Why do my "Series" have numbers in brackets?

[kjdavies]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Guess I'm not going to get an answer on this.

That's unfortunate, I was curious about that myself. I use [0] for things like series omnibus or supplementary things that are not 'in series', but still closely related. If it's a bad idea, it would be nice to understand why.

I usually use other fields for grouping on non-series things (for instance, I have 'setting' and 'location' in my RPG library, or 'programming language' in my technical library), so perhaps I haven't hit the threshold for it mattering. I don't see why it would, except perhaps from a matter of taste.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by kjdavies

That's unfortunate, I was curious about that myself. I use [0] for things like series omnibus or supplementary things that are not 'in series', but still closely related. If it's a bad idea, it would be nice to understand why.

I usually use other fields for grouping on non-series things (for instance, I have 'setting' and 'location' in my RPG library, or 'programming language' in my technical library), so perhaps I haven't hit the threshold for it mattering. I don't see why it would, except perhaps from a matter of taste.

0 is a bad idea because no book can be 0. 0 means nothing and the book is something.

[kjdavies]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

0 is a bad idea because no book can be 0. 0 means nothing and the book is something.

Ah, philosophical bad idea, not implementational. I was concerned there might be a technical reason it's a bad idea.

For instance, in some of my libraries where I don't have good 'author' data, I'll use the first three characters of the CRC32 checksum as 'author', just to avoid having tens or hundreds of thousands of entries with author 'Unknown', because a single folder with that many books in it will be horribly nonperformant.

I still have potentially 4096 entries at the top level (16*16*16), but after that I'm mostly down to a handful per folder.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

0 is a bad idea because no book can be 0. 0 means nothing and the book is something.

That... doesn't make sense.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by kjdavies

Ah, philosophical bad idea, not implementational. I was concerned there might be a technical reason it's a bad idea.

For instance, in some of my libraries where I don't have good 'author' data, I'll use the first three characters of the CRC32 checksum as 'author', just to avoid having tens or hundreds of thousands of entries with author 'Unknown', because a single folder with that many books in it will be horribly nonperformant.

I still have potentially 4096 entries at the top level (16*16*16), but after that I'm mostly down to a handful per folder.

There is a technical reason. No series has book 0. And no series has the same number for multiple books.

Are you saying you don't know who the author is?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

That... doesn't make sense.

No series has a book 0.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

No series has a book 0.

No, but series can be unnumbered.

Since Calibre requires a number, i define 0 as unnumbered.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

No, but series can be unnumbered.

Since Calibre requires a number, i define 0 as unnumbered.

Unnumbered series is called tags.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Unnumbered series is called tags.

That will mess up my tagging structure.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

That will mess up my tagging structure.

I use the Tags field for collections. Been doing so ever since Tags in the driver for the Sony Reader. Tags is a different column not used for collections or series.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I use the Tags field for collections. Been doing so ever since Tags in the driver for the Sony Reader. Tags is a different column not used for collections or series.

I use a custom column for collections, because I have tags that are useful for me in Calibre, but I don't want any collections based on them on my Kobo. Some of those tags are temporary (for doing a certain task), others not.

I don't have any unnumbered series. When there is no specific order to a series, I list the books in publication order. Then again I don't read fanfiction, short stories and such, only novels.

[kjdavies]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There is a technical reason. No series has book 0. And no series has the same number for multiple books.

Are you saying you don't know who the author is?

Absolutely. I'm not saying I can't find out, but in my experience many (amateur) publishers, and some professional ones, are really bad at metadata. Until I have an opportunity to review it, I don't trust the values for title or 'author', I'm usually much safer rolling with metadata from other sources, even the file names and a surrogate 'author'.

'Author' names often don't match the name on the cover. I've seen the name of the layout person (since they entered it into the software and didn't update in the document), I've seen the name of the publisher, I've seen the name of the project the book was created in, I've seen 'ASFD'. I often eventually do find the author names, as I cleanse my data, but I don't trust whatever I find on loading.

Sometimes I never find out the writer's name, especially when the book was done as a work for hire (I'm reasonably confident 'White Wolf Publishing' and 'Fantasy Flight Games' are not actually people, despite the definition of 'corporation', but they put their names in as 'author')

So yes, I may not know the author name when I load the file.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I use a custom column for collections, because I have tags that are useful for me in Calibre, but I don't want any collections based on them on my Kobo. Some of those tags are temporary (for doing a certain task), others not.

I don't have any unnumbered series. When there is no specific order to a series, I list the books in publication order. Then again I don't read fanfiction, short stories and such, only novels.

I do it opposite to you because it's been that way ever since Kovid decided that's how it is to be. He had the tags column make collections with no series number since the days of LibPRS500 which eventually became calibre. That;s why a custom column is for tags and Tags is for collections.

[JSWolf]

As for the OP's Star Trek issue, published is the way to do it. I posted in this thread an Excel spreadsheet that has most of the Star Trek books in published order.

[kjdavies]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

No series has a book 0.

Well, there is xkcd, volume 0, but since Randall is a very nerdish person and starts arrays from 0, and I have not seen a 'volume 1' I can see how it might not be accepted as a 'series', being only a single book so far.

On the other hand, there also is Order of the Stick, Volume 0: On the Origin of PCs, which came out about three weeks after Volume 1.

And even Order of the Stick -1: Start of Darkness, which came out almost nine months after Volume 1.

So... weird edge cases, to be sure, but there are series with '#0' and even negative indexes.