Displaying LN, FN in Author Column

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

@Jeannie - I remember some pretty abrasive posts you made on these forums when you were last here a fair while ago. Insulting the people who have spent long periods of time trying to help you isn't going to have others lining up for the job, certainly I'm not going to bother with your requests again.

No you have not followed our suggestions, or rather if you have you haven't mentioned it that I saw. Did you install the Quality Check plugin? That is the piece that does the magic of flipping the names for you if When adding a book you find the name needs swapping around. Until you follow the instructions to apply the tweak that are both in the manual and coming ffrom both experienced users and developers of the software it shall be referred to as "your way", whether that offends you or not.

Enjoy your weekend and goodbye.

I'm raising the B.S. flag on this one! When did I ever make abrasive posts against people who were trying to help me? Back up your accusation or withdraw it!

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

@jeannie - it is hard to explain all the reasons why you should change the tweak without getting more technical, and you said you hate that.

What I find even more interesting is the only reason that tweak was added to calibre was for the exact situation Jeannie now finds herself in.

[theducks]

Old technician observation (and I am older than you claim).
When a suggested solution that is supplied by multiple people does not work , it usually means:

1) The problem was not described correctly or IN fullness (they missed a side note. ex. the calibre is crashing. when they had installed a 3rd party crash manager)
(we gave a solution for A, but you really have a B)

2a) The user skipped a step
2b) or did them out of order
2c) or misinterpreted an instruction (Oh boy! has that one gotten more than once )
2d) made a stupid typo ( believe tweak does now check for (syntactially) valid entries before letting you depart)

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by theducks

Old technician observation (and I am older than you claim).
When a suggested solution that is supplied by multiple people does not work , it usually means:

1) The problem was not described correctly or IN fullness (they missed a side note. ex. the calibre is crashing. when they had installed a 3rd party crash manager)
(we gave a solution for A, but you really have a B)

2a) The user skipped a step
2b) or did them out of order
2c) or misinterpreted an instruction (Oh boy! has that one gotten more than once )
2d) made a stupid typo ( believe tweak does now check for (syntactially) valid entries before letting you depart)

Thank you! At least you understand how problems can arise and don't just insultingly assume the user is just being stubborn.

One example is the Quality Check plugin. That was never even mentioned in the first set of directions. When it finally was mentioned, it came across as being optional so I opted not to deal with it since I never was able to understand the manual's directions on plugins and didn't want to open that can of worms. Now, in Kiwidude's last post, it's suddenly mandatory.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

I'm raising the B.S. flag on this one! When did I ever make abrasive posts against people who were trying to help me? Back up your accusation or withdraw it!

I'm still waiting!

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

One example is the Quality Check plugin. That was never even mentioned in the first set of directions.

Not to be picky, but it was mentioned in post 2 by theducks and post 4 by me. You are correct though it is optional, but it does make things easier. Applying the tweak though is essential for future use and author sorting. The only reason this tweak was created was for folks that insist on reversing the default. If you continue doing things exactly as you are you might be fine in the future, but if you grow at all in your understanding of calibre using any new learned techniques could cause problems with authors not sorting correctly. For now though, if you found something that works for you, march on.

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

I'm still waiting!

I don't know about any other threads, but this thread is full of you being abrasive against people who were trying to help you. This last post is further evidence of your abrasive tendency. There was no need to continue this past conversation, yet you couldn't help yourself.

I'm glad you got things set up and working the way you want them.

[44reader]

@Lady Fitzgerald: I wasn't sure if this was a good idea but in the end I've gone for it anyway...

I've gone to some effort to help you understand the whole of this LN, FN thing in calibre.

I've taken what I feel are the most relevant and helpful parts of the advice in this thread. In some cases I've taken the liberty of slightly changing the wording and I've put some quotes in a different order (apologies to the orginal posters; the changes are minimal).

It's all aimed at making it simpler to understand for you and anyone else who may stop by this thread with similar needs.

My next post is the post I'm talking about but I want to give some introductory words first; if I put this bit in that post (my next one, below) I feel it will clutter and dilute it.

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

It's a royal pain the a$$ to have to retype in the author name every cotton pickin' time I add a book, which is what I had to do when the tweek was in place.

