suggestion: tag groups should use Calibre tag hierarchy

[nikoski]

Ay, i see, i did not have that box because deactivated in the settings. Now it works ok. Thanks a lot once more!

[peaceridge]

Question about hierarchical tags - I may be missing something here and what I'd like to do is probably not doable anyway. However, just in case: is there a way to look at tags like
"Fiction.
Fiction.Mystery
Fiction.Mystery.Police"

Tapping on Fiction would show within the book column all fiction books sorted by the rest of the tag? So I would see all the Fiction books listed in order as Fiction (without extra tags then Fiction.Mystery, then Fiction.Mystery.Police etc? I don't want to look at each group individually.

More cumbersome, but doable if someone can tell me how to use AND - if I could search for tags=Fiction AND tags=Fiction.Mystery AND etc. Obviously I'm not using the correct syntax as I can't get it to work. Thanks for any help.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by peaceridge

Question about hierarchical tags - I may be missing something here and what I'd like to do is probably not doable anyway. However, just in case: is there a way to look at tags like
"Fiction.
Fiction.Mystery
Fiction.Mystery.Police"

Tapping on Fiction would show within the book column all fiction books sorted by the rest of the tag? So I would see all the Fiction books listed in order as Fiction (without extra tags then Fiction.Mystery, then Fiction.Mystery.Police etc? I don't want to look at each group individually.

More cumbersome, but doable if someone can tell me how to use AND - if I could search for tags=Fiction AND tags=Fiction.Mystery AND etc. Obviously I'm not using the correct syntax as I can't get it to work. Thanks for any help.

I am a bit confused. If you tell CC that tags is to be treated as hierarchical (CC's Settings / Grouping drawer), and if you check the box Group by first letter, then (I think) CC does what you want. For example, these screen captures show what I see. The first is the first letter grouping. The tag AA has a trailing period indicating that it is hierarchical.


The second capture shows what I see if I tap on the AA tag. I see the subgroups of that tag.


CC does not support a third level of grouping and does not support hierarchies when first-letter grouping is off.

BTW: I apologize. I thought that hierarchical grouping was addressed in CC's FAQ. It isn't. It is discussed in post 13 and post 20 of this thread, but these posts are very easy to miss.

Other than possibly the third level, how does this differ from what you are asking for?

Regarding your search, you are missing the colon between the column name and the equals. It should be like tags:=Fiction. That said, I am not convinced that you need the search.

[peaceridge]

Originally Posted by chaley

I am a bit confused. If you tell CC that tags is to be treated as hierarchical (CC's Settings / Grouping drawer), and if you check the box Group by first letter, then (I think) CC does what you want.
Other than possibly the third level, how does this differ from what you are asking for?

Regarding your search, you are missing the colon between the column name and the equals. It should be like tags:=Fiction. That said, I am not convinced that you need the search.

Thanks so much. Turning hierarchical on did give me partly what I want, essentially the same as what I would get with my search question.

However, once I have the book list, I can't sort on the lower group. Fiction is mixed up with Fiction.Mystery and Fiction.Mystery.Police. I'd like to have the list show books with Fiction first, Fiction.Mystery second and Fiction.Mystery.Police last. The "Select sorts to show in menu" doesn't have tags listed. Also the "user defined sort" doesn't have tags listed. Did I miss something else in order to sort by tags?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by peaceridge

However, once I have the book list, I can't sort on the lower group. Fiction is mixed up with Fiction.Mystery and Fiction.Mystery.Police. I'd like to have the list show books with Fiction first, Fiction.Mystery second and Fiction.Mystery.Police last. The "Select sorts to show in menu" doesn't have tags listed. Also the "user defined sort" doesn't have tags listed. Did I miss something else in order to sort by tags?

No, you didn't miss anything. Neither CC nor calibre support sorting by tags in the fashion you describe. In effect, you are not asking to sort by "tags" but instead to sort by "the tag (hierarchy) I am currently looking at". That isn't something we can do.

The only way to get an approximation of what you want is complex. You would need to create a "column made from other columns" for each hierarchical tag you want to sort by. this would give both CC and calibre something it could sort, but it would be exceedingly difficult to manage.

[peaceridge]

Thanks chaley,

I guess I thought that if the tags were sorted in the grouping column, sorting the books column by tags wouldn't be difficult. However, the hierarchy gives me most of what I wanted. I so appreciate your dedication to this software - it is by far the best Android application I have and your helpfulness in answering my sometimes dumb questions is also much appreciated.

[peaceridge]

Originally Posted by chaley

The only way to get an approximation of what you want is complex. You would need to create a "column made from other columns" for each hierarchical tag you want to sort by. this would give both CC and calibre something it could sort, but it would be exceedingly difficult to manage.

I don't suppose I could create a column made from other columns, ie the tag column and replace any "." with a "-", then I could sort on it?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by peaceridge

I don't suppose I could create a column made from other columns, ie the tag column and replace any "." with a "-", then I could sort on it?

You could sort on it but you likely won't get what you want.

The problem is that a book usually has more than one tag and there is no universally-accepted order for the tags. Consider a book that has three tags: Vampire, Fiction, and Mystery. If you sort by tags, what is the book's sort order: "Fiction, Mystery, Vampire", "Fiction, Vampire, Mystery", "Mystery, Fiction, Vampire", "Vampire, Fiction, Mystery", or any of the other combinations of the tags? There is no right answer other than "what you want at the moment", and the computer has no way to read your mind.

If a book has no tags or 1 tag than your suggested scheme will work, even without the changing of dot to dash. But how do you guarantee at most one value? This is what I was getting at with my "difficult" suggestion: you create columns for each the single tags on which wish to sort. It is hard to believe that the complexity of setting this up and managing it is worth the benefit you get.

[peaceridge]

Ah, I get where you are coming from now! I was just thinking of sorting alphabetically with me creating the order. So if I wanted vampire.mystery or vampire.horror, I wouldn't want mystery.vampire or I would have tagged it that way instead. Then under tags I would get
vampire.
vampire.horror
vampire.mystery

and they would sort that way in the books - vampire alone coming first because blank would sort before vampire.horror (or at least in the old Cobol world it would), then vampire.horror because h comes before m in mystery. Never the other way around of mystery.vampire. Hope I'm being more clear now.

Sorry about the confusion - I guess I got hierarchy mixed with sorting. Appreciate your correction.