Authors names with a capital in the Middle

[valerie4]

I have several authors which are Capitalized in in middle of the name as well as the first letter, such as MaryJanice Davidson or MacAlister. How do I get the second capital to capitalize without it showing a a incorrect name/spelling?

I've googled for answers and don't see anything.

Thanks Valerie

[Grins]

Have you tried just doing it? I also have "MacBride", "McDonald" and others and I can not remember having used any particular switches / options to enforce that behaviour.

[theducks]

MaryJanice ? Someone forget a space or dash.

In the Tag Browser: Right click: Manage Authors: There you can modify the sort value for the odd cases that the normal rules can't deal with.

Other Useful tools to help normalize Author names:
Quality Check Plugin: Fix: <choices>

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by theducks

MaryJanice ? Someone forget a space or dash.

You can say that to the author

[valerie4]

No space or dash, that’s her name, you can look it up. Also I’ve tried putting it in the way it should be and the field turns red. Oh and I have the quality check plugin, it didn’t help.

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by valerie4

Also I’ve tried putting it in the way it should be and the field turns red.

The "Author Sort" field will be red if it does not match what would end up in that field if you use the Calibre default rules (i.e., clicking the right-arrow to turn the "Author" into "Author Sort"). That's all the field being red means. Nothing is broken, and Calibre will happily use the value in the "Author Sort" field to sort the author. I have dozens of books like this in my Calibre library, for various reasons (e.g., James Patterson books with other authors still get sorted as "Patterson, James", and all books written by Dean Koontz get sorted as "Koontz, Dean", even though I track the pen name that was used when originally published).

[chaley]

Originally Posted by valerie4

No space or dash, that’s her name, you can look it up. Also I’ve tried putting it in the way it should be and the field turns red. Oh and I have the quality check plugin, it didn’t help.

Use the Manage Authors dialog (in the tag browser, right click on the author and choose "Manage authors"). Set both the author and the author sort to what you want. The red box will go away.

You might also check in Manage Authors to see if you have multiple versions of the same author name. Changing a name in Edit Metadata can add another author if other books with the old author name are in the library. If this has occured then set them to the correct value.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

The "Author Sort" field will be red if it does not match what would end up in that field if you use the Calibre default rules (i.e., clicking the right-arrow to turn the "Author" into "Author Sort"). ...

Actually, it is red if it disagrees with the author sort value you see in the Manage Authors dialog.

It is true that the initial value of author sort in Manage Authors comes from the calibre rules. However, once it is assigned to an author the rules are no longer used unless you specifically ask that calibre recalculate the sort. Any changes you make in Manage Authors will be used.

[BetterRed]

If you don't like right clicking in the Tag Browser, perhaps because you normally have it hidden, you can add the Manage categories tool to a toolbar or menu via Preferences->Toolbars and menus. I have it in my Book list context menu



BR

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by chaley

Actually, it is red if it disagrees with the author sort value you see in the Manage Authors dialog.

...which is the ruleset that is used to convert from Author to Author Sort when you use the arrow in the Edit Metadata dialog.

New authors get default rules that can be edited by the user.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

...which is the ruleset that is used to convert from Author to Author Sort when you use the arrow in the Edit Metadata dialog.

New authors get default rules that can be edited by the user.

The value for an author's sort value isn't a rule. It is a sequence of characters -- a string. An author's initial sort value is generated by the rule specified in Tweaks, but you can change the value to whatever you want in "Manage authors".

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by chaley

The value for an author's sort value isn't a rule.

The "Manage Authors" box is a list of mappings (one for each author) that shows what the Author Sort for an author should be.

The default for the "string" (as you put it) in each of the fields is calculated by Calibre when the author is first entered into Calibre. After that, Calibre uses the string in the list (which can be edited by the user) to create the Author Sort value, so each one of those mappings is a rule to create the user-desired Author Sort value for that particular author.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

The "Manage Authors" box is a list of mappings (one for each author) that shows what the Author Sort for an author should be.

The default for the "string" (as you put it) in each of the fields is calculated by Calibre when the author is first entered into Calibre. After that, Calibre uses the string in the list (which can be edited by the user) to create the Author Sort value, so each one of those mappings is a rule to create the user-desired Author Sort value for that particular author.

You are disputing what the author_sort field is with the person who maintains the Manage Authors code. Whilst there is a rule for arriving at the default value of author-sort, it's an editable field in Manage Authors.

When I added "The Women in Black" by Madeleine St John to my library the author_sort column defaulted to "John, Madeleine St", I changed it in Manage Author's to "St John, Madeleine".

BR