[Bug?] Calibre incorrectly handling series

[Ruskie_it]

Hi guys, I can't see this reported elsewhere, so maybe it's something new.
A friend of mine has this problem, but I had her send me the calibre subdirectory and imported it to my calibre library, and I can replicate the problem.

So, she has a series of 15 books, all with their corresponding metadata filled correctly. They are all part of a series she named "La Confraternita del Pugnale Nero", each numbered with a series index from 1 to 15.
Calibre shows there is only one series called "La Confraternita del Pugnale Nero", so it's not a case of two different series with a similar name... (see series.jpg)

Now, if she displays the whole library, and she sorts by the "Series" column... Some of the books are listed under the "C" letter; some other under the "L" letter (see pictures series_list_C.jpg and series_list_L.jpg)!!!
How the heck is this possible?

Also, if she filters by series, and choose to display only the books in the series, sorting by the series... All the books are displayed, but their order is wrong.
She sees, book number 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11 and then 5, 7, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15 (see picture series_sort.jpg)

I had her send me the books (her whole calibre subdirectory, actually) and imported the books in my calibre library, and the problem is reproducible.

What is utterly strange is that if you use "Manage Series" and choose to rename the series name in all the books with anything else: "Weird series behaviour", or "Confraternita Pugnale Nero" for what matters, everything works just fine. If you rename the series back to "La Confraternita del Pugnale Nero", the problem reappears again.

I swear this goes beyond my understanding. Can you help me find an explanation for this?

[Terisa de morgan]

Just a question, which is the language of the books?

[Ruskie_it]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Just a question, which is the language of the books?

Hi Terisa, good question. Now that you ask, I went to check.
All the books are actually in italian, but you have a point because the metadata in that are not correct:

Books number 5, 7, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15 are set to English.
Books number 1, 2, 3, 8, 10 are set to Italian
Books number 4, 6, 11 are set to Spanish

I guess she or somebody must have used the "Download metadata" with too much liberty, so to say. I will see if setting everything to Italian fixes the problem.

Yet:

1) I don't see why different languages should cause an issue to series ordering
2) While English book are actually those "set aside" (they all come last after anything els), Italian and Spanish books are mixed in sorting. So this should either not be relevant or showing that something is messy in that part of the ordering alghorhytm.

Language related, books from 1 to 15 goes like that:
I, I, I, S, E, S, E, I, E, I, S, E, E, E, E

But the way calibre orders it is this:
I, I, I, S, S, I, I, S, E, E, E, E, E, E, E

(See attached picture to have a clearer idea)

[Ruskie_it]

HOLY CRAP!
I have changed them all to Italian and now they are sort correctly...
I have the same problem with another short series, actually, where I have the first two books in Italian, and the third in english, and they show the same issue. This time, though, the books truly are in two different languages, so I can't just "fix" metadata...

And anyway, how come series ordering is being messed up if some books in the series have a different language?
And not in a simple way: for example, here: it's not that some languages are put after others: english books are put after italian books if you look at the picture. But italian and spanish books are mixed together, so it is not even predictable how the would end up...
Is it?

This looks kinda weird to me: the language a book is in should not related to the ordering the book has in a series, since there is "series_index" that does the job...

[Terisa de morgan]

The problem is not the ordering inside the series, but the series itself. You see both series in the same way, but for sorting I'm sure they group in two series:

1. Spanish and Italian: Confraternita del pugnale nero, la
2. English: La confraternita del pugnale nero

Because "La" has a significance in sorting in English Itaian and Spanish that it doesn't have in English.

Pdta: I think it's quite predictable

[Ruskie_it]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

The problem is not the ordering inside the series, but the series itself. You see both series in the same way, but for sorting I'm sure they group in two series:

1. Spanish and Italian: Confraternita del pugnale nero, la
2. English: La confraternita del pugnale nero

Because "La" has a significance in sorting in English and Spanish that it doesn't have in English.