You don't really have to do that.

My touble is that in trying to explain why, and the other solutions, I have to introduce new things and use lots of words that make the whole thing sound even more complicated.

But please bear with me; it's not complicated at all in reality and the extra things are only mentioned to actually make things easier.

If you follow all the steps in my next post, you are looking good and you will soon see that what you're trying to achieve is easy and you'll fall into a swift and painless workflow. And breathe a sigh of relief.

I know that the 'copy Tweak' seemd to break things for you but it really wasn't the culprit. I am already doing exactly what you want to do and I am very new to calibre and far dumber than you - and I've got to a point where I'm perfectly happy with the LN, FN thing. It's a breeze.

-------------------
That's it really for a preface for my next post but I want to mention two of the 'new things' just in passing. I'll not go into detail yet about them (nor in the next post) but it's just in order to sow the seed so that you are hopefully reassured that things will soon be very easy and painless.

Please don't even bother looking into these two things properly yet; it's more important to get the basics done first (i.e. follow the instructions in my next post).

However, as I say, just to sow the seed and to make you realize that there are other things that will help along the process and make you not regret sticking with your "LN, FN" policy, here's a taster for now ...

1. There is another thing that the Quality Check plugin does. It can find all your authors that don't have commas in them. This effectively finds all the authors that have "FN LN" instead of "LN, FN". So that means that you don't have to worry when adding books to instantly correct the way the authors' names are formatted. You can come back to them later and do them all at once.

2. There is another plugin called Find Duplicates that does more than just that. One thing, for instance, would have helped you with similar authors missing middle initials and that sort of thing. It can show you all these grouoed together and fix them with a single click to either add or remove those middle initials and other discrepancies.

It does lots more but the point is that it can find similar entries and it's very useful.

Both these plugins are written by kiwidude. He gives them to us for free (donations gratefully received of course) and he's got loads more plugins too. His plugins are absolutely invaluable and freakin' awesome.

I know you've ended up having a minor spat with him in this thread but please realize what a helpful person he is and that he's only trying to help you in this thread. I'm not getting involved on that matter beyond that one statement; it's none of my business. All I'm doing here (and especially in my next post) is trying to simplify and condense the advice from this thread to make the "LN, FN" thing easier for you and everybody. It's worked for me.

Thanks to everybody for the advice and I'm sorry if my next post omits anything vital and particularly if I've butchered any of your posts inappropriately.

Here it comes....

[44reader]

Instructions in response to the original post, condensed:

Originally Posted by paw3pals

First, do the below (which should also make all future author's names listed as LN,FN):

Go to Preferences, then select Tweaks (on bottom of page).
Click on Author name sort algorithm in the left column.
In the bottom right, make it say author_sort_copy_method = 'copy'.
Click Apply and then close Preferences.
EXIT CALIBRE AND THEN RESTART IT AGAIN.

See attached image below

Originally Posted by theducks

Remember to clic 'Apply' before leaving each changed tweak.

Originally Posted by kiwidude

The step you have just taken of modifying Tweaks just means that whenever you add a *new* book to calibre (or rename an author for an existing book), that whatever you type as the author will be copied to also be how that author sorts on screen.

So that if you type "Bloggs, Joe" as an author, it is going to *copy* the same value into the author sort as "Bloggs, Joe" for it.

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Your issue next is twofold.

You have a whole bunch of existing books you can see that need changing because they were there before you changed the tweak.

The problem is that even if you went through and just changed them on screen (either by typing in the library view, or using the single/bulk metadata dialogs, or even using the Quality Check plugin), that probably isn't going to completely solve your problem.

The reason being that the very first time you add a book for an author to calibre, calibre will set a "default sort" for that author name that is associated with the author itself. Confusing I know - it had me in a pickle when I started. There is a sort for the author for each book, and there is a default sort for the author itself. Likely you will have a mish-mash in this field if you have been (like I did) experimenting with renaming authors without changing the tweak first.

So what you need to do is follow paw3pals instructions [see next post] of using the Manage Authors feature to change this "Default" sort for an author.

It just so happens that when you do that, there are buttons on that dialog as per their instructions which will also effectively let you "fix" all your book authors too. A two for one deal - go through this little drama once and you will never have to bother again.

