03-16-2011, 06:58 AM | #1 |
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Plugin to fix author name
I've found that many (all?) of the books that I download from Amazon have the author name listed as lastname, firstname. Consequently, when adding the book to Calibre, I have to edit the author name and sort name.
Would it be possible to write a plugin that would fix the metadata in Calibre when author name is listed as lastname, firstname? |
03-16-2011, 07:31 AM | #2 |
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I am not sure how you are adding your books, but have you tried the "Swap author firstname and lastname" option in Preferences->Adding books?
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03-16-2011, 07:46 AM | #3 |
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Usually I download them onto my Kindle, then add them to Calibre by plugging the Kindle in, viewing the books on Kindle, and copying them to the Calibre library.
I haven't tried that I'll have to investigate, thanks. |
03-16-2011, 08:03 AM | #4 | |
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Quote:
One other point - if the option did work, it'd have to edit books not bought at Amazon, since it's only books bought from Amazon that have this issue. |
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03-16-2011, 08:46 AM | #5 | ||
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Quote:
Quote:
Update: This thread should help you change a bunch of these last, first names using the search and replace in the bulk metadata edit area. Good Luck. Last edited by DoctorOhh; 03-16-2011 at 08:51 AM. |
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03-16-2011, 10:05 AM | #6 | ||
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Quote:
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I was hoping that it would be simple to create a GUI plugin that would swap the first & last names in the author field when editing metadata. It's not a big deal, I can copy/paste them the right way around. |
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03-16-2011, 10:18 AM | #7 |
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It is relatively simple to create a plugin to do this, but it would just duplicate functionality that exists using search/replace as per that link that dwanthny pointed you at. In a future version of the Quality Check plugin I may incorporate something like that.
There are already a bewildering away of GUI things related to authors - Search and Replace, the Manage Authors dialog, search queries and a tweak. It is a highly confusing and overly complicated part of Calibre imho. A user should be asked in the wizard when they first start Calibre whether they want to display their authors as FN LN or LN, FN, and have a flip author name menu/button for when they have imported it the wrong way around. Maybe I am just wishfully over-simplifying it. |
03-16-2011, 10:24 AM | #8 |
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I may not have explained myself very well, but that's what I was hoping for. I check/edit the metadata whenever I add a book, so I don't need to do a mass update/fix. Basically, I was being lazy and looking for a simpler/better way than manually copying/pasting to correct the name.
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03-16-2011, 10:47 AM | #9 |
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I think you explained yourself fine We just wanted to suggest ways of if possible of avoiding getting the author in the wrong order in the first place.
I would suggest you raise a feature request ticket for the edit metadata and bulk edit metadata dialogs and see what Kovid says about it. Personally while possible I don't believe a plugin menu would be a "convenient" enough general solution, and a plugin approach cannot be used to extend those dialogs. |
03-16-2011, 10:48 AM | #10 | |
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03-16-2011, 10:55 AM | #11 |
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I really think the place to fix this, would be the "Maintain Author Sort' area (of the Tag Browser) as this would fix all occurrences in 'Books', not just a single title.
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03-16-2011, 10:59 AM | #12 |
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True, it would be a useful option to have there. However the Manage Authors dialog is one of the least discoverable dialogs in Calibre and suffers from a lack of find/filtering. Hitting Alt-A on a book to get all occurrences of the author and then E to bulk edit is a more natural route in my workflow.
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03-16-2011, 07:20 PM | #13 |
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I was just going to ask this exact same question under the exact same circumstances. The sort order is generally correct, so I've often wished that the button between the author and the author sort could be used to go either way (take the LN, FN in the sort order and generate FN LN in the author field). It wouldn't work for multiple authors, but it would be a help.
Anyway, lots of help in this thread, so thank you. |
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