Custom Groups in Companion CC (Dewey)

[Glottalpoly]

In Calibre in the “Subject” field I have classified my books using Dewey. Thus on the Left Hand Side in Calibre, as well as the usual “Author … Series … Publisher..” I have “Subject” which provides a hierarchical structure (see picture). E.g.
300Anthropology
500NaturalScience
...... 500NaturalScience.510Maths
.............500NaturalScience.510Maths.512Algebra

This provides “automatic” subject filtering in Calibre. I am trying to do the same in CC. The “OTB” CC gives me automatic Title, Author, Series (etc) Grouping. I added “#Subject” expecting the same to happen, but it seems to be treated very differently. I :
1. Click on “Group By #Subject” (expecting to see them grouped by …. Subject),
2. It prompts me to enter a search term.
3. I enter “512” (i.e. Algebra)
4. It tells me how many are in that “Group” but doesn’t display the list.
5. I THEN need to “Ungroup” them to display the list of books
6. I can then “Group By” (Author, Publisher etc)
So instead of a ONE click action, it is now a six click process. It seems that the user custom “Group”, functions more as a “Filter” rather than a Group. Is that correct ? How can I get it to behave as an actual “Group” ?

If I can’t “Custom Group”, then it would seem that I would need to copy the Subject to the Tag Field then use the Tags or some other way. Any thoughts ?

[Glottalpoly]

After further testing it would seem that the "#Subject" is treated as "just text" and that it searches through everything. Thus looking for Subject "101" (Theory Of Philosophy), also retrieves "101 Dalmatians" (101 in the Title).

That is NOT quite the behaviour i was expecting !

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Glottalpoly

In Calibre in the “Subject” field I have classified my books using Dewey. Thus on the Left Hand Side in Calibre, as well as the usual “Author … Series … Publisher..” I have “Subject” which provides a hierarchical structure (see picture). E.g.
300Anthropology
500NaturalScience
...... 500NaturalScience.510Maths
.............500NaturalScience.510Maths.512Algebra

This provides “automatic” subject filtering in Calibre. I am trying to do the same in CC.

You must have set it up to be a hierarchical column. CC does not support showing the hierarchy.

The “OTB” CC gives me automatic Title, Author, Series (etc) Grouping. I added “#Subject” expecting the same to happen, but it seems to be treated very differently. I :
1. Click on “Group By #Subject” (expecting to see them grouped by …. Subject),
2. It prompts me to enter a search term.
3. I enter “512” (i.e. Algebra)
4. It tells me how many are in that “Group” but doesn’t display the list.
5. I THEN need to “Ungroup” them to display the list of books
6. I can then “Group By” (Author, Publisher etc)
So instead of a ONE click action, it is now a six click process. It seems that the user custom “Group”, functions more as a “Filter” rather than a Group. Is that correct ? How can I get it to behave as an actual “Group” ?

I am confused. Your process indicates you are tapping the search button (the magnifying glass), not the group button. Why are you doing this?

I suspect that you are seeing nothing when you tap on Group, #Subject. The reason is that you have "misspelled" the lookup name for the subject column. Lookup names never contain uppercase characters. In calibre, hover the mouse over the Subject column header or the tag browser category name, and you will see the lookup name. Enter this into CC exactly as it is spelled.

Do note that it is not an error to enter a lookup name into CC that does not exist in some (or all) books. If a person is using multiple libraries then it is very possible that some custom columns are in one library but not the other. However, we do know that lookup names must be lowercase, so we can (and will in the next release) auto-correct that mistake.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Glottalpoly

After further testing it would seem that the "#Subject" is treated as "just text" and that it searches through everything. Thus looking for Subject "101" (Theory Of Philosophy), also retrieves "101 Dalmatians" (101 in the Title).

That is NOT quite the behaviour i was expecting !

What are you entering into the search box? The correct syntax is the same as used in calibre: #subject:101.

HOWEVER... While playing with search to verify that things worked as I expect, I found two significant bugs. I am surprised that no one has reported them.

The first bug: enumerated columns (column with a fixed set of values) and composite columns (column made from other columns) could not be searched.

The second bug, and the worse of the two: the searcher was using the column name instead of the column lookup key as the search prefix. In effect, this means that searches on custom columns didn't work unless by accident the name and the key were the same. Almost all the columns in my test library are like that, so I never noticed the problem.

While fixing these bugs I added regular expression searches (calibre's '~' searches) to CC.

All of this will be in the next release. My son has been horribly backed up so we haven't made the progress we wish, but we are hoping that the release will be the end of this week.

[Glottalpoly]

Originally Posted by chaley

You must have set it up to be a hierarchical column. CC does not support showing the hierarchy.
I am confused. Your process indicates you are tapping the search button (the magnifying glass), not the group button. Why are you doing this?

I am not expecting to see the hierarchy - I can live with that. I was selecting the SEARCH option because when I select "Group By #Subject" nothing happens (sic).

I have now discovered that you are right about the "Capital" letter ! You can specify grouping on a non existent field. . . . . . . . so nothing happens.

I have corrected it .... and now Grouping works.

[Glottalpoly]

Actually using the "subject" for Dewey is quite good (now that it is working). Grouping by "#subject" displays the ten top level Dewey Categories e.g.

-------------------
1
100PhilosophyPsychology

2
200Religion

3
300AnthropologySociology....

5
500Science
-------------------

I can then select the top level Dewey class that I want (e.g. 5 Science),
[See Screen shot 1]

which then displays a scrollable list of all the sub classifications e.g.
512 Algebra
515 Calculus
[See Screen Shot 2]

So I am happy with that ! I will post a screen print when I can co-ordinate my fingers. At the moment I either change the volume or turn it off (Strange way to enable screen print ...)

Edit1 - Uploaded screenshots taken wth crappy mobile phone camera. Still cant use built in facility

Edit2 - Took cover off - still difficult to take screenshots.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Glottalpoly

So I am happy with that ! I will post a screen print when I can co-ordinate my fingers. At the moment I either change the volume or turn it off (Strange way to enable screen print ...)

Keep trying it gets easier. Holding down the power button and the volume down button at the same time will take a screen shot.

Thanks for the update.