Originally Posted by paw3pals

On the left side of the Calibre screen, in the list should be Authors and a number in brackets - right click it and select Manage Authors.

Scan the list of authors' names and see if there is a column that has them listed as Last Name, First Name (LN,FN) already.
If the Author Sort column does, click the copy all author sort values to author button.
Check through the authors to be sure you are happy. You can still press Cancel to abandon the changes. Once you press OK, there is no undo.

If 1 column has a name listed wrong and the other is correct, right click the correct name and select copy to (the other column).

Press OK, at which point calibre will change the authors in all your books. This can take a while.

Originally Posted by dwanthny

Install the Quality Check plugin: Preferences - Plugins - Get new plugins.

After the plugin is installed, restart Calibre.

Then select the books you want to swap FN, LN > LN, FN then select the menu item as shown in the attached image. Further info is in the Quality Check plugin help section.

Or, as stated in the first reply in this thread:

Originally Posted by theducks

The Quality Check plugin has a FIX subsection the swap is just one of them.

Highlight (select) the problem kids, invoke the Fix

See attached image below

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

Is there any way to get calibre to automatically put LN, FN in the author field when adding a book without having to change it in the metadata editor after adding the book?

Originally Posted by kiwidude

As for automatically putting a name into LN, FN format for new books, no calibre does not have that feature.

However the Quality Check plugin has a feature to do this which you can assign to a keyboard shortcut.

So if you import the author and it is already LN, FN due to your regular expression or book metadata then all is fine and you have nothing to do.

If calibre sees the author as FN LN then you need to flip it, which the Quality Check plugin has a feature to do - to save you the typing and without having to enter the Edit Metadata dialog.

Originally Posted by kiwidude

When downloading metadata, make sure you have the "Swap author names from FN LN to LN, FN" option checked if you are overwriting the Authors field.

Brief summary:

Originally Posted by kiwidude

(1) Put that pesky tweak back in to say "copy".
(2) Install the "Quality Check" plugin, using Preferences -> Get Plugins
(3) Any time you see books for an author that are FN LN in the library view, select them and choose Quality Check -> Fix -> Swap author FN LN <> LN, FN

That's all there is to it. No copy/pasting required.

Assign a keyboard shortcut to that particular action [Quality Check -> Fix -> Swap author FN LN <> LN, FN] and you don't even have a mouse click.

Originally Posted by kiwidude

It is hard to explain all the reasons why you should change the tweak without getting more technical

Originally Posted by kiwidude

The tweak is five seconds work to change. And Quality Check will 99% of the time be able to flip your author names without you having to retype them. In the long term it is your best approach to minimise the effort. If you don't do it, eventually you will screw up and books go in the wrong places; it happened to me when I first started with calibre two years ago as I too display/sort names as LN, FN.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

Not to be picky, but it was mentioned in post 2 by theducks and post 4 by me...

I went back to post 2 and, yes, it was there. It completely slud (is that a word?) by me because I got the impression there were two plug ins, one by kiwidude but I was going to have to figure out what the plug in was for myself (and I had no clue how to do that), and another one called the QC plug in (which I couldn't find because I didn't know where to look and, if I did, I would have blown by it anyway since I would have been looking for QC, not Quality Control; yes, my mind ADD "blessed" mind works like that).

When I went back to post 4, again, yes, it was there. I'm guessing I missed it because I was brain fried after trying to make sense of the directions in the manual that you linked. You even had the path to get to the plug in but, even when I just now went back, I had to stare at it for a while before it registered because it was all merging into a blur in my mind.

I apologize to you and theducks for that misunderstanding.

Originally Posted by dwanthny

...Applying the tweak though is essential for future use and author sorting. The only reason this tweak was created was for folks that insist on reversing the default. If you continue doing things exactly as you are you might be fine in the future, but if you grow at all in your understanding of calibre using any new learned techniques could cause problems with authors not sorting correctly. For now though, if you found something that works for you, march on...

