[Rellwood]

I want some help or suggestions on keeping track of, and maintaining two different custom columns with tags shown in the browser. The columns hold the same information but one is hierarchal, and one isn’t.

It’s a book source column. It’s been around almost as long as I have had Calibre. It started with Amazon, Kindle Unlimited, and Library, but it has grown over the years to 50 different tags. I can’t change the tags or the column because it’s in use in tweaks, plugins, and rules. On their own in the book list and when editing the metadata the tags are great. When looking at them in the browser, they suck. Strictly alphabetizing tags isn't a good thing when you use many of them only a few times and the ones you use the most aren't grouped together.

Today I decided to create a new column to hold “Book Source” tags, but in hierarchal form, strictly for use in the tag browser. Hierarchal tags are ugly outside the browser. I don’t want to deal with manually inputting them, or having them high up in my edit metadata custom column order, or booklist view. I plan on hiding the column everywhere but the browser, and hiding the original Book source column in the browser, but showing it everywhere else.

I am asking for help or suggestions on how I can have the original book source field be filled in manually with “Amazon” and have the hierarchal book source column automatically fill in with “0 – Main Sources.Retail.Amazon”, and so on matching up each original tag with a heirarchal. I know I can do a quck copy/replace when starting out, but as the time goes on and new books are brought in, how can I keep it up?

I am afraid that if I manually have to type this field in, it will change because of input error and just forgetting which tag matches with the original one.