[jackie_w]

Before I start, apologies that this is such a long post. If you don't have a Sony device it probably won't interest you at all.

There have been a couple of recent posts from PRS-650 owners regarding difficulty viewing their complete on-device book list in the sequence – Author, Series, Series_index, Title

As I have just received a PRS-650 as a birthday present, I thought I would document my experience of the differences between the PRS-505 and PRS-650 as regards book sorting and the Metadata Plugboard.

I have the Plugboard set as follows for use with both the 505 and the 650:

device_db:PRS505 = ([{author_sort}] -> authors), ([{series:lookup(\s,#serinit,series)}{series_index:>2s|| - }{title}] -> title), ([{series}{series_index:0>2s| | - }{title}] -> title_sort)

where #serinit is a custom composite column which abbreviates Series_name to initials, template is:

{series:re(([^\s])[^\s]*(\s|$),\1)}

Sort all books by Author (see attached image AllbyAuth_505vs650.jpg)

• PRS-505: seems to sort by authors, title_sort.
  Given the Plugboard setting this means author_sort, series, series_index, title – exactly what I want.
  
  
• PRS-650: seems to sort by authors only
  i.e. titles for any given author are in no particular order that I can figure and is therefore no use to me.

Sort all books by Title (see attached image AllbyTitle_505vs650.jpg)

Relevant info is that I have the following calibre tweaks set:

title_series_sorting = 'strictly_alphabetic'
save_template_title_series_sorting = 'strictly_alphabetic'
title_sort_articles=r'^$'

i.e. 'The Client' should sort under 'T' not 'C' everywhere.

• PRS-505: seems to sort by title_sort.
  Given the Plugboard setting this means series, series_index, title – exactly what I would expect.
  
  
• PRS-650: seems to sort by title not title_sort. And also, despite my calibre tweaks, 'The Hobbit' sorts under 'H' and 'A Time to Kill' sorts under 'T'.

Sort sequence within Sony Collections (see attached image Coll_505vs650.jpg)

Relevant info is that I have a custom composite column named #coll505sort with a template

{author_sort:titlecase()} - {series}{series_index:0>2s| | - }{title}

and the calibre tweak:

sony_collection_sorting_rules = [(['*'], '#coll505sort')]

i.e. books in Collections should sort by author_sort, series, series_index, title

• PRS-505: Collections sort as expected
• PRS-650: Collections sorted 'By Added Order' sort exactly the same as the 505.
  
• I did notice on both readers, that my sample calibre Catalog ({authors} = calibre), sorted after 'Tolkien' and not between 'Baxter' and 'Grisham'. I guess this means the sort is case-sensitive. This is not a problem for me but I did wonder whether it was intentional.
  [Edit: Fixed this by amending the coll505sort template above in blue.]

I was still left wondering how I was going to get my PRS-650 to sort the full book list by author, series, series_index, title. I finally achieved this by using
'Sort all books by File Name' (see attached image AllbyFileName_650.jpg).

In addition I also had to change my Preferences – Plugins – Device interface – Sony – Save template to

{author_sort} - {series}{series_index:0>2s| | - }{title}

to add the author name to the beginning of the FileName. It also meant deleting all the books on the 650 and re-Sending to Device.

The layout is not as neat as the PRS-505's 'Books by Author' because the whole filename is shown under the book title rather than just the author. It looks a bit "busy", but at least the sequence is correct, and if you use Option – View:Thumbnail rather than View:List most of the Filename is truncated leaving not much more than the Author visible.

I am merely passing on information here, not requesting any bug-fixes. I'm not even sure there are any bugs, just differences in how the 2 Sony models do things.