[Merischino]

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This metadata.db looks correct to me.

Yay!

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It seems that there is a problem, at least in my installation of Calibre, where having your own rules for what data you enter in to the "author sort" fields and what order you put the names in the "author" field creates havoc.
I don't know why you say this. You can put anything you want into either, but you have to turn off the option that tells Calibre to automatically set author_sort.

I say this because what I did in the previous iterations of my calibre was NOT to select "automatically sort author" and TO enter exactly what I wanted it to look like in "author" and exacltly what I wanted it to sort like in "author sort". What i got, was not anything at all like what I entered. What you saw when you looked at the db, was not what I entered -- either because I moved the library and thereby lost all my edits up until that point or for some other reason like maybe a glitch when author and authorsort fields are not flippable by the program even when you aren't asking the program to flip them. eg, a "tweak" i didn't have was not correcting for a problem that exists with the software.

What I want, and what I can't get calibre to do, is to let me identify that the author should display as authorlastname comma authorfirstname and it should sort based on authorlastname and not on authorfirtname, no matter where authorfirstname appears in the display. This problem persists whenever i edit the metadata to reflect what I want, and never do I specify my own data for authorsort at the same time telling the program to sort automatically.

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Field Entry
Author = Author's name in first_name last_name order
Author sort = left blank
Author sort automatically? check box = checked
Just so you understand - if you have the option to set Author sort automatically, that's what it will do, based on what is in author.

yes. This is the first time I have ever told the program to sort for me. I didn't want the program to sort for me, I wanted it sorted a different way than it defaults to, and therefore I never asked it to do that before. Asking it, and letting it, do that is the only way I can get my installation to sort in any way that can be characterized by the word "consistent"

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Where the result is that the list in all cases does display as firstname lastname, and does sort in all cases uplon lastname
As it should.

correct. and, I reiterate, as it never does when I tell it to sort by user-entered data. It only operates as it should when author-sort is populated by the program and not by me.

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Which -- is definitely an improvement over what I had before. STill not what I want, but I can definitely work with it this way.
This is Calibre's default. It was originally designed this way, but tweaks have been added for people who want last name first.

I need those tweaks.

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Next is the question, what tweak do I need and where do I get it, so that I can display authors my way and not get shown the highway?
Preferences|Advanced|"Open Calibre configuration directory"|edit tweaks.py

Info on the options is in that file. Use notepad to edit it or another ascii editor.

This is where I need to be led by the hand. I can get to that file, open it with text edit or what have you, but knowing what to enter to get it to behave the way I want is another question entirely. What are the magic words (or coded instructions?) to tell Calibre to let me enter my own author display and author sort information pretty please?