Series - Automatic numbering?

[Ortep]

Originally Posted by drplokta

I would find it more useful if it defaulted to the lowest unused number, not the highest used number plus one. So if you've already added items 1, 3 & 4 to a series, the next item should default to 2, not 5.

That would not be usefull to me. I have a serie of over 300 books and I'm missing a few numbers in the 'early teens' I'm adding now at around 60. If it would default to the lowest I would have to tell Calibre with every addition that it is not 13 but 61...62...63 etc etc for the next 250 books. That is worse than no number at all

[kovidgoyal]

I'm not going to add a config option for this to the main GUI, but at some point I'll create a config file called tweaks which you can edit by hand to customize these sorts of things.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

I'm not going to add a config option for this to the main GUI, but at some point I'll create a config file called tweaks which you can edit by hand to customize these sorts of things.

Cool

[guyanonymous]

That'd do it. Thanks!

(or would "Advanced" menus available from the "Basic" menus be useful all-round in simplifying the menus to include the controls most (you) use regularly being on the basics, with the features rarely used (us) being on the advanced menus - this would achieve even greater simplicity than we have now, and I do agree, the menus are confusing at times).

[ebartley]

Originally Posted by guyanonymous

I noticed that is now a feature in Calibre, and it has the potential to be very useful to me. But I'd also like to turn it off sometimes. How do I go about doing so?

This isn't quite what you're looking for, but if you edit metadata in bulk and set the metadata for the series simultaneously, they'll all default to the same number.

[MarcWinter]

I'd like to add another quite irritating issue to the discussion:

I too sometimes add books from series in non-consecutive order. If the auto-numbering suggests a number which is not correct, I simply overwrite it. No big deal for me.

My problem: I'm using usually the keyboard only. If I notice that I have missed an information which is located above the Series-ID, I hit Shift+Tab several times to move the focus upward. Unfortunately the books ID gets overwritten by the automatically generated number as soon as I leave the Series field on my way up.

This means the automatic function overwrites my manual entry. This should definitely be prevented. You have to be very concentrated to notice such a change in a field you have already finished working in.

Suggestion: the auto-numbering should only fill the ID-field as long as it's empty.

Yours,

Marc

[guyanonymous]

Wow - it looks like the latest version includes this "tweak" already! Thanks!

[theducks]

Amazing. I reported 3 bugs last week and the 3 bugs and this were fixed.

And Surprise, I discovered the Ability to make a folder based upon the first letter in the Author_sort field. (looks like this slid in a release or 2 back)

{author_sort[0]}_Author/[authors}/{title}-{id}/{title}

BRAVO Calibre team

[theducks]

6.39 just came out and the release notes noted there is another tweak.
I had changed the original tweak (6.38) to const .

6.39 did not stomp my tweak, nor did it add the new (6.39) syntax / values to the file

How are we going to handle this can of worms we have created

[kovidgoyal]

Just copy paste the new tweak from the file default_tweaks, or delete tweaks.py and it will be recreated.

[guyanonymous]

Next thing you know we'll be able to turn off automatic sorting

Seriously though! Thanks!

Edit: that was totally passive-aggressive in feel - not my intent! Thanks again!

[Sabardeyn]

Honestly automatic numbering is going to be a problem - no matter how it is set. Depending on current usage of calibre, various users need this field to do something different from the next user.

I've been busy entering books into calibre lately. And I've found series with missing books (the 1, 3-5, missing #2 situation) and adding the latest book to the series situation. No matter which situation I came across the numbering was just kind of annoying.

Their are really only two logical possible settings: No Automatic Numbering, or Highest +1.

Missing Number does not make sense because in some situations this would still result in wildly inappropriate numbering. For instance, if you've got several gaps in a hugely popular series (Dr. Who, Star Trek, Superman, Goosebumps, Hardy Boys, Inuyasha, etc) it would default to the lowest missing book number - which will probably still be incorrect.

Technically Highest +1 has the same type of problem, but at least after the initial series set up the majority of users would find it acceptable. If we're going to have some automatic numbering sceme, this makes the most sense.

[guyanonymous]

I've become master of the copy and paste and finish the line method...

Copy "Series title ["
Double click on next book.
Paste and type the new # and ]