MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Many books display Author name first regardless of settings

chaley · 04-21-2021, 05:20 PM

In an attempt to help make things clearer, this is what calibre does and has done for the 11-or-so years I have worked on it:

There is no calibre setting that will change an author name when importing. You will get whatever is in the book or file name, depending on your add book settings.
There is no calibre setting/tweak that will automatically change already imported books. You must do this by hand or with a plugin.
The calibre tweak "Author sort name algorithm (ID: author_sort_copy_method)" controls to some extent how the author sort value is computed when you import a book.
The calibre tweak "Author sort ..." also controls to some extent whether the author sort field is marked as inconsistent (red border) or consistent (green border).
There are various options in tweaks that have appeared over the years that affect computing an author sort value, for example author_name_suffixes and author_name_prefixes amongst others. These options can help when adding a book or forcing a recomputation of author_sort values. But to repeat, they will not change an author name.
The "Manage authors" dialog, found by right-clicking on Authors in the tag browser, is where you should change an author's name and sort value. Changes done in that dialog will be applied to book metadata in calibre's database. In this dialog you can ask that the author_sort be recalculated; that calculation uses the tweaks.
None of the above automatically affects the metadata stored inside a book.

The default for the "Author sort ..." tweak is "comma". This value says that if the author name contains a comma then it is to be used unchanged. If not the last word in the authors name becomes the first and a comma is added. Example: Joe Van Blogs becomes Blogs, Joe Van.

04-21-2021, 05:20 PM	#9
chaley Grand Sorcerer Posts: 12,468 Karma: 8025600 Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Notts, England Device: Kobo Libra 2	In an attempt to help make things clearer, this is what calibre does and has done for the 11-or-so years I have worked on it: There is no calibre setting that will change an author name when importing. You will get whatever is in the book or file name, depending on your add book settings. There is no calibre setting/tweak that will automatically change already imported books. You must do this by hand or with a plugin. The calibre tweak "Author sort name algorithm (ID: author_sort_copy_method)" controls to some extent how the author sort value is computed when you import a book. The calibre tweak "Author sort ..." also controls to some extent whether the author sort field is marked as inconsistent (red border) or consistent (green border). There are various options in tweaks that have appeared over the years that affect computing an author sort value, for example author_name_suffixes and author_name_prefixes amongst others. These options can help when adding a book or forcing a recomputation of author_sort values. But to repeat, they will not change an author name. The "Manage authors" dialog, found by right-clicking on Authors in the tag browser, is where you should change an author's name and sort value. Changes done in that dialog will be applied to book metadata in calibre's database. In this dialog you can ask that the author_sort be recalculated; that calculation uses the tweaks. None of the above automatically affects the metadata stored inside a book. The default for the "Author sort ..." tweak is "comma". This value says that if the author name contains a comma then it is to be used unchanged. If not the last word in the authors name becomes the first and a comma is added. Example: Joe Van Blogs becomes Blogs, Joe Van.