CC Prerelease V3.4.0d

[chaley]

CC prerelease 3.4.0d has been published and will available soon to people who are members of the CC prerelease program.

This is a bug fix release.

- [BUG FIX]Fix title sort regression
- [BUG FIX]Fix crashes when clicking on tags that begin with non-alphabetic characters
- [BUG FIX]Add AM/PM indicator to dates displayed in the book list

[kaufman]

I just installed this and both issues from yesterday are now fixed

Originally Posted by chaley

- [BUG FIX]Fix crashes when clicking on tags that begin with non-alphabetic characters

FYI, I actually only got the crash on #. Tags that started with underscore worked fine.

I tired removing all sorts, and it worked as expected, with no issues.

One thought I had today. Since you have already done all the work to extract and use the custom tag name in the sorting and grouping menus, would you consider adding a dialog to the settings to allow people to rename them to something more readable? It would make several places a lot prettier. I was thinking that the simplest thing for people to understand would be a two stage process. Step one would be to list the custom columns as they do now, and step two would be to fill in a translation table. Or maybe just turn the custom column stuff into the translation table.

Last thought. Since custom columns are. Now group able, does it make sense to make them clickable in the book details screen?

[jackie_w]

@chaley,

If someone chooses to autosort a grouping by Author, would it be possible to (silently) actually sort by Author/Series/Title. Would there be any harm? Based on a lot of the early work with metadata plugboards, I think it's probably a common sort preference and it would be very convenient (especially for me )

Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting that choosing Author from the standard Sort button would do this (even if I'd prefer it this way), just the autosort.

[kaufman]

Perhaps the easiest way to do this would be to make another default sort called (for example) "full sort" which did the sort. Then you could select that sort type for the default.

Having said that, I don't think you actually want author/series/title. Series sort sorts by the series number. Wouldn't this make your sort put (for each author) all first book of series together and then all second books and so on and then all the books without series.

I think what you might actually want is an author sort, and then within that treat sort series name with index and title as one field and then sort that.

I think might give people with shorter lists of books something useful.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by kaufman

Having said that, I don't think you actually want author/series/title. Series sort sorts by the series number. Wouldn't this make your sort put (for each author) all first book of series together and then all second books and so on and then all the books without series.

No, it works fine at the moment if done in 3 (reversed) passes - Title then Series then Author. Sort or Autosort by Series is already Series/index, as far as I'm aware. Perhaps I should have described it as Author/Series/index/Title

[kaufman]

My mistake. I was not aware of that. The full sort part might still be useful.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by kaufman

Series sort sorts by the series number. Wouldn't this make your sort put (for each author) all first book of series together and then all second books and so on and then all the books without series.

No, it sorts by series name and THEN series number. If you select an author, and then do a series sort, you first get all the books with no series, and then each series, alphabetically in order, arranged by number.

Eg if I do a series sort on my Agatha Christie books I get...

Books not in a series.
...
Miss Marple 1
Miss Marple 2
...
Poirot 1
Poirot 2
...
Tommy and Tuppence 1
Tommy and Tuppence 2.
...
etc.

[kaufman]

Ok, ok I was wrong, I'm sorry. Why do you people keep hounding me?

[DoctorOhh]

No, it sorts by series name and THEN series number.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kaufman

FYI, I actually only got the crash on #. Tags that started with underscore worked fine.

I am quite sure that tags starting with ? or & would also fail. Perhaps '='. Basically characters that mean something in URLs.

One thought I had today. Since you have already done all the work to extract and use the custom tag name in the sorting and grouping menus, would you consider adding a dialog to the settings to allow people to rename them to something more readable? It would make several places a lot prettier. I was thinking that the simplest thing for people to understand would be a two stage process. Step one would be to list the custom columns as they do now, and step two would be to fill in a translation table. Or maybe just turn the custom column stuff into the translation table.

This is in the wish list as "Some way to add a display name for custom columns in the grouping drawer". You are right to point out that having the autosorts etc expands the scope of the wish but it doesn't change the fundamentals.

What I intend to do is to change the groupable items entry dialog to use key/name pairs, such as "#genre/Genre, #series/Reading order". If you don't enter a /... then the display value will be the key. For existing installations I will migrate the keys to the display values.

I hope to have this in the next release.

Last thought. Since custom columns are. Now group able, does it make sense to make them clickable in the book details screen?

Probably.

Originally Posted by jackie_w

@chaley,

If someone chooses to autosort a grouping by Author, would it be possible to (silently) actually sort by Author/Series/Title. Would there be any harm? Based on a lot of the early work with metadata plugboards, I think it's probably a common sort preference and it would be very convenient (especially for me )

Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting that choosing Author from the standard Sort button would do this (even if I'd prefer it this way), just the autosort.

This is a difficult one for me. On one hand I can see why you want it and why others might want it. On the other hand it introduces magic behavior and could break someone's carefully-prepared sorting sequence, neither of which are desirable.

Regarding your example, why bother with Title? Do you have books with the same series and series index? Ahh... you are dealing with the case where there is no series, in which case Title would effectively become the second sort key.

Kaufman's idea to introduce some compound sorts would eliminate the magic, but it would also increase pressure to be able to create them dynamically or to have several of them. Being able to take sorts off the menu removes a big reason to avoid having lots of them.

So the question: other than Author/Series/Title, are there any other compound sorts that scream for attention?

Related question: is there any reason to have "Read" as a sort?

Originally Posted by DoctorOhh

No, it sorts by series name and THEN series number.

Piling on now.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by chaley

So the question: other than Author/Series/Title, are there any other compound sorts that scream for attention?

Sorting series within author and title within author would be the only ones that I'd personally want. They are the two sorting options that I have in desktop Calibre.

[jackie_w]

On the other hand it introduces magic behavior and could break someone's carefully-prepared sorting sequence, neither of which are desirable.

All of CC is 'magic' Breaking a carefully-prepared sort sequence is why I suggested restricting to autosort. In what way might autosort get broken? If the user selects autosort Author they currently get Author/random. If they got Author/Series/index/Title instead, why might they be upset? They'd still have what they asked for. I won't push to the point of irritation (unless I've already passed that point )

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

All of CC is 'magic' Breaking a carefully-prepared sort sequence is why I suggested restricting to autosort. In what way might autosort get broken? If the user selects autosort Author they currently get Author/random. If they got Author/Series/index/Title instead, why might they be upset? They'd still have what they asked for. I won't push to the point of irritation (unless I've already passed that point )

Agreed. Being able to select a secondary sort sequence for each primary sort option would be a VERY useful enhancement indeed.

[kaufman]

All this abuse...

I feel like you are all part of my family.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by chaley

Regarding your example, why bother with Title? Do you have books with the same series and series index? Ahh... you are dealing with the case where there is no series, in which case Title would effectively become the second sort key.

Exactly.

Originally Posted by chaley

So the question: other than Author/Series/Title, are there any other compound sorts that scream for attention?

This is the only compound sort I use in calibre or on any of my previous devices.[/quote]

Originally Posted by chaley

Piling on now.

Who, me?