Displaying LN, FN in Author Column

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Jeannie, as I said in my post paw3pals laid it all out for you in their post and I mentioned it as well - there is a button on the Manage Authors dialog which will do them all at once for you, once you verify that the current way the author sort field is populated as the values you now want to display for the author just hit the magic "copy all author sort values to author" button...

That wasn't what I just asked about (and I have looked at Manage Authors but I'm not ready to make that commitment just yet). My concern right now is to get calibre to enter the authors of NEW books as LN, FN without my having to manually change it in each new book I add before I worry about changing the existing ones. It may not be worth changing the existing ones if adding new books is going to turn into a pain in my ample asset.

Originally Posted by kiwidude

...As for automatically putting a name into LN, FN format for new books, no calibre does not have that feature. However the Quality Check plugin has a feature to do this which you can assign to a keyboard shortcut. So if you import the author and it is already LN, FN due to your regular expression or book metadata then all is fine and you have nothing to do. If calibre sees the author as FN LN then you need to flip it, which the QC plugin has a feature to do to save you the typing and without having to enter the Edit Metadata dialog.

I find it really hard to believe a program as sophisticated as calibre would be unable to do something as simple as enter authors as LN, FN when adding a book. That said, your comment, "...if you import the author and it is already LN, FN due to your regular expression...", caught my eye. Hunh? Can you explain what you mean by my regular expression? Where would this be; where and how would I set it up?

I appreciate your patience with me. I'm not a complete dummy (heck, I even gradjiated frum colludge) but these kind of things are completely above my head.

[kiwidude]

Please don't defer that Manage Authors step - do it now. We listed it as the next step for a reason As I said above there is a default sort for your authors, and if you don't go into Manage Authors and make sure your default is correct (and at the same time take advantage of fixing the display author for all your books) then you will likely end up with some quirky results, which will have you puzzling even more. Fix that now, and then worry about the new books.

As for why calibre does not have such a feature, it is because calibre has no concept of author last names. And there are geunine international reasons for this - while it is perfectly acceptable for us to just flip around the last word of an english name so "Joe Bloggs" becomes "Bloggs, Joe" which is what the QC plugin does, that doesn't work for other multinational names. Like "Kim Lee" where Kim is the family name and the correct reversal would be "Kim, Lee" not "Lee, Kim".

When I said regular expression I meant whatever your settings are in Preferences -> Adding Books. If you have "Get metadata from filename" ticked, then the author name will come from what is embedded in the metadat for that book format when you add it, as specified by the publisher of that book. You have zero control over what that is - sometimes it might be "FN LN", sometimes it is "LN, FN" and sometimes it isn't even the authors name and is the book title or something else.

Alternatively you can uncheck that "Read metadata" option and rely on the filename. Which is where the regular expression comes in. Now this only works if your filenames are in a consistent format - like "Author - Title.epub" or whatever. In that situation if your book files happened to be actually named "LN, FN - Title.epub" for instance, then calibre will have the author as LN, FN for you which is what I meant above. If your books are randomly or inconsistently named, it won't help you.

And you also have the complication of downloading metadata, and making sure you have the "Swap author names from FN LN to LN, FN" option checked if you are overwriting the Authors field.

Bottom line - I find the easiest way is to drag/drop the books into calibre, look at the author field and if it needs swapping to LN, FN then just use the QC plugins "Fix" menu to swap it for you. Or manually edit it. Then make sure you have your metadata download configured to either ignore the authors field, or to swap author names as I said above. Then you should be fine.

[Divingduck]

Hello Lady,
sorry for my late answer. I had read your comment to my way and I was quite suprised about your result and check this with my database. I have the same issue. I like to ask Kovid why this happen. For me it seems to be a bug (maybe...). I will come back as soon I have a answer.
In the meantime, I guess, there is only the solution from kiwidude and paw3pals.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

OK, guys, I've gotten my authors all corrected (I hope). I skipped the first step paw3pals suggested (making the change in tweaks) and went on to the Manage Authors step after I had gone through all the authors to make sure everything was kosher. Some clean up was necessary; authors with Company and Institute in them drove me nuts for a while until it dawned on me to fix them in Manage Authors instead of the Metadata Editor (calibre would just laugh at me when I tried to fix them in the Metadata Editor; the neighbors were complaining about the noise from the laughter). After checking the entire list, it appears all went well.

