having trouble with calibre sorting

[whismerhill]

hi,
I'm having issues knowing/understanding/controlling how calibre sorts stuff

for example if I sort by series then by Author it will be sorted by :
- 1 Author A - Z
- 2 Series A - Z
however on the UI it only shows the Author sorting not the series subsorting
minor gripe I know but still. More complex issue follows.

It does strange stuff (for me at least) that I would like to understand better
For example I had a series of books in both french & english
I didn't understand why it wasn't sorted by series given that "series" was the column with the black triangle so in my mind it had to be the primary sorting

Despite that it displayed something ordered like this :

• Series[1]bookname French
• Series[3]bookname French
• Series[4]bookname French
• Otherbooks
• Series[2]bookname English
• Series[5]bookname English

And I understood after a while that the difference was the language, e.g. it seemed despite the black triangle indicating that books should be sorted by series. it still had a primary sorting by language.

Any hindsight ? why does it behave like this ?
any way to control it better ? ....

[theducks]

Originally Posted by whismerhill

hi,
I'm having issues knowing/understanding/controlling how calibre sorts stuff

for example if I sort by series then by Author it will be sorted by :
- 1 Author A - Z
- 2 Series A - Z
however on the UI it only shows the Author sorting not the series subsorting
minor gripe I know but still. More complex issue follows.

It does strange stuff (for me at least) that I would like to understand better
For example I had a series of books in both french & english
I didn't understand why it wasn't sorted by series given that "series" was the column with the black triangle so in my mind it had to be the primary sorting

Despite that it displayed something ordered like this :

• Series[1]bookname French
• Series[3]bookname French
• Series[4]bookname French
• Otherbooks
• Series[2]bookname English
• Series[5]bookname English

And I understood after a while that the difference was the language, e.g. it seemed despite the black triangle indicating that books should be sorted by series. it still had a primary sorting by language.

Any hindsight ? why does it behave like this ?
any way to control it better ? ....

Calibre Biases by previous sorts
IIRC the default is 5 (mine is at 3)

Preferences: Tweaks: maximum_resort_levels

[whismerhill]

wow thanks a lot really helpful

edit: I wish those additional sorting levels were shown somewhere though.
As well as the ability to set a "default" sorting you can return to

[theducks]

Originally Posted by whismerhill

wow thanks a lot really helpful

edit: I wish those additional sorting levels were shown somewhere though.
As well as the ability to set a "default" sorting you can return to

Take time to read the description on all those tweaks

Your 2nd wish, just might have been offered

[whismerhill]

yeah I just found the default starting sorting option, I'm not sure I wrote it right however.

sort_columns_at_startup = [('authors', 0), ('series', 0), ('title', 0)]

thanks

[theducks]

Originally Posted by whismerhill

yeah I just found the default starting sorting option, I'm not sure I wrote it right however.

sort_columns_at_startup = [('authors', 0), ('series', 0), ('title', 0)]

thanks

In my opinion: No....
Because: Series clashes with title (I prefer my titles to be in Series_Index order, which is mutually exclusive in most cases). And sometimes even clashes with Author (series with various participants: eg Man-Kzin )
YMMV (and your choice of reading material )

[whismerhill]

yup indeed found out it worked but didn't have the expected results

sort_columns_at_startup = [('series', 0), ('authors', 0), ('title', 0)]

this is more what I wanted
it's sorted by series/series_index correctly, then by author & finally sorted by title inside the authors