[chaley]

Originally Posted by tarisea

chaley thank you for your response. when I used your program I got the error:

EXCEPTION: Formatter: unknown function author_links near author_links

The function was added to calibre today. Unless you run from source it won't be available to you until next week.

What I want is so simple. I have over 500 authors. I want to be able to divide them into 4 or 5 categories and have a column that shows what category they are in without having to manually add every book.

eg. every time I add a John Grisham boom the column should automatically say "ReadList". Jodi Picoult "MyAuthors". Ann Rice "MyAuthors". The first time I add a new author I will assign it but after that it should be automatic.

So whether it is putting the Category in the Manage Authors Links column:

Author: John Grisham
Author Sort: Grisham, John
Link: ReadList

Author: Jodi Picoult
Author Sort: Picoult, Jodi
Link: MyAuthors

And then a column made from other columns that shows the Link column

or

The User Category plugin that I can add the Authors to and then have a column that will show the User Category that the author belongs to.

or something else entirely.

Please there has to be a way. Help

Thanks

I have built a solution for you. As I said, it will be in next week's calibre release.

If you want to do something *right now* then you can build a custom template function (Preferences / Advanced / Template Functions). The function would have access to the underlying data (the author -> author link map) from which you can extract the info and format it however you want.

Do note that you have never specified what should happen if there is more than one author. I assumed that you would want to merge the information.