[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Merischino

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".

That's what's confusing us both. What would you have seen if you immediately looked at the record using "E" and looked directly at the author and author_sort fields? When I do that, I see what I entered.

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

That's not the way Calibre is designed to work. It will work that way, if you force it to with a tweak, but it's not really designed to do that.

and it should sort based on authorlastname and not on authorfirtname,

It will always sort based on whatever is in author_sort. All that the tweak does is control what Calibre puts into that field when you first enter a book (or edit metadata and check the option that tells Calibre to change author_sort).

no matter where authorfirstname appears in the display.

Calibre really doesn't know which part of a name is the first name.

This is the first time I have ever told the program to sort for me.

Calibre always enters something in the author_sort field when it adds a book. It assumes you have entered the author's name "firstname lastname", and it puts "lastname, firstname" into author_sort. It never leaves it blank. The option setting only applies when changing (editing) metadata.

I didn't want the program to sort for me,

It has to sort.

I wanted it sorted a different way than it defaults to,

Then you have to manually set author_sort for each record, or you have to set the tweak so it fills it in automatically the way you want.

and therefore I never asked it to do that before.

It has to put something into author_sort. That's the way it works.

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"

It is consistent. A big part of your problem is that when you add a book, Calibre will determine the author name from either the filename or from internal metadata. That's controlled in Preference|Add/Save. If you have it set to get metadata from inside the book, and your author name is not correct, or is reversed, Calibre will fill in the author and author_sort differently.

It only operates as it should when author-sort is populated by the program and not by me.

It may seem that way, but you're wrong. Just go into any record, change the author_sort to "zzzzz" and sort the authors - that record will sort to the "z's". Calibre won't touch your author_sort after it's set the first time (unless you set the option checkbox during editing). You are free to put anything you want in there, and whatever you put in there will control the sort order.

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?

You can always enter your own data in those two. Whatever you want to put in there is OK. All that the tweak does is control what Calibre does when it first adds the book or when you set the option and tell it to change author_sort based on what you've put into author. You don't need the tweak, but it makes it easier if you are going to use lastname, firstname. If you want it simple, don't use reverse name order or any tweaks - Calibre is designed to use normal name order.