Send 'Published' to 'Date'-field

[Cryptopsy]

Hello people,

I hope you can help me with the following question. I used the help and search function, but I couldn't find an answer.

When I sort books by date in my Sony PRS-T1, the date that is used is the date I added the books to my library. What I want, is that it uses the 'published' date. This info is ofcourse available from the metadata, but the Sony doesn't use it.

Is it possible to have Calibre send the 'published date' to the 'date' field? So that I can sort my books in my reader by published date?

Kind regards.

[chaley]

There is no way that I know of to change the date field on the T1. It is set by the reader to the date the book is put on the reader.

You can create a special collection containing all books, sorted by whatever metadata you want. See paragraph number 5 in the first post of this thread. You should be able to use "abs:pubdate", which you enter in the collections box of the Sony PRST1 device plugin (preferences -> plugins -> device interface plugins -> SONY PRST1).

On the T1, to see books in the collection in pubdate order, you must select the sort "added order".

[Pinecone]

What I do is to make a custom series like column, put the author's name as the series name, and set the series order to the published order.

Then I modify the Sony plug in to NOT make collections based on author name, but to make collections based on my custom column. This gives me collections by author in published order.

This method allows you to order each author by a different method, some by published order, some grouped by series, whatever you like.

[Cryptopsy]

Thanks for the replies, people. I'll try your suggestions and report back! Reading it, I don't quite understand what I'm supposed to do, but I'll start the software and follow the steps.

[Cryptopsy]

I tried your suggestions and they worked, but it was not exactly how I wanted it to be. So I have been searching for other options and finally found the exact solution I was looking for.

Under preferences > tweaks I found a tweak 'Specify how SONY collections are sorted'. In the 'edit tweak'-field I typed (the bold text is what I added):

# Specify how SONY collections are sorted

sony_collection_sorting_rules = [(['authors'], 'pubdate')]

The collections (based on author) on my reader are now sorted by published date, which was exactly what I wanted.

[Pinecone]

Only issue is getting the published dates correct. I find many metadata sources have various and incorrect dates.

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by Pinecone

Only issue is getting the published dates correct. I find many metadata sources have various and incorrect dates.

To be correct it isn't the metadata source's fault - unfortunately calibre does not use the dates returned from the metadata plugins. Instead it relies on getting a date from Worldcat based around isbn pools. That is where the unreliability lies - in many cases the Worldcat data is rubbish, but it will always get used despite there being a "more correct" published date available from the Fantastic Fiction/Goodreads etc plugins.

Kovid said he will accept a patch if someone comes up with a fix for it. I've taken a look at the code but I really can't grok the merge logic that takes place with the metadata results, it makes my head hurt too much .

[Cryptopsy]

Originally Posted by Pinecone

Only issue is getting the published dates correct. I find many metadata sources have various and incorrect dates.

I get the dates from Wikipedia and enter them manually.

[Pinecone]

In the time it takes to do that, I just set up a series and put them in the proper order.