Since I download my metadata instead of depending only on getting it from a book's filename, when I add a book, it will easiest and fastest for me to get all the meta data sorted out, then just copy the Author Sort field and paste it into the Author Field just before clicking on OK.

Thanks for all your help and for being patient with a computer challenged old lady.

[kiwidude]

@Jeannie - ummm - when you say you "skipped" the first step, you didn't really mean that did you? The steps listed for you weren't really "optional" for the sake of your future sanity .

As I explained in a previous post, if you don't change your tweaks, then calibre will not do what you want at various places (such as when you change the author name, calibre will automatically put the author sort to that value rather than you having to copy/paste it). Or worse - not notice it is wrong and then have books appear out of order in strange places. Please do implement the Tweaks step too so it is set to a value of "copy" and then you really are done with it.

Also you mentioned copy/paste - I presume you are talking about the Edit Metadata dialog. There is a button to the right that sits between Author and Author sort that you can click on to just copy the value from one to the other.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

@Jeannie - ummm - when you say you "skipped" the first step, you didn't really mean that did you? The steps listed for you weren't really "optional" for the sake of your future sanity .

As I explained in a previous post, if you don't change your tweaks, then calibre will not do what you want at various places (such as when you change the author name, calibre will automatically put the author sort to that value rather than you having to copy/paste it). Or worse - not notice it is wrong and then have books appear out of order in strange places. Please do implement the Tweaks step too so it is set to a value of "copy" and then you really are done with it.

Also you mentioned copy/paste - I presume you are talking about the Edit Metadata dialog. There is a button to the right that sits between Author and Author sort that you can click on to just copy the value from one to the other.

Dang right I meant it! When I had the tweek in place, both the author and author sort boxes had the author shown as FN LN. Clicking on the little button did nothing since all it was doing was copying data from author to author sort without changing it from FN LN to LN, FN. It's a royal pain the a$$ to have to retype in the author name every cotton pickin' time I add a book, which is what I had to do when the tweek was in place. I tried that way at first and hated it. The way I have it now, when the author name gets put in, all I have to do is copy what's in the author sort box and paste it into the author box. It works just fine (at least it did on the test books I did) as long as it is the last thing I do in the Metadata editor before clicking OK. I've learned to check every book I add, both in the tag browser and in the main listing, so I shouldn't get any surprises (if I had been doing so from the first time I started using caibre, I wouldn't have had so much clean up to do first before making the changes).

Ok, this next part is a rant so you can ignore it if you want. For all my life (which is probably longer for me than most of you), here in the U.S. whenever names are put in a list, they are almost always listed as LN, FN. In fact, it has always been considered improper to list names as FN LN. It is much, much, much easier to find a name in an alphabetical listing sorted by last name (which is traditional, at least here in the U.S.) when the names are listed LN, FN, especially if the list is very long. All the eye has to do is scan on the first letter or two while running down the list. When the list is FN LN, the eye has to follow a random, jagged line buried in the middle of the list of names. That takes much longer and is very tiring, both of which open more opportunity for error.

True, not all nationalities use the FN LN method of naming. But non-European names will almost always be a small minority when dealing with names in English (or whatever it is we speak this side of the pond). The rare exceptions (here in the U.S.), such as Kim Lee, usually get handled the same way (again, here in the U.S.) the same way as English names are (even though, technically, it is wrong), especially since most people in the U.S. would have problems finding the name otherwise. Even some European names don't follow the "rule", such as Sprague de Camp. De Camp (probably) should be sorted as "Camp", not "de Camp" yet a name like John DeChancie is (probably) sorted as DeChancie. Exceptions like that have to be dealt with individually, at least at first, and, fortunately, calibre has the capability to allow one to do so.

