sort by date / classical books b.c.?

[FZinforen]

Hello,

I'm new on this forum, and just didn't manage to find my question by search term, even if I think that a shouldn't be the first one with that problem.

I decided to sort my library by date - not the date of the current edition, but of the content (first edition or creation). Like on my book shelves in the corridor. No big deal: Just created a user defined meta tag called "Original-Date" (well, indeed in German).

BUT: I can't enter values before the common era ("b.c.") How can I sort classical literature from Rome and Greece and other early cultures? There _is_ some media in the "free" world. I even can't set a date before Feb 0101!

Anyone an idea? Within or outside calibre?

Frido

[kovidgoyal]

0101 is the earliest date calibre supports. But you can simply create a numeric column in preferences->add your own columns if you need to track dates before that.

[FZinforen]

Thanks a lot, Kovid, for that point!

So, I will consider another format of numeric system for that. In older days, decades would be clear enough - but for nowaday's stuff, I prefer it more precisely. Maybe, I use another start point at 1000 B.C. for counting. Most writings are after that. I will manage to recount 405 B.C. for "Aischylos - The Frogs" to "+595" in that system.

[FZinforen]

The proposed idea works fine for years: 2018 is sorted befor 0410 which is sorted before -0405 (which means 405 B.C.).

I just now have a big gap between +1 and -1 with all those home brewed epubs which don't have a "#yearoriginallypublished": all those news compilations taken from the web.

Is there a way to change the recipe for the news aggregator, so that I get a content for "#yearoriginallypublished" like "2018" or so?

Thank you in advance!