Newbie author+series sorting problem

[Bragir]

I want to sort my libray so that it is first sorted after author then serie (if it's a part of one) and then title.
After a bit of serching here i found that this tweek should do it

sort_columns_at_startup = (('authors', 0), ('series', 0), ('title', 0))

This also works as long as there is only 1 author, if there is more than one the serie sorting don't work as i want.

Is there any way to make it use only the first author name (without having to remove other authors from metadata)

This is how it looks now:
Pirate of the pacific - Kenneth Robson - Doc Savage[5]
Land of always-night- Kenneth Robson - Doc Savage[25]
....
World's Fair Goblin - Kenneth Robeson & William G. Bogart - Doc Savage[74]
...
The Man of Bronze - Kenneth Robeson & Lester Dent - Doc Savage[1]
...

What i would like was books from the same "main" author to be grouped and the series sorted numericaly (so that book 1 is the first, bok 2 the next and so on).

[capnm]

Create a custom column, built from other columns.
Name it something like 'mainauthor'.

Put this in the template field:

{author_sort:list_item( 0, ' & ')}

Sort on your custom column at startup.

Don't forget to add a leading # to the custom column name when you refer to it.

sort_columns_at_startup = (('#mainauthor', 0), ('series', 0), ('title', 0))

Caveat: I can't check my syntax at the moment, it may not be 100% correct, but you should get the idea ...

[Bragir]

Thanks that worked (after i found out that the separator in list_item has to be without ' around it)