I don't know how names get listed on the other side of the pond and, frankly, I don't give the north end of a southbound furry little rodent since I live here, not there. What we do here works just fine and I see no reason to change it. Granted, other changes between here and overseas have been resisted here mostly because of sheer stubborness, such as adopting the metric system (and, frankly, I wish we would do so since it makes much more sense) but the apparent obsessive resistance to people listing authors as LN, FN by calibre's developers is baffling and has been the one single thing that has irritated the tar out of me from the first time I started to use calibre (fortunately, not enough to make me abandon calibre). One example of that resistance is the example one of you gave that was given about book spines having the author listed as FN LN is comparing apples to kumquats. Looking at books on a shelf is not the same as looking at a printed (or on screen) list. I've always found looking for books on a shelf, such as at a bookstore or library, to be a pain in the neck; and, at my age, it is a literal pain in the neck, not to mention my back (one reason I don't frequent bookstores like I used to, especially used bookstores since most of them do a lousy job of putting books in alphabetical order, if they even bother at all, and one has to look in an entire section instead of being able to home in on a specific area). When I use calibre, I don't look for books with the cover browser; I use the listing or the search function.

OK, rant over. You are being returned to your regularly scheduled thread.

Again, thanks for your help. I know I've been doing some industrial strength complaining (the polite term) but that doesn't change the fact that calibre is still an awesome program without equal and the help one receives here is great!

[kiwidude]

@Jeannie - back to that tweak. I understand what you were saying about the copy now. Though note if you hold the mouse down on that button I referred to on Edit Metadata it can copy in the other direction.

But you should really do yourself a favour and do these steps:
(1) Put that pesky tweak back in to say "copy". Trust us. Please
(2) Install the "Quality Check" plugin, using Preferences -> Get Plugins
(3) Any time you see books for an author that are FN LN in the library view, select them and choose Quality Check -> Fix -> Swap author FN LN <> LN, FN

That's all there is to it. No copy/pasting required. Assign a keyboard shortcut to that particular action and you don't even have a mouse click.

If you don't change the tweak, you will get bitten sometime .

I won't comment on the rest, I've said enough about it elsewhere

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

@Jeannie - back to that tweak. I understand what you were saying about the copy now. Though note if you hold the mouse down on that button I referred to on Edit Metadata it can copy in the other direction...

Thanks for that tip! I did a quick check on it and it looks extremely promising but I'll wait until I have some more books to add to actually try it out. I've spent way too much time on this already and need to spend more time elsewhere for a while (like learning how to use MonkyMedia and cleaning up the tags on my mp3s, for starters).

Originally Posted by kiwidude

...But you should really do yourself a favour and do these steps:
(1) Put that pesky tweak back in to say "copy". Trust us. Please ...

My ex and I learned quickly when my son said, "Trust me" to be afraid, very afraid.

Originally Posted by kiwidude

...If you don't change the tweak, you will get bitten sometime ...

You all keep promising dire consequences if I don't put the tweek back in but never specifically tell me what they are or could be. I'm from Missouri. (In case you aren't familiar with that expression, Missouri is called the Show Me State because people from Missouri have the reputation of not being willing to accept anything just on someone's say so; we want proof or specific examples.) Exactly what could go pear shaped or perforate my body if I don't restore the tweak?

[theducks]

In this case, believe the master of plugins
That tweak make it the Default (for future add, and metadata update).

If you want the Author to shoe LN, FN and the Sort to be LN, FN. set the tweak to copy.



If the Author Shows LN, FN but the sort Is (or shows red)Select all the books with this problem: Select Bulk metadata edit mod (the E key with 2+ books selected) and tick the box, automatically set Author sort

This will update the sort value following the tweek rules set (for those books). It will not affect the Value in the Authors column..

For those: use the Quality check plugin, then follow with the bulk trick above.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by theducks

In this case, believe the master of plugins ...

That still doesn't tell me why.

Originally Posted by theducks

...That tweak make it the Default (for future add, and metadata update).

If you want the Author to shoe LN, FN and the Sort to be LN, FN. set the tweak to copy...

That's not what happened when I tried it. I had to manually retype the author. I'm too old for that nonsense.

