by Date & PRS-650

[smoldersonline]

We are very new to e-reading (Sony PRS-650) and calibre (on a Mac). After pushing books from calibre to the PRS-650, it seems that only the "Date" field is available for sorting the books (by Date) on PRS-650. I would prefer to be able to sort the books on the "Published" field. I can manually change the "Date" field, but maybe there is a more efficient way to make the "Published" info available on the PRS-650 for sorting the books.

Hope this makes sense... Thank you for reading and for any feedback you may have.

[Pinecone]

Using Calibre, I find it easiest to sort in Calibre and create a collection sorted on that attribute.

[smoldersonline]

Thanks a lot for your feedback! Would prefer to have the published date in my Sony but this should also work.

[speakingtohe]

You could make a plugboard that would write the published date into the date field.

This is a good way to go as it does not affect the library, just the way the books are on a device.

I am curious as to why you would want to sort by date published? This date is not accurate in all cases unless you enter it yourself (in my experience).

I have my books in collections by author and then sorted within the author collection by series number (if it is part of a series) with the series name and number after the author name.

Helen

[smoldersonline]

Thank you! The main (and obvious) objective of having access to the published date on the reader would be to avoid missing the order of a series. I'm very grateful for pointing me to the "collections/series" option. That should work just fine. But still, the option on the Sony to sort "by Date" does not make a lot of sense (to me anyway) if it is going to sort on the date that I pushed the book to the reader. I'm very new to calibre, but it seems that the plugboard option is the way to go for me - after making sure that the Published date is correct, of course.

Thank you

Dirk (newbie) from the Netherlands

[itimpi]

I must admit that on my Sony the only reaon I tend to use the sor by date option is to see which books I have recently added.

[speakingtohe]

Look for Chaley's post in this thread for a simpler approach

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=138543

Or dwanthny's post in this thread

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=126313

I use this plugboard (from Jackie_W I think)

format device_db
device any device
source template {author_sort}{series:| - | }{series_index:0>2s}


Sony device interfaec Plugin is set to
save template {author_sort}/{title} - {authors}
collection field author_sort

This gives me a collection for each author with the books sorted by series. After the authors name for each book the Sony shows the series name and number

Helen

[smoldersonline]

Many thanks to all! I now have collections for each author with the books sorted on published date. That works. I would still like to try to get the published date into the Sony. A metadata plugboard seems the way to go, but I'm struggling with using that functionality. Any pointers are appreciated.

[speakingtohe]

there is a sticky (third) on plugboard examples in library management subforum

[Pinecone]

I do the same thing in most cases. I also have a PRS-650 (and my wife a PRS-600).

What I did was create a custom series like column for Author. In that, I put all the books by that author in the order I want them on the Reader. So if the author has no series, I put them in published date order. If the author does have series, I put each series in order.

And then, in the device plug in, I removed the create a collection by the exisiting Author field (which will put the books under the name in alphabetical order) and added to create a collection based on my custom column.

I also use the Series Column to create a collection for each series. You could also just put them in published date order under the custom Author column and uses the Series column to group by series.

So this provides several possible ways books can be ordered. And if an author has books in series and some books that are not, I can group the series books and separately group the non-series in published order.

Collection - Author A
Series 1 Book 1
Series 1 Book 2
....
Series 2 Book 1
Series 2 Book 2

Or I could do Author A as:
Book 1
Book 2
Book 3
Book 4

Collection - Author B
Book 1
Book 2
Book 3

Then I also get:

Collection - Series 1
Book 1
Book 2

Coelction - Series 2
Book 1
Book 2


And remember, collections are metadata, having the same book show up in multiple colelctions, just means that it pointed to from those collections, there is still only one copy of the book in Calibre or on your Reader.

Harder to describe than to do.

[smoldersonline]

Thanks again! I managed to get the Published Date on the Reader with a plugboard, like this:

format: any format
device: any device
template: {title} - {pubdate}
destination: title

In the Destination field (dropbox) there is no option to choose "date", so I guess it is not possible to push the Published date to replace the "standard date"?

[speakingtohe]

In the Destination field (dropbox) there is no option to choose "date", so I guess it is not possible to push the Published date to replace the "standard date"?

I never noticed that.
If you put a request message in the library management forum, Chaley will most likely add in that ability.

Helen

[chaley]

On my PRS-300 (and I am sure on the other sonys), the date shown is the book file modification date -- the date the book was last changed on the device. The reader insists on this. If I change the date in the sony DB, the reader changes it back, throwing away all the custom metadata in the process. It might be possible to change both the DB date and the file date, but as I have had incredible amounts of trouble with matching the reader's notion of 'correct dates', I am unwilling to attempt it.

[speakingtohe]

@chaley
Thanks for the explanation.
I am sure the op will eventually get their books sorted using one of the many other methods you and kovid etc. have provided.

I am pretty happy with mine

Helen

[smoldersonline]

@all: thank you so much for helping me. This is an extremely friendly community. I am indeed very happy with what I learned here and what I now can do with calibre and our readers.

Take care!