reverse name - surname of author?

[Lauraq]

Hi

I imported a lot of books and I would order all authors with the surname before the name, eg:

William Irish

I want to be

Irish William

In the tweak I had already set

author_sort_copy_method = 'copy'

but obviously in some cases does not work, then I copied the books that did not fit into a new library and tried to rename changing "copy" with the other options

"fn ln"
"ln, fn"
'invert'

all work but all insert a comma between the last name and first name. You tell me which command should I use for dont' have the "comma" or what I must do, after the renaming, for delete the comma?

Thanks

[BetterRed]

@Lauraq

I find that the best place to resolve Author naming anomalies is in the Author Maintenance list, that may sound trite but having a list of author names and author sort names makes it much easy to spot the anomalies - you can also fix up casing mistakes and resolve variations such as Pinyin v Wade-Giles etc.

There are various pathways to get at the list, including

• via Alter Tag Browser->Manage Authors, tags etc->Manage Authors at the bottom of the Tag browser panel,
• via the Manage Author item in the context menu (right click) of an Author in the Tag browser
• via the context menu (right click) on the Author name (blue link) in the Book Details

I mainly use the third one because I usually don't have the Tag browser displayed.

And I suspect that if you have the author_sort as last name followed by first name then the comma is mandatory - ie Joseph, Annabel - but not Joseph Annabel - but I could be wrong.

BR

[At_Libitum]

I don't know if there's an easy way to drop the comma, but in case there isn't, you could create a custom column build from other columns behaving like tags, then give it this as a template

{author_sort:'re($, "\,","" )'}

The same template you could also use in a plugboard to send the books using this format for author name to your device.

This way you don't need to jump through hoops editing or renaming authors and leave them as they arrive in metadata

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Lauraq

Hi

I imported a lot of books and I would order all authors with the surname before the name, eg:

William Irish

I want to be

Irish William

In the tweak I had already set

author_sort_copy_method = 'copy'

but obviously in some cases does not work, then I copied the books that did not fit into a new library and tried to rename changing "copy" with the other options

"fn ln"
"ln, fn"
'invert'

all work but all insert a comma between the last name and first name. You tell me which command should I use for dont' have the "comma" or what I must do, after the renaming, for delete the comma?

Thanks

You seem to be talking about two things: 1) ordering of the parts of the author name during import, and 2) generating the author sort value from the author name.

Getting the author name "right" during import is up to you. After import you edit the author so that it appears the way you want. From what you say, it seems as if you want the authors to show as LN FN, but that isn't totally clear.

If you want authors to display as LN FN, then you probably want the author sort tweak to be set to "copy". Author sort will also be LN FN. As said above, it is up to you to ensure that the author names are correct. Calibre can't help you with that.

If you want the author names to display as FN LN and that you want author sort to be LN FN, you should set the tweak to "nocomma". As above, it is up to you to ensure that the author names are all in the correct order.

If you do not use commas then there is no way for calibre to guess what order an author's name is in. "John Doe" and "Doe John" look exactly the same. As a result, things like the quality check plugin and search/replace are probably of no help to you.

Bottom line: it is up to you to ensure that author names are consistently in one form or another. Once that work is done, you set the tweak to tell calibre how to convert an author name to author sort. Because you are not using commas, there is very little automation available to help you.

[Lauraq]

these days I will try to better understand your comments because my English is not good.
What I would say is that it seems to me that Calibre has many limitations, it should be trivial to have the option to reverse first and last name, or do not put a comma (it is not clear what it is for), or put in a tiny, all without having to know the various codes or complicated settings. Thanks for the help

[Sabardeyn]

Originally Posted by Lauraq

... it should be trivial to have the option to reverse first and last name, or do not put a comma (it is not clear what it is for), ...

Reversing first and last name is trivial and several ways to do so have been mentioned already.

The comma allows calibre to know which word is a first name or last name. The program has to know which name to use when sorting by author.

The program does not know every first and last name in the world. All the program knows is a certain group of letters is a name and -- depending on whether there is a space (" ") or comma and space (", ") -- if this particular bunch of letters is supposed to be a first name or last name.

If you use author sort = "copy" then the exact author name you enter into the field will be used for sorting, without a comma. But that means you are going to have to do the necessary work to enter information the way you want it to appear. Every other user of this software has had to do the same thing for their unique needs.

