Use "short" instead of "full" title for title sort & renaming?

[wolpi]

Especially for Non-Fiction books, the title metadata frequently not only contains the actual title, but also a subtitle, e.g.


"A Visual Astronomer's Photographic Guide to the Deep Sky: A Pocket Field Guide (Astronomer's Pocket Field Guide)"


This produces incorrect or ugly results both with the {title_sort} "library order" format and with naming the book on export.

What I would like to achieve is for books with a title of the form "{short_title}: {subtitle}" like the above:


{title_sort} = library_order{short_title} ("Visual Astronomer's Photographic Guide to the Deep Sky, A")

If the {title} does not contain a ":" (i.e. indication of no subtitle being present) then {short_title}={title}

renamed exported file = "{short_title} - {author_sort} - {publisher} - {pubdate}"


Can this be done in Calibre? If so, I would be grateful for any pointers, examples etc. you could give me.

Thanks,

Wolpi

[theducks]

I made a custom column {#subtitle} : text shown it Tag browser

I manually move (sometimes aided by S&R. But caution is needed because not titles should split on a colon, dash) them (cut and paste), the recompute the title sort (click the button)

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by theducks

I made a custom column {#subtitle} : text shown it Tag browser

I manually move (sometimes aided by S&R. But caution is needed because not titles should split on a colon, dash) them (cut and paste), the recompute the title sort (click the button)

I keep the 'short title' in Title and put the subtitle into a Strapline/#strapline custom column. I have Add set up to take the Author and Title from the file name. Prior to importing I separate the Title and Strapline with a '#', and then use Bulk Metadata Edit Search and Replace to move what's after the '#' to the custom column.

My custom column is same type as theducks, Text, column shown in Tag browser, and I hide it in the Tag browser.

My understanding is that the next release of calibre (maybe as soon as today) will have provision for the equivalent of a 'Text, column not shown in Tag Browser' column type. I intend moving my existing Strapline column into one of those - I'll have to figure out how to put the comma separated bits back together again

BR