My template is
Code:
{author_sort}/{title}/{title} - {authors}
I think that's what shipped with the software. That particular chunk of the program mystifies me and most of the time the results are fine, so I don't mess with it.
The offending characters are being replaced fine, and the idea of truncation is okay with me, but I never expected it to truncate in the middle of the text string. And why did the Holmes book truncate when the 16 Lessons book didn't? I'm fairly certain that the Desktop doesn't have a path as long as the path to the archive folder I put that one into.
...although now that I look at it, the AUTHORS field for that Holmes book (it's an anthology) is ridiculous. "John Joseph Adams & Robert J. Sawyer & Stephen King & Michael Moorcock & Sharyn Mccrumb & Stephen Baxter & Anne Perry & Barbara Hambly & Tanith Lee & Neil Gaiman & Rob Rogers & Naomi Novik & Anthony Burgess"
That might possibly just maybe produce a file path that is stupid-long.
Hah! I replaced them with "Various," and voila - no truncation of the Holmes title. Yes, RM, total file path matters.
I also noticed that I wasn't looking carefully - the FOLDERS that contain the book files have truncated names. Most of the files themselves are named properly. And I notice that the ones where the actual book filenames are truncated are also the three where the authors' names are truncated. So I'll just chalk all this down to file-path-length and unexpected truncation of the strings in the middle.
Thanks so much for the suggestion about the custom column for subtitles et al. The Guild of the Cowry Catchers book slipped through during a period when I wasn't doing regular cleanup - I don't usually let the "book 1" stuff stand. But I couldn't figure out what to do with the subtitles on the other works. Now I have a direction to poke in.