repositories, just install the following packages:

poppler-utils
catdoc
djvulibre-bin
archmage

Python 2.6 or 2.7 is required (scripts are using some features introduced in 2.6 - in particular tempfile extensions, subprocess and namedtuple). Also, lxml library must be installed. On Debian or Ubuntu just install the following packages:

python2.6
python-lxml

For calibre_convert_docs_to_rtf to work, ootools library must be installed. Simplest method to install it:

easy_install ootools

(on Ubuntu sudo easy_install ootools).

I develop and use those scripts on Ubuntu Linux. They should work on Windows or Mac if necessary tools are installed, but I’ve never tried it.

Actual installation

Simple:

easy_install mekk.calibre

should do.

Configuration

The ~/.calibre-utils file can be used to configure some program settings. The file is created, if missing, whenever any of the scripts is run, and can be customized.

Here is the default content:

[commands]
catdoc = catdoc
archmage = archmage
djvutxt = djvutxt
calibredb = calibredb
pdftotext = pdftotext

[isbn-search]
guess_lead_lines = 10000
guess_lead_pages = 10

The commands section defines location of the external tools being used. In case the commands are present in PATH, bare names can be used. Otherwise full path can be specified. Finally, if some tool is missing, it can be defined as empty string.

The isbn-search section specifies how many leading pages (in page-based document formats like PDF or DJVU) or lines (in the free formats like TXT or CHM) are scanned looking for ISBN-like strings.

For example, the file can be changed so:

[commands]
catdoc = /usr/local/bin/catdoc
archmage =
djvutxt =
calibredb = /opt/calibre/calibredb
pdftotext = pdftotext

[isbn-search]
guess_lead_lines = 12000
guess_lead_pages = 15

In such a case catdoc will be used from /usr/local/bin, calibredb will be expected in /opt/calibre, pdftotext will be sought in PATH, and archmage and djvutxt will be treat as missing (so the isbn guessing script won’t be able to scan CHM and DJVU files for ISBN and will ignore them).

Sources, bug reports

The project is hosted here.