[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by Merischino

I tried reading the FAQs, and did try searching through this forum for posts related to my questions, however it seems that folks here are all much less of a n00b to programming and coding to get around than I am. In fact, I am not at all comfortable with coding of any kind.

Despite the fact that a lot of coding chat breaks out here on occasion (including a rather massive argument I once spawned as to whether writing a regex constitutes programmign!), it's actually not necessary to using calibre. It's just that the calibre devs hang out in this forum, and various other code geeks hang out here too, and where there are coders, they talk about coding.

I am using Calibre library in concert with Stanza on an OS X 10.6.4 mac and an iPhone 3GS running ios 3.1.3.

I may not be 100% useful on this because my OS and device mix is different, but I'll try to genericize if necessary.

By the way, thank you for providing this information. I don't know how many times, in my years of answering random tech questions for people all over the Web, I've given someone a comprehensive answer to their question only to hear "well, that will work for you, but I'm running (strange, obsolete OS) on (obscure hardware) in (just plain strange environment) so that's not going to help." Yeah, well, and if you'd told me that up front .... (sorry for the rant, I'm kind of peeved at the clueless right now)

I am able to import books into calibre. I am able to download from my computers library into the iPhone. So far, so good.

Are you talking about "send to device" in calibre, or some other means?

But... I have a considerable library, less than 2% of which I have brought into Calibre.

Since "considerable" means different things to different people (some think my library of 2500 ebooks is insane, some think it's pathetically small), I ought to ask you right up front how many books you're talking about.

I've spent the last 2 months trying everything (short of coding) to get the simple task of sorting by author done. And, it appears that it simply cannot be done. Adding books by a single author all at once, then changing the calibre metadata (distinct from the existing file's metadata) for each record so that the author's name is uniform in all instances before adding books from another author does not help.

There is no way it should be that hard. It shouldn't take you 2 minutes, let alone 2 months.

For starters, what format are your files in? There are some format quirks (mostly with PDF, the format of the beast) which might be involved here.

I deal mostly with epubs. I just import the book, do a quick check on the existing metadata, add my tags, and I'm done. I've never had a problem sorting by author; it's just a matter of clicking the "author" column header. If I'm misunderstanding you and you're referring to sorting on your device, or if this just isn't working for you, please correct me.

I also can't sort reliably on any other category, but for simplicity I will limit this post to the fact that re-entering/correcting the "author" field doesn't do it. Re-entering/correcting the "author sort" field doesn't do it. Deleting the entire calibre library and starting from scratch doesn't do it.

There is something seriously whacked here. I've never had a problem sorting on any category; I don't think anyone else has either. I have a bad feeling I'm misunderstanding the problem.

What is the trick?

There shouldn't be one.

Things I'd like to do that seemingly *can* be done in calibre although I haven't been able to make it happen:

-Update all records with the series name and series number for all those books for which these fields are relevant.... and sorting on those.

There's a "series" field for that purpose. It can auto-number all books in a series, or you can choose not to do this, in case (for example) you have a non-contiguous part of a series.

-Making series information available and usable while on the device, in this case the iPhone using Stanza (although I also have Good Library and several other iphone programs that would suffice)

That one you're going to have to ask the iPhone people about; my Sony PRS-505 handles it as collections -- in fact, I've had to turn off making collections from series as it caused the number of collections to get way out of hand.

-Do something to correct the files in the Calibre library such that corrected author names, author sort fields, ISBN numbers and cover art which has been downloaded, etc. all get associated with the book file (my ideal view would be, this information gets put INTO the ACTUAL file so that the calibre metadata work does not have to get done over, and over, and over again as is my experience)

That's easy: Just convert the book to itself. That is, if it's in epub format (for example), convert epub to epub. That will update the book's internal metadata. Understand, however, that some book formats provide for more, or different, metadata than others. You're not going to have much luck trying to add metadata to a text file, for instance. (edit: once you've done this, if you want the udpated file to use for other purposes, use "save to disk" to export the book(s) you need to wherever you need them)

-Ultimately arrive at a Calibre library that does not have multiple folders for the same author, some with a comma, some with an underline, in the name, all with identical contents, and arrive at a Calibre library that does not have emply folders for every instance of incorrect author name that existed prior to being corrected

The calibre library needs to have a big blinking neon sign on it saying "NO USER SERVICEABLE PARTS INSIDE!!!!" Never mind what it does with its folders; just pretend they're not there at all.

I don't need to go into my Calibre library as an access point for the books, but with a substantially large library, I do not want to have duplicate, triplicate, quadruplicate files in that library. Its inefficient and undesirable, not to mention impossible to figure out which file is/should be updated with the corrected metadata.

Stop trying to use calibre to manage files; that's not what it's for. Use it to manage books. If calibre wants to have quadruplicate files, let it. Don't try to mess with their metadata. You'll break something.

Anyway, I would appreciate any help, and if there IS an existing thread or help file that addresses Sorting, integrated correct metadata into your file, etc, feel free simply to point me there, I'm not intending that anyone recreate the wheel.

Hopefully this will be a start -- but don't forget to read the first post in the thread I pointed you to in my prior post first. And read my .sig; it's true.