MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Author sort not working consistently for "ln, fn"

kiwidude · 10-16-2010, 04:05 PM

I hope someone can help, I'm sure there must be a bug underlying this but I can't figure out the exact cause to report it for replication. Using 0.7.23.

I want my author for display and sorting purposes to be the same, and for it to simply be "ln, fn".

So for importing the books I use NIYOW to rename my source files into this author format since the filenames are currently "fn ln" and I see no way within Calibre to do this - a minor extra step but not my issue here.

In the tweaks dialog I changed the author_sort_copy_method to "copy" or "comma" - I've experimented with both but surely if whatever I type manually or import is correctly named already with a comma as "ln, fn" either setting should be fine, right? I restart Calibre after making a change.

The problem is that I am getting inconsistent behaviour when adding books to the library. After an initial subset import, I wanted the titles to be sorted purely alphabetically as per this thread:

I then tried the "option 3" listed of doing the bulk edit and checking the "Automatically set author sort" checkbox with nothing else on the entire library and clicking ok. It was alleged this would mean I would not have to manually edit each title that was incorrectly indexed. However not only did it not fix the titles, it utterly "trashed" my author sorting so every author sort was no longer "ln, fn". I no longer use this checkbox - ever!

I spent hours manually fixing this back up, then have been adding more books with different formats (some duplication of titles, have set the merge to automatic). I drag them in one author at a time - however it seems that for some authors that regardless of any settings in Calibre it decides it wants to not respect the "ln, fn" of the filename and instead fiddle with the author sort.

However the behaviour is not consistent. I'm sure I have seen it happen sometimes for completely new authors, and other times when a merge is required for some of the books being added (leaving the "new" books with an incorrect author sort, and the merged books with the old correct sort!).

Similarly the edit dialog that has the green/red background for author sort has pretty "random" behaviour in deciding which colour to show.

Basically I have no confidence in Calibre's ability to handle a "ln, fn" format for authors and have to manually check the files appear sorted correctly in the list (fixing the incorrect ones) which is extra pain that seems avoidable. It is like there is some cache or something of the incorrect author sorts that it is using when adding titles for those authors - knowing nothing about the architecture is this possible?

Anyone else experienced this or got advice on what I have done wrong?

10-16-2010, 04:05 PM	#1
kiwidude Calibre Plugins Developer Posts: 4,730 Karma: 2197770 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kindle Oasis	Author sort not working consistently for "ln, fn" I hope someone can help, I'm sure there must be a bug underlying this but I can't figure out the exact cause to report it for replication. Using 0.7.23. I want my author for display and sorting purposes to be the same, and for it to simply be "ln, fn". So for importing the books I use NIYOW to rename my source files into this author format since the filenames are currently "fn ln" and I see no way within Calibre to do this - a minor extra step but not my issue here. In the tweaks dialog I changed the author_sort_copy_method to "copy" or "comma" - I've experimented with both but surely if whatever I type manually or import is correctly named already with a comma as "ln, fn" either setting should be fine, right? I restart Calibre after making a change. The problem is that I am getting inconsistent behaviour when adding books to the library. After an initial subset import, I wanted the titles to be sorted purely alphabetically as per this thread: I then tried the "option 3" listed of doing the bulk edit and checking the "Automatically set author sort" checkbox with nothing else on the entire library and clicking ok. It was alleged this would mean I would not have to manually edit each title that was incorrectly indexed. However not only did it not fix the titles, it utterly "trashed" my author sorting so every author sort was no longer "ln, fn". I no longer use this checkbox - ever! I spent hours manually fixing this back up, then have been adding more books with different formats (some duplication of titles, have set the merge to automatic). I drag them in one author at a time - however it seems that for some authors that regardless of any settings in Calibre it decides it wants to not respect the "ln, fn" of the filename and instead fiddle with the author sort. However the behaviour is not consistent. I'm sure I have seen it happen sometimes for completely new authors, and other times when a merge is required for some of the books being added (leaving the "new" books with an incorrect author sort, and the merged books with the old correct sort!). Similarly the edit dialog that has the green/red background for author sort has pretty "random" behaviour in deciding which colour to show. Basically I have no confidence in Calibre's ability to handle a "ln, fn" format for authors and have to manually check the files appear sorted correctly in the list (fixing the incorrect ones) which is extra pain that seems avoidable. It is like there is some cache or something of the incorrect author sorts that it is using when adding titles for those authors - knowing nothing about the architecture is this possible? Anyone else experienced this or got advice on what I have done wrong?