[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by nynaevelan

YAY!!! You did it!!! You are my Plugboard king!!

Oh and to the template stuff, went zipping right past my head.

You probably created three custom columns as per the first post:

Originally Posted by chaley

General Metadata

Metadata: Put series into the title, using either initials or a shortened form. Strip leading articles from the series name (any) (inspired by Gary_M_Mugford)

Spoiler:

The solution requires creating three composite columns. The first column is used to remove the leading articles. The second is used to compute the 'shorten' form. The third is to compute the 'initials' form. Once you have these columns, the plugboard selects between them. You can hide any or all of the three columns on the library view.

First column:

Name: #stripped_series. Template: {series:re(^(A|The|An)\s+,)||}

Second column (the shortened form):

Name: #shortened. Template: {#stripped_series:shorten(4,-,4)}

Third column (the initials form):

Name: #initials. Template: {#stripped_series:re(([^\s])[^\s]+(\s|$),\1)}

Plugboard expression:

Template:{#stripped_series:lookup(.\s,#initials,.,#shortened,series)}{series_index:0>2s| [|] }{title}
Destination field: title

This set of fields and plugboard produces:
Series: The Lord of the Rings
Series index: 2
Title: The Two Towers
Output: LotR [02] The Two Towers

Series: Dahak
Series index: 1
Title: Mutineers Moon
Output: Dahak [01] Mutineers Moon

Series: Berserkers
Series Index: 4
Title: Berserker Throne
Output: Bers-kers [04] Berserker Throne

Series: Meg Langslow Mysteries
Series Index: 3
Title: Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos
Output: MLM [03] Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos

You can delete those now, as I incorporated programming into my plugboard that handles it all. I edited the latest plugboard to highlight that part, as you can see, the green stuff actually has the same name=value of your custom columns.

That's all, really.