Originally Posted by theducks

...If the Author Shows LN, FN but the sort Is (or shows red)Select all the books with this problem: Select Bulk metadata edit mod (the E key with 2+ books selected) and tick the box, automatically set Author sort

This will update the sort value following the tweek rules set (for those books). It will not affect the Value in the Authors column..

For those: use the Quality check plugin, then follow with the bulk trick above.

Hunh?

[kiwidude]

@jeannie - it is hard to explain all the reasons why you should change the tweak without getting more technical, and you said you hate that. You also asked for step by step instructions to get yourself setup as best possible for LN, FN and every user plus the help page has said you should change the tweak. By doing things your own way, I'm afraid you have spent a lot longer on it than it needs to have taken, because all that copy and pasting was completely unnecessary if you had followed all the steps in the order given.

The way you have your library now, every single book will need double checking to make sure that the author sort is in LN, FN. And every time you add a book, you have to go edit, even if when the book was added it displays as LN, FN. Your default author sorts are wrong for every new author, causing you to have to go to Manage Authors to fix it, or else your edit metadata dialog will show a red background warning you of an inconsistency. And if you don't fix that then should you do some bulk operation involving renaming an author, it will end up the wrong way around. The final issue I can think of at the moment is that it is possible that there is plugins or other functionality in calibre that uses the tweak in order to try to guess about LN, FN swapping and by not seeing copy there will not be able to guess correctly.

Bottom line - you are going to have to spend even longer and do more actions to fix up book authors. And if you get it wrong, books won't sort together on screen which may think you are missing a book. And they won't save together in the same folder if you export to disk or device.

The tweak is five seconds work to change. And QC will 99% of the time be able to flip your author names without you having to retypr them. In the long term it is your best approach to minimise the effort. If you don't do it eventually you will screw up and books go in the wrong places, it happened to me when I first started with calibre two years ago as I too display/sort names as LN, FN.

But if you want to be stubborn about it and do things your way, you just do that

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

@jeannie - it is hard to explain all the reasons why you should change the tweak without getting more technical, and you said you hate that. You also asked for step by step instructions to get yourself setup as best possible for LN, FN and every user plus the help page has said you should change the tweak. By doing things your own way, I'm afraid you have spent a lot longer on it than it needs to have taken, because all that copy and pasting was completely unnecessary if you had followed all the steps in the order given...

What copying and pasting? First, most of the time I spent was cleaning up past inconsistencies with the author sort because I hadn't paid attention to how calibre had been doing them (inconsistent downloaded metadata was an even bigger culprit) and I didn't take time to check them after adding the books, a mistake I will not repeat. The only thing that took any real time to fix were the authors that had Institute and Company in them until I figured out I had to use Manage Authors instead of the Metadata Editor to fix them (the wrong word in the author name was being used for the sort). I took the time to do all that first because I didn't want to have to deal with more than one issue at a time.

The actual change from FN LN to LN, FN didn't involve any copying and pasting. It only took a single mouse click on the Copy All Author Sort Values to Author button in the Manage Authors. Checking through 1719 books to see if everything was correct only took maybe ten or fifteen minutes to scroll down both the author list in the tag browser (which had been pared down to 820 once I got rid of the duplicate entries caused by missing middle names, misspellings, etc.) and all 1719 books on the main menu. Every change had been made correctly with that one mouse click. Even the authors that had Company and Institute in them and the two that I had changed manually as a test when trying to use the tweek stayed correctly formatted and sorted.

The only copy and pasting I have been referring to is for when I will add books in the future (and the context menu you told me about will probably make that even easier; I see no reason why it wouldn't but time will tell). I will already be in the Metadata Editor so that will require very little effort on my part. I don't know where you got the idea I used copy and paste in the Metadata editor to correct each of my existing books.

Originally Posted by kiwidude

...The way you have your library now, every single book will need double checking to make sure that the author sort is in LN, FN...

Again, checking them took only a few minutes.

Originally Posted by kiwidude

...And every time you add a book, you have to go edit, even if when the book was added it displays as LN, FN...