[Lauraq]

Originally Posted by Sabardeyn

Reversing first and last name is trivial and several ways to do so have been mentioned already.

The comma allows calibre to know which word is a first name or last name. The program has to know which name to use when sorting by author.

The program does not know every first and last name in the world. All the program knows is a certain group of letters is a name and -- depending on whether there is a space (" ") or comma and space (", ") -- if this particular bunch of letters is supposed to be a first name or last name.

If you use author sort = "copy" then the exact author name you enter into the field will be used for sorting, without a comma. But that means you are going to have to do the necessary work to enter information the way you want it to appear. Every other user of this software has had to do the same thing for their unique needs.

I do not think that it is as you say because in the faq site I have read about commands that should not put the comma (but don't work for me), then they also know that many person do not want the comma. And I think it's obvious, it is much easier to rename some names wrong than having to remove the comma at all

[Adoby]

If you have

author_sort="copy"

Then you can enter the name of the author as:

Smith John

And everything will work as you want it to work.

Test it by making a small test library with just 2-3 books and see.

You can use bulk metadata edit and search and replace, using regular expressions to automatically convert the current names in bulk. Provided they all use the exact same naming convention. Either fn ln or ln, fn.

You will also have to request calibre to update the author sort field.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Lauraq

I do not think that it is as you say because in the faq site I have read about commands that should not put the comma (but don't work for me)

The no comma tweak is used to copy the author column to the author_sort column. Not the other way around. I'm fairly sure you don't want you Author column to be LN FN and your Author_sort column to be FN LN (without a comma), sorting by first name would be very counter-intuitive.

Below is the full tweak info.

Spoiler:

ID: author_sort_copy_method

The algorithm used to copy author to author_sort
Possible values are:
invert: use "fn ln" -> "ln, fn"
copy : copy author to author_sort without modification
comma : use 'copy' if there is a ',' in the name, otherwise use 'invert'
nocomma : "fn ln" -> "ln fn" (without the comma)
When this tweak is changed, the author_sort values stored with each author
must be recomputed by right-clicking on an author in the left-hand tags pane,
selecting 'manage authors', and pressing 'Recalculate all author sort values'.
The author name suffixes are words that are ignored when they occur at the
end of an author name. The case of the suffix is ignored and trailing
periods are automatically handled. The same is true for prefixes.
The author name copy words are a set of words which if they occur in an
author name cause the automatically generated author sort string to be
identical to the author name. This means that the sort for a string like Acme
Inc. will be Acme Inc. instead of Inc., Acme

Originally Posted by Lauraq

then they also know that many person do not want the comma.

This is not correct, you are the first person in over 4 years of reviewing this forum that I can recall ever having an obsession about the comma in the actual author column.

chaley, one the main contributors to calibre's code answered your question here.

Originally Posted by chaley

If you do not use commas then there is no way for calibre to guess what order an author's name is in. "John Doe" and "Doe John" look exactly the same. As a result, things like the quality check plugin and search/replace are probably of no help to you.

Just for a point of reference, here is the section of the FAQ that covers switching FN LN in the author column to LN, FN. If it isn't clear in this section how to accomplish what you want it is because what you want is not a Frequently Asked Question.

However, as Adoby points out above you can do what you want with the tweak above using the copy option. Then make sure that each entry in the author column is LN FN. Select all and in edit metadata select Automatically set author sort.

Good Luck.

[Lauraq]

Thanks really a lot of aid that are giving me but unfortunately I do so much work to translate and follow your advice I seem to have figured out that removing the comma is only one thing that I would like so I apologize if I said something incorrect. I kindly ask if anyone knows how to solve my problem to tell me exactly step-by-step what I must do, or tell me if is impossible. I will not weary you further

[Adoby]

1. Apply the tweak: author_sort_copy_method="copy"
2. Edit and change author for all books to ln fn. For example "Smith John".
3. Select all books and Edit Metadata. Select update author_sort.

Done.

When you add new books, make sure that you add them with author in the format ln fn.

I suggest you first try this on a small test library with just a few books.

Step 2 can be done fast and efficiently on many books by using bulk metadata edit and search and replace with regular expressions. But exactly how depends on what the author field contains now. And especially if that format is consistently used.

Please note that some functions in calibre most likely will not work properly any longer. For instance the quality check plugin, but maybe also metadata download. Possibly other things as well.