Sony book sorting by author fails when creating collections from a custom column

[speakingtohe]

Occasionally I try creating my collections using a custom column built from other columns.

A couple of years ago chaley helped me with template for one, but while the collections were named perfectly the books would no longer sort by author even in the collections built from standard fields.

I do use a plugboard but cannot see how this would affect things.

I cannot see how fields created by custom columns would differ in any way from fields built from authors etc. once the are on the reader.

I am trying this once again as I bought my mother a T3 and I just want a single author name for each collection as she is 88 and gets confused easily. Plus it is neater IMO. A few anthologies can really make a lot of one book collections.

This has happened with 4 different models of Sony readers. PRS-350, 600, T1 and T3.

I configure the driver to use the custom column and the author sort will not sort correctly. I configure the driver to use authors or author_sort or series and remove custom column and sorts perfectly.

I am baffled as to how the Sony would interpret the custom column collections any differently.

Thanks for any insight you can provide.

Helen

EDIT: It appears the problem is always showing up column, just that I have a couple of large collections one being anthologies one being a series and maybe an author or two.

Sorting is fine in short collections so far.

[chaley]

It has been a long time since I have used a Sony and memory is failing. However, I can think of a few things to check.

• Do you have anything in the Sony tweaks, especially the sony_collection_sorting_rules?
• I am not sure what you mean by "configure the driver to use the custom column". Do you mean to build a collection using that column? If so, and if the column is not listed in the sony_collection_sorting_rules, then it will be sorted by title_sort.
• If you have a device_db plugboard defined then the sort values will be the ones generated by the plugboard.

The general rules are:

1. The special All By Author (%aba) column is sorted by author sort then title sort.
2. The special All By Title (%abt) column is sorted by title sort then author sort
3. A series column is sorted by series index.
4. Columns listed in sony_collection_sorting_rules are sorted by the column specified in the tweak. If the specified column does not exist then the collection is sorted by title sort.
5. All other columns are sorted by title sort.

[speakingtohe]

Thank you.
I was sorting by author which works perfectly when no custom column, but not when a custom column is used to build collections in large collections.

Changing to sort by date added works.

I had forgotten about %aba will have to try that.

Helen