Pdta: I think it's quite predictable

I see, and yes you are right it IS predictable. I only now realized that the books in italian and spanish are mixed between each others, but they respect their series index, so you are right that ordering is correct.

Yet it doesn't feel logical, to me, that books in the same series are treated differently depending the language they're in. I might choose to have the same series in different language, yes, but even in that case I might prefer to have it listed with an "order by series_index" (if you pass me the quasi-sql language) rather than "order by language".

And more than that, it feels very counter intuitive to me that it is internally treated like two different series, but externally it is showed as only one series. I don't know how easy it is (I suspect not much, because the algorythm should start considering not only the book it's sorting, but also others), but in case there is more than one language, calibre should automatically use only one for sorting the entire series...

Anyway... Thanks for your help, at least now I have understood what was "wrong" with that series.

[Terisa de morgan]

No problem, although you don't believe it, it' has been quite easy to guess it with your pictures (professional mind, you can see, used to look for bugs)

[Ruskie_it]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

No problem, although you don't believe it, it' has been quite easy to guess it with your pictures (professional mind, you can see, used to look for bugs)

I am too, I work for SAP (though not a programmer, still a technical consultant). But I didn't mention languages in my first pictures, did you already have experience with them? You truly did a good job.

And, btw, I didn't think about "series sort" because I have never seen that in calibre: I knew you have title_sort, and author_sort, I used it sometimes and there are places in the calibre GUI where you can mess with them. But I could never find anything about series sorting...

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Ruskie_it

I am too, I work for SAP (though not a programmer, still a technical consultant). But I didn't mention languages in my first pictures, did you already have experience with them? You truly did a good job.

And, btw, I didn't think about "series sort" because I have never seen that in calibre: I knew you have title_sort, and author_sort, I used it sometimes and there are places in the calibre GUI where you can mess with them. But I could never find anything about series sorting...

In the Tag Browser: Right click on a series name:Manage

That is where you can play

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Ruskie_it

I am too, I work for SAP (though not a programmer, still a technical consultant). But I didn't mention languages in my first pictures, did you already have experience with them? You truly did a good job.

Well, just yesterday we were talking about sorting in calibre and it came to my mind (and I've been programmer and tester for a long time).

Originally Posted by Ruskie_it

And, btw, I didn't think about "series sort" because I have never seen that in calibre: I knew you have title_sort, and author_sort, I used it sometimes and there are places in the calibre GUI where you can mess with them. But I could never find anything about series sorting...

Neither do I (I haven't seen the place that theducks mentions), but as I've told we had been talking about sorting...

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by theducks

In the Tag Browser: Right click on a series name:Manage

That is where you can play

And yes, I think that is the only place where you will see two different series

[Ruskie_it]

Originally Posted by theducks

In the Tag Browser: Right click on a series name:Manage

That is where you can play

I knew that, that's where I went trying to fix my friend's "error".
But there is nothing, there, to change seriers sort.
You can manage author_sort with right click on an author name:Manage.
Not with series. There, "series sorting" is hidden.

[Ruskie_it]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

And yes, I think that is the only place where you will see two different series

Except, there aren't.
That popup you get there is the "parent", let me say, of the Series categorization you see in calibre's gui.
And despite the fact as you outlined there are internally "two series", one for the english books and one for italian+spanish books because of the sorting, yet __explicitly__ (that is in calibre's gui) you only see one, categorized under letter L.

And so it is when you display Series:Manage popup. Only one series for the "Black Dagger", and no referrals to series sort, contrary to what happens for authors.

Then again, if you display all the books in your library sorting them by series, "series sort" kicks in, and you see italian+spanish books sorted with letter 'C', and english books sorted with 'L'. Extremely counterintuitive I'd say

[Ruskie_it]

Originally Posted by Ruskie_it

Except, there aren't.

Here is in the attached sample how series:manage looks to me.

[Terisa de morgan]

That's worse because my answer has been an educated guess after your evidences, but having different display in two places is not very friendly for an user.