I'm still struggling (and failing miserably) to understand how not having the tweek can cause future problems, especially since the tweek does create more work for me. When I scan a book to an image only PDF (which is how I will be getting most of the books I will be adding; I have way too many to scan, OCR and edit), all I use for the filename is the ISBN (I found it a lot simpler than typing title, author, etc. into the title and maintaining a consistent format calibre can understand, especially when most or all of it wound up being overwritten anyway). When I add several books, I highlight all of them, then go into the Metadata editor and edit them individually. To get the metadata, I used to copy the ISBN from the title field, paste it into the ISBN field (now the ID field), then download the metadata. That almost invariably results in the author being entered as FN LN. If the tweek is in place, I would have to retype the author as LN, FN. Without the tweek, all I have to do is click on the box to the right of the author and hold it a whole half second until the menu comes up, then click Copy Author Sort to Author (faster than the copy/paste I was going to use). I then move on to the next book until I've updated all of them, then hit OK. It seems to work ok, even if I add a "real" e-book (so far, all epubs), since, even though "real" e-books are tagged with the author, etc. (the author shows up as FN LN in the author field), I still download additional metadata that overwrites fields (I set it that way on purpose).

Btw, I did eventually find (by dumb luck) yesterday or the day before (I don't remember exactly now) and installed the Quality Control plug in. I'm still hazy (think London Fog) on how it can benefit me.

Thanks for your patience!

[Lady Fitzgerald]

@44reader. I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate your effort to help me and that I'm not blowing you off. However, it's late and I need to put ample asset in bed before I start having conversations with elephants in my bedroom (and I don't even drink!). I will take a harder look at what you wrote tomorrow or Monday; I have to digest things in small chunks or my mind shuts down.

Thanks!

[paw3pals]

When you add a book, the author's name is listed however the publisher put it, so there is no way to control that.

However, if you download metadata (which I almost always do, as that gives me series info) you can specify LN,FN. Go to Preferences, Sharing, Metadata download - in the bottom right make sure there is a check in the box for "Swap author names from FN LN to LN, FN."

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

Edit2: I changed the preferences back to the default and tried going to the metadata editor after adding a book, then just copying the author sort field and pasting into the author field. That was a considerable improvement over having to retype the author.

So, I'm back to asking, is there any way to get calibre to automatically put LN, FN in the author field when adding a book without having to change it in the metadata editor after adding the book (if so, then the tweek should work)?

[44reader]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

@44reader. I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate your effort to help me and that I'm not blowing you off. However, it's late and I need to put ample asset in bed before I start having conversations with elephants in my bedroom (and I don't even drink!). I will take a harder look at what you wrote tomorrow or Monday; I have to digest things in small chunks or my mind shuts down.

Thanks!

^^ Cool.

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

When I add several books, I highlight all of them, then go into the Metadata editor and edit them individually. To get the metadata, I used to copy the ISBN from the title field, paste it into the ISBN field (now the ID field), then download the metadata. That almost invariably results in the author being entered as FN LN. If the tweek is in place, I would have to retype the author as LN, FN. Without the tweek, all I have to do is click on the box to the right of the author and hold it a whole half second until the menu comes up, then click Copy Author Sort to Author (faster than the copy/paste I was going to use). I then move on to the next book until I've updated all of them, then hit OK.

^^ Don't forget...

Originally Posted by kiwidude

When downloading metadata, make sure you have the "Swap author names from FN LN to LN, FN" option checked if you are overwriting the Authors field.

That will save you most of what you talk about in your post that I've just quoted. Downloading metadata will give you LN, FN automatically. Imagine that!

EDIT: Oh, I missed paw3pals' post saying the same thing. Can't do any harm to repeat it anyway (again).

[44reader]

@Lady Fitzgerald: Just by the way... the plugin is called Quality Check (not Quality Control). No need to reply to this post; just thought I'd mention it.

[theducks]

Sorry Lady F
I have been working (40+ years) in the Electronics/Manufacturing industries.

QC and Quality Control are the same to us: "I will run this by QC", "I would build your board if ^&* QC would ever release the parts"

(there are a lot of words that get put in font of "QC" , but believe me, the customer has a lot of words if QC is not done )

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by theducks

QC and Quality Control are the same to us

Although as pointed out by 44reader the plugin is called the Quality Check plugin not the Quality Control plugin.