[Old Thread] Incorrect title sort order

[SkyDream]

Until the last few days i used calibre primarily as a converter tool. But now i loaded about 500 books and still going.

I'm using 7.7 and not quite sure if the sort order of the title column is wrong or if this could be customized. Sorting titles from A-Z looks like

"A book"
"B book"
"The C book"
"D book"

although i believe it should be

"A book"
"B book"
"D book"
"The C book"

as "The" is part of the title and therefore should be part of the sorting order. So far i've never seen sorting order ignoring articles. It just kills me as everytime i have to look at all titles manually just to be sure nothing's been overseen. Sorting title column doesn't seem to help. Not very convenient for me.

Any hints or comments ?

Thx.

[JMikeD]

Originally Posted by SkyDream

Until the last few days i used calibre primarily as a converter tool. But now i loaded about 500 books and still going.

I'm using 7.7 and not quite sure if the sort order of the title column is wrong or if this could be customized. Sorting titles from A-Z looks like

"A book"
"B book"
"The C book"
"D book"

although i believe it should be

"A book"
"B book"
"D book"
"The C book"

as "The" is part of the title and therefore should be part of the sorting order. So far i've never seen sorting order ignoring articles. It just kills me as everytime i have to look at all titles manually just to be sure nothing's been overseen. Sorting title column doesn't seem to help. Not very convenient for me.

Any hints or comments ?

Thx.

Standard sorting order for titles has been to ignore "The" and "A", except for titles such as A for Anything.That's the way everybody does it, even before computers.

[SkyDream]

That's the way everybody does it, even before computers.

Nope.
Maybe in the US but not Europe.
Unfortunately i'm German.

[chaley]

You can change the sort order for the GUI using a tweak.

Tweaks are set in the file tweaks.py, located in your configuration directory. You can find that by going to preferences -> advanced -> Open configuration directory (or something like that).

The documentation for the tweak in question is

# Control title sorting.
# If set to 'library_order', Leading articles such as The and A will be ignored.
# If set to 'strictly_alphabetic', the titles will be sorted without processing
# For example, with library_order, The Client will sort under 'C'. With
# strictly_alphabetic, the book will sort under 'T'.
# This flag affects Calibre's library display. It has no effect on devices. In
# addition, books added before changing the flag will retain their order until
# the title is edited. Double-clicking on a title and hitting return without
# changing anything is sufficient to change the sort.
title_sorting = 'library_order'

[kovidgoyal]

You can turn off that type of sorting via a tweak, documented in the customizing calibre section of the user manual

[SkyDream]

Great !

I'm going to try this as soon as my PC is available again.

Is there a list of available tweaks ?
The default tweaks.py only contains 2 tweaks.

[kovidgoyal]

In the User Manual

[JMikeD]

Originally Posted by SkyDream

Nope.
Maybe in the US but not Europe.
Unfortunately i'm German.

OK, "in English-speaking countries." I have no knowledge of sorting in other languages. It's interesting that it's different. Probably should have expected it, though.

[chaley]

Out of curiosity, would a you sort Die Fliedermaus under D or F? Eine Frau under E of F? von Braun under v or B? In English, the first would be under 'F' (The Bat), the second under 'E' (One Woman), and the third is undefined, left to the preferences of the person.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by SkyDream

Is there a list of available tweaks ?
The default tweaks.py only contains 2 tweaks.

The other day I noticed my tweaks.py only had one tweak so I exited calibre, deleted the file, restarted calibre which rebuilt the tweak file to default with 5 or 6 tweaks documented in it.

[weatherwax]

Originally Posted by chaley

Out of curiosity, would a you sort Die Fliedermaus under D or F? Eine Frau under E of F? von Braun under v or B? In English, the first would be under 'F' (The Bat), the second under 'E' (One Woman), and the third is undefined, left to the preferences of the person.

Die Fledermaus --> F (otherwise D would be the biggest section in any bookstore or register).
Eine Frau --> just as likely under "E" (its ambiguous and might be "a woman" or "one woman")
von Braun --> depends, some would sort as Braun, Firstname von, others as von Braun, Firstname

NB: My Sony sorts all titles starting with "The" under "T", which I find annoying, but in Calibre the "The" is ignored.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by SkyDream

Nope.
Maybe in the US but not Europe.
Unfortunately i'm German.

Originally Posted by weatherwax

Die Fledermaus --> F (otherwise D would be the biggest section in any bookstore or register).

Now I am curious and confused. Skydream seems to say books in Europe are sorted using "The" as an alphabet entry but weatherwax states if they used "Die" to sort then D would be the biggest section in any bookstore.

I know countries do things differently but ordering books, movies, and CDs have been done ignoring the articles of "A" and "the" since long before I was born (don't ask).

I suspect as weatherwax indicates above, the same is true for Europe and the USA for the same reasons.

If either of you can enlighten me further I would like to know.

[Ortep]

Here in the Netherlands we also 'skip' certain words like DE / HET (the) or EEN (a/one) so books in a library would be sorted as

Angst
Duin
Laatste Offer, Het
Ringwereld, De
Testament, Het

The same technique is used for the names of Authors Lastname, Firstname but with words like 'de' and 'van' combined with the firstname.

So Yvonne van der Meer would be Meer, Yvonne van der

Sorting would go like

Meer, Yvonne van der
Mendes, Bob
Vogt, A.E. van