Quote:
Originally Posted by Starson17
Respectfully, I don't understand this change either. If the author_sort field is available to the content server, then it's simply a matter of which field is used to sort when the author field is clicked. I'd prefer the author_sort, as that's what I expect.
If there was a "tweak" allowing the content server author sorting to be by author_sort, or a checkbox option, I'd use it.
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No can do.
I will repeat what Kovid said in different words and somewhat more technically. When calibre produces a list of authors, it does so by scanning the authors table. At this point we have authors, but no books, so we don't have author_sort. Sorting will be by author, as it is written. Now assume you want the books by an author. Calibre looks up all the books that reference that author. We now have a list of books, each with an author sort, but what can we do with it? Nothing, because the list is book within author, not author within book.
There are only two ways to solve this problem correctly: 1) store authors so that they produce the order you want naturally (this is what I do), or store an editable author sort field for each author *in addition to* each book. The first the users can do, the second takes development.
We could argue about whether the hack that inverted author names should have been left in. Although he didn't ask me (and there is no reason he should), I happen to agree with Kovid that the hack shouldn't be included. It assumes that names are 'fn ln', which is incorrect for a sizable piece of the world.
I'll stop now, or I will yet again get into a rant about name order assumptions and difficulties ...
