[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by marp68

1. How can I cange the how the author's name is displayed in the field in the Author column?

In the column Author(s) the authors are now displayed first name, then last name. When I sort them they sort correctly by last name. But I would like the last name to be displayed first in the field.

I don't seem to find the template for specifying name order in Author column

2. Similar question about if it's possible to to have the last name first in the author folder name in the calibre library? This is how I have specified the names to be written when sending the book to the Kobo device. It's easier to find a book when sorting the folders.

calibre does not care what you use in the Authors field. It does care, however, that you allow the filenames to be generated from the metadata in the calibre database.

You can use "LN, FN" format if you want to, to fill in the Authors column, if you don't mind metadata downloads and anything else that cares about comparing the authors info, getting the wrong information (LN, FN is wrong if FN LN is expected...)


There is no magic code that recognizes "hey, you made a policy decision to use LN, FN". The only way calibre can know is by comparing it to an authoritative source (i.e. metadata downloads).

...

This change will cascade to the actual folder structure on disk, it will cascade to send-to-device templates, etc.

3. Curious question. Is there any particular reason for calibre to write the book's file name as "title" - "author"? Why not "author" - "title". And why not language specific characters, like åäö, in the file name?

No, you cannot change the use of "title - author", because calibre demands a rigid filename structure for the sake of being consistent, and an arbitrary decision was made that that should be "title - author" instead of say "author - title". It is that simple, there is no "particular reason" beyond that.
Likewise, filenames are normalized to ASCII, for the simple reason that not all filesystem/OS combinations support full unicode, and it is best to be consistent.

Note that both restrictions are lifted for books exported through Send-to-Device or Save-to-Disk.

4. Must one always use the Add book function to update the library with new books. Is it not possble to place the book directly in the calibre library folder and then update the library metadata about what's in the library folder? I wanted to copy some books from the library on one computer to a library on another computer and then just update the calibre library user interface with the new books. But it seemed that I had to enter every book folder and use the add button. Then a new copy of the book was created beside the one copied from the other computer.

There are a number of ways to add books to calibre in a calibre-compliant way, via the calibredb command-line interface, via Add Books, via the Add format button in the Edit Metadata window, via drag-and-drop on the Book Details pane, etc...

But the fundamental difference between that and what you are doing is that calibre adds the book and handles the metadata tracking.

It must do so, because the library is one huge database of ebooks.
You cannot sneak around in the back and partially modify that database and expect good things to happen.

Why do you want top add books via the file browser? I can guarantee you there is a far better way to do whatever you wanted to do.
If all you want is to add books from one calibre library to another, just use "Add books from directories, including sub-directories (One book per directory, assumes every ebook file is the same book in a different format)" and it will import from a Save-to-Disk (it is more or less meant for this exact purpose).