Thread: Author Sort is messing things up
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Old 02-03-2010, 12:41 PM   #27
chaley
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Starson17 View Post
What I'm asking is - What use (other than the GUI display) do you make of your reverse stored author field that can't be handled by using the author_sort field?
The problem is that the two fields do not the same meaning. One contains the string to be displayed, and the other contains the order specification. This is, of course, the philosophical position that calibre currently takes, and it is the right one. The fact that I want the initial default of author_sort to equal author does not change the underlying semantics of the fields. Just like everyone, I want to be able to change the order without changing the content. It is only an accident that the two fields contain the same data. I confess that in my case it is a frequent accident, but it is an accident all the same.

To more specifically answer your question, I use author and not author_sort when writing to my reading devices and when generating reports with calibredb. I could use author_sort, but the output would be wrong when author_sort != author. In the new catalog feature, author_sort determines order (as it should) , the author field is displayed in the new catalog feature (as it should), and there is no option to display author_sort (which would be incorrect for the reasons given above). Book metadata would contain the incorrect string as author. Author, not author_sort, is used in the calibre library folder structure (as it should). Bulk import produces the 'wrong' answer. And so on.

Summary: I want the two fields to continue to have the meaning they have today: author is what I see and author_sort is how it is ordered. However, I want to use a different method when calibre is copying author to author_sort, should such a copy be necessary or requested. From a philosophical point of view, I don't see how this position can be controversial.

Asking someone who does not care about the different method to take time to develop and to support it is arguably controversial, and I recognize the full validity of that point of view.
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