So? Since I download my metadata anyway, I'm already in the Metadata editor.

[QUOTE=kiwidude;2158311...Your default author sorts are wrong for every new author, causing you to have to go to Manage Authors to fix it, or else your edit metadata dialog will show a red background warning you of an inconsistency...[/QUOTE]

That was happening even when tweek was in place. Again, THE TWEEK DIDN'T WORK! When it was in place, I had to retype the author because both the Author and Author Sort fields were displaying FN LN.

Originally Posted by kiwidude

...But if you want to be stubborn about it and do things your way, you just do that

Granted, I'm stubborn (I'm part Irish so what did you expect?) but stubborness had little to do with it. It's not about doing my way; it's about trying to get it to work! Period! So there is no need to get flip with me. I learned a long time ago to never take anything at face value. If someone tells me something is a certain way and just take their word for it, it's not going to happen; I'm going to question it.

You all keep insisting I screwed up by removing the tweek yet, when I had it in place, it made more work for me. So what the heck went wrong, if anything?

[kiwidude]

@Jeannie - you came here asking for help and a number have tried to suggest a best approach. If you only ever change author names using the single edit book metadata dialog and nowhere else ever (not using the library view to edit in cell, not using the tag browser to rename, not using the bulk metadata editor dialog, not using...) then you might get away with your approach. We've told you the steps for a preferred alternative. If you insist you want to do it your way, then as I said above go for it. But don't be surprised if somewhere down the line it goes wrong. I'm not posting again about this, I just didn't want others coming to this thread thinking that they should also skip a step or two without at the very least understanding the consequences. Best of luck to you.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

@Jeannie - you came here asking for help and a number have tried to suggest a best approach. If you only ever change author names using the single edit book metadata dialog and nowhere else ever (not using the library view to edit in cell, not using the tag browser to rename, not using the bulk metadata editor dialog, not using...) then you might get away with your approach. We've told you the steps for a preferred alternative. If you insist you want to do it your way, then as I said above go for it. But don't be surprised if somewhere down the line it goes wrong. I'm not posting again about this, I just didn't want others coming to this thread thinking that they should also skip a step or two without at the very least understanding the consequences. Best of luck to you.

What's it going to take to convince you it's not about me "doing it my way?" I tried it the way you all suggested and IT DIDN'T WORK! Either something was wrong with your method or I did something wrong. Since the latter is not at all unlikely, I'm trying to get to the bottom of it but if you want to be a jerk about it, maybe someone else will be willing to take a stab at it.

One problem I've had when trying to get help from geeks (I'm not using geek as a perjorative term, btw), especially here, is they frequently forget that not everyone is going to understand the subject they are proficient in as well as they do. They tend to assume that whoever they are addressing knows more than they actually may know. One lesson i learnned years a go form an otherwise useless supervisor I had was, when writing a report, assume whoever is going to be reading "is an total idiot." While he was being condescending, the valuable point was to never assume anyone is going to know details that may seem to be common knowledge. Assume they know nothing about the subject and cover all bases. Even then, they may not still may not understand it.

I have a well above average IQ but there are certain things I will never understand. Math is one. I struggled to get through college geometry and trig and completely bogged down when I tried to take Analysis/Calculus. Twice. It was just over my head. I also have ADD, which, among other things, means I have trouble processing some things that are intuitive for others. I can look at something and not see it as others do. That is why I need excruciatingly detailed instructions for many things.

[kiwidude]

@Jeannie - I remember some pretty abrasive posts you made on these forums when you were last here a fair while ago. Insulting the people who have spent long periods of time trying to help you isn't going to have others lining up for the job, certainly I'm not going to bother with your requests again.

No you have not followed our suggestions, or rather if you have you haven't mentioned it that I saw. Did you install the Quality Check plugin? That is the piece that does the magic of flipping the names for you if When adding a book you find the name needs swapping around. Until you follow the instructions to apply the tweak that are both in the manual and coming ffrom both experienced users and developers of the software it shall be referred to as "your way", whether that offends you or not.

Enjoy your weekend and goodbye.