Query/Request/Nuisance

[ElMiko]

Kovid, you are a rock star. Thank you!

@Insalata - Although it appears that you are referring to the partitive articles (whereas my inclusion of "Des" was as an indefinite article), you are probably right in including them as flaggable articles for the purposes of this exercise. Thanks! Obviously, any native French speakers (c'mon, I know you're out there) who can shed light on sorting standards, please do!

@SPQR10 & @opitzs - thank you both for your input. I'm so gratified to find people pitching in to make this functionality as accurate & inclusive as possible!

To all: I've updated the original list to reflect your input. Again, thank you!

[opitzs]

I am sorry, I was to fast!
Could you please also add "Des", "Einem" and "Eines" to the german list?

I think, than it should be close to complete...

[chaley]

Originally Posted by ElMiko

Obviously, any native French speakers (c'mon, I know you're out there) who can shed light on sorting standards, please do!

I am not a native French speaker, but I have looked at sorting rules for names in French. They are very difficult to automate.

First problem: capital letters matter. The name "Jean de La Fontaine" should sort as "La Fontaine, Jean de" because the 'L' in La is capitalized, making it part of the place name and not an article. If the name were "Jean de la Rivière" it would be sorted "Rivière, Jean de la", because in this case it is an article.

Second problem: people with the names make choices for how their name is spelled. I know people with names like "Jean du Dupont" who insist that their last name is "du Dupont", and others who insist that it is "Dupont". This problem also exists in German with von (and others).

Third problem: usage. I have seen both "Charles De Gaulle" and "Charles de Gaulle". Apparently there is some question about whether he has a "noble" name (de Gaulle) or a "common" name (De Gaulle); I don't know which is correct. In any event, these should sort differently.

[ElMiko]

@Kovid (or others in the know) - after applying the tweak (and restarting calibre), checking "Update title sort" in the Batch Edit dialogue doesn't apply the tweak. Am I doing something wrong here? On the individual Edit Metadata dialogue, the "Automatically create the title sort entry..." arrow works perfectly.

@ chaley - Yeah, the same is true of Spanish (although now we're kind of talking about prepositions more than articles). I figured that multi-lingual title sorting would have enough challenges as it was. My bootleg workaround for names has been to omit the space: DeGaulle, LaFontaine, etc. It ain't always pretty and I still struggle on making that choice (should John le Carre sort as "Carre, John le" or "LeCarre John"... "Guin, Ursula le" or "LeGuin, Ursula"?), but it doesn't happen enough (in contrast to leading articles in titles) for me to be driven completely nuts.

@opitzs - thanks. I will add them to the thread list too.

[kovidgoyal]

I just forgot to make the changes for the bulk edit dialog...next release.