Author Sort When Author Has Three Names

[HarryT]

That's why it's good that Calibre has an "author sort" field, so the complicated cases can be dealt with manually

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's why it's good that Calibre has an "author sort" field, so the complicated cases can be dealt with manually

I think I'm right in saying dealing with author sort manually - i.e. forcing a value that overrides Preference settings - must be done via Tag Browser->Alter Tag Browser->Manage authors, tags, etc->Manage Authors.

It took me ages to discover that feature - why not allow a manual value to be entered in Edit metadata - with a some sort of 'yes I really want to do this' confirmation.

BR

[HarryT]

You can enter anything you want in the "Author Sort" field in the usual "Edit Metadata" screen.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You can enter anything you want in the "Author Sort" field in the usual "Edit Metadata" screen.

If in metadata edit I change the Author Sort value "John, Lauren St" to "St John, Lauren" it gets and retains a pink background, and when I go into Manage Authors I still see "John, Lauren St"

But if I change it to "St John, Lauren" in Manage Authors, then in Metadata Edit that's what I see on a green background and that value 'sticks' in Manage Authors. And Lauren St John will be sorted as an 'S' and not as a 'J'

I prefer the Manage Authors 'method' because it gets rid of the pink background, which I regard as signal that something requires attention.

Oh, and I'd forgotten you can go directly to the Author's row in the Manage Authors list via one of the options in the Edit Metadata Author -> Author sort drop down. You can also get to it via the context menu of the Author name in the Book Details panel

BR

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

If in metadata edit I change the Author Sort value "John, Lauren St" to "St John, Lauren" it gets and retains a pink background, and when I go into Manage Authors I still see "John, Lauren St"

But if I change it to "St John, Lauren" in Manage Authors, then in Metadata Edit that's what I see on a green background and that value 'sticks' in Manage Authors. And Lauren St John will be sorted as an 'S' and not as a 'J'

We are talking at cross purposes. You're talking about editing the author's name; I'm talking about editing its sort order.

Eg, if you have the famous Dutch author "Dick van Writer", you would, to conform to Dutch sorting rules, want to list him as "van Writer, Dick", but have his name sorted under "Writer", not "van". You can achieve this by setting the author's name as "van Writer, Dick" and the author sort as "Writer, Dick van", on the metadata screen.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by HarryT

We are talking at cross purposes. You're talking about editing the author's name; I'm talking about editing its sort order.

Eg, if you have the famous Dutch author "Dick van Writer", you would, to conform to Dutch sorting rules, want to list him as "van Writer, Dick", but have his name sorted under "Writer", not "van". You can achieve this by setting the author's name as "van Writer, Dick" and the author sort as "Writer, Dick van", on the metadata screen.

BetterRed is also talking about editing the sort order -- the difference is, editing it in Manage Authors makes it a librarywide change.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by HarryT

We are talking at cross purposes. You're talking about editing the author's name; I'm talking about editing its sort order.

Eg, if you have the famous Dutch author "Dick van Writer", you would, to conform to Dutch sorting rules, want to list him as "van Writer, Dick", but have his name sorted under "Writer", not "van". You can achieve this by setting the author's name as "van Writer, Dick" and the author sort as "Writer, Dick van", on the metadata screen.

As I use Calibre (i.e. Preferences etc) I would put Dick van Writer into the author.name column, and the default value of author.sort would be Writer, Dick van - so no change necessary in Edit Metadata or Manage Authors.

If you look at the attached screen shots you'll see the difference I'm referring to in the 'treatment' of Madeleine St John and Lauren St John.

Madeleine : The 1st screen shot shows that in Metadata edit I changed the Author sort: value from John, Madeleine St to St John, Madeleine - and the text box acquired a pink background. Yet the Manage Authors list, Tag Browser and database still show John, Madeleine St... yes I have clicked OK on the edit, and gone back to it - see 2nd screen shot for a quality check on author_sort.

However look at the book list - Madeleine St John is sorted as St John, and shown after Lauren St John which is what I want, but... what about the rest.

Lauren : In Manage Authors I changed the Author sort cell value from John, Lauren St to St John, Lauren and hit OK, in the 3rd attachment you'll see that this is what's shown in Metadata Edit - and the text box background is green. And in the Manage Authors list, the Tag Browser and the database its shown as St John, Lauren and of course its sorted as St John.

I like this as I not only get what I want (manual control over the sort name as and when required), I also see the value I want, and I don't get any pink text boxes or 'spurious' reports from the QC Check author sort function.

maybe this is not the way Calibre is supposed to work. I think I stumbled on this under my own steam - can't recall reading anything here about changing Author sort in Manage Authors or in the manual.

But back to my original point, I think it would be nice to have something like a checkbox to the right of the Author Sort text box that became active if the default value was overtyped. If checked it would 'force' the overtyped value into the author.sort column in the same way as changing an Author sort cell in Manage Authors does.

This should get rid of the pink text box, show the desired value in the Tag Browser, Manage Authors and the database and not be picked up by the Quality Check plug-in as an Author sort 'error'.

BR

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

BetterRed is also talking about editing the sort order -- the difference is, editing it in Manage Authors makes it a librarywide change.

@eschwartz : excellent point, that distinction hadn't occurred to me

I don't use metadata edit much, I do almost all my editing on the library list (spreadsheet cells), and I use Manage Authors more than most because I usually paste a link to an "Author Info" folder in the Author link cells.

Added : It also stopped my 'ing - and of course, it explains why the book table has an author_sort column and the author table has a sort column - I knew they did and why they did, but in this instance I didn't join the dots

Thanks BR

[Tarana]

It's perhaps worth noting that Dutch names of the form "van X", should be sorted under "X", not under "van". ie, the prefix is ignored for sorting purposes.

Despite what I said earlier, it is YOUR library. If you think of an author in terms of Van Whatzizname rather than Whatzizname, then it makes sense to sort it that way if it gives you trouble finding the author later on. Despite knowing siince high school how to do it correctly, I still prefer to sort my audiobooks by Vanderschleiben rather than Schleiben, van der because that is how I think of it.