Beta testers for calibre 9 needed

[ownedbycats]

Silly question: How do group books?

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Silly question: How do group books?

Click the group by button to the left of the search bar while in bookshelf view.

[ownedbycats]

For some reason I don't see one

[ownedbycats]

Also I guess I don't need 'Sort By' on my searchbar anymore

[kovidgoyal]

You only see it when you are in bookshelf view

[ownedbycats]

I see it now!

[Frogm4n]

Thanks for all this work! I've seen all the recent hubbub around people tweaking the visuals of KOReader with Project Title, so I'm sure this new view in Calibre will spark a lot of interest from the community when it goes to release.

[ownedbycats]

Question: How do dates work in Group? I have a custom column, set to MMM d yyyy (Jan 26 2026), it shows as Jan 2026.

Two features I would use:

- Add to list view.
- Keyboard shortcut to navigate to next divider

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@anyone- Apart from because you can - why would anyone group by anything other than the primary sort key.

I've done it, just because I can, on several libraries and couldn't keep track of where I was. And I kept asking myself the same question - why would I want to take what feels like a random walk through my library… it's tiresome, and I could get lost?

My first test was grouping by Purchase Source and then sorting by Purchase Price. Admittedly it'd be more useful if I could do this in listview.

[Comfy.n]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

My first test was grouping by Purchase Source and then sorting by Purchase Price. Admittedly it'd be more useful if I could do this in listview.

Isn't that achievable by 'Sort by multiple columns' inside the sort by context menu? Not sure really but I recall vaguely one use case I had in the past, in which this helped me. Can't test at the moment but it looked "grouped".

[JSWolf]

One thing I think we need is to be able to do is change the color of the test for the group labels separately. It's not as easy to see because it's using the same color as some of the spines.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

One thing I think we need is to be able to do is change the color of the test for the group labels separately. It's not as easy to see because it's using the same color as some of the spines.

v8.99.9 does have the ability to change the colours of group divider text/line/background independently of each other. What more is needed?

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Subsorting - For example, group by authors and sort by rating, easy way to see books by authors in order of rating.

Grouping could have been done with the addition of one check box in Sort By :



Which would have obviated the need for the Group by button. A toggle to Show/Hide dividers action could have been added to Sort by's action menu that was only enabled in Bookshelf view.

Re Sort by — I find the order of items in the Sort by drop down menu rather odd:



Two action items (Re-apply…, Reverse…), then the user defined saved sorts (Default, StatWords), then two more action items (Select…, Sort on…), then a list of sortable Header names with no separation of built-in and custom columns, nor any visual indicator.

Now that custom columns can have the same Header names as built-in columns some way of distinguishing between them is needed.

Group by segregates built-in and custom column Header names, but without any visual marker - I suggest a line between them.



Oh, and put the built-in columns in alpha order

BR

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Comfy.n

Isn't that achievable by 'Sort by multiple columns' inside the sort by context menu? Not sure really but I recall vaguely one use case I had in the past, in which this helped me. Can't test at the moment but it looked "grouped".

I was thinking more of seperate row with just column name.

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Grouping could have been done with the addition of one check box in Sort By :

Feels not intuitive to me, going into multisort menu to group.

[ownedbycats]

Maybe add the Sort button to list-view too - so not have 2 sort buttons when other views are active.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Feels not intuitive to me, going into multisort menu to group.

One would have changed the name of the button to "Sort and Group by" - the only purpose of Grouping is to show dividers, under the covers it is the primary sort column. But its not going to happen, so don't worry about it.

I suggested up thread to put "Sort by" on List view too - it was rejected.

BR