Organizing a PDF Library on iBooks - Editing Meta Data

Book Bedlam

Surely, every iBooks user accumulates a rather considerable amount of literature in PDF over time. Despite the fact that the reader from iBooks is very suitable, at some point it starts to annoy the inability to edit the name and author of PDF files. As a result, original copies of PDF with alphanumeric designations or notes of the creator of PDF instead of names accumulate on the shelf, which does not allow you to correctly organize your library.



Trying to solve the problem using iTunes, I came across the completely useless function of changing the name and author in the "Information". All changes, so painstakingly made to books and articles, either evaporated at the first synchronization, or did not in any way affect the displayed names. Everything turned out to be simple - iBooks pulls the name and author from the meta data.

A network search showed that the English-speaking community is also concerned about the need to edit the meta of their PDFs, or rather, the lack of this option in iBooks and iTunes ( thread on the official site ). Apple support has been silent since 2010.

Decision

I started by looking for a suitable program for editing meta-data (please do not worry for the lucky owners of adobe reader pro; the author has in mind a free but sane alternative to it).
The first thing Google finds is the pdftk multiplatform suite. Alas, the author of the article in using the terminal is a complete ignoramus, so the search for more friendly software continued. Those who wish can familiarize themselves here .

A good, and most importantly free, alternative is PDFInfo . A few words about the features of the program:

• PDFInfo didn’t have a tragic relationship with the Russian language, so we obligatory call folders and files in English (this will hardly affect sorting, and we won’t see these names in iBooks). I want to note that there should not be Russian characters along the entire path to the file. C'est la vie.
• The protected PDF program, alas, does not open, but most of the ones that I met were normally designed.
• There is a log to track the success of the process, which you periodically have to use to see if the Russian letter is in the name.

And finally

If the library already has a bunch of “curves” PDF, then copy them to a safe place, if necessary, give new names and edit one by one in PDFInfo. We need the Author and Title fields, since they only appear when sorting in iBooks.



The work is painstaking, but worth it if there is a strong desire to restore order. After editing all the files, they can be downloaded to iTunes and synchronized with your iPhone / iPad (you must first rub the old files).

One last note: after downloading, the name of the file will be indicated in the PDF name, but after the first opening, everything will fall into place.