Periods in authors' names

[bpugliese]

Hello there, I'm struggling with Calibre and Kindle trying to get the author name to display correctly.
The problem is that authors whose have periods in their name end up having their name partially hidden when i transfer the book to Kindle.

Let's take for example the author J. K. Rowling.
In my current calibre and Kindle configurations, the author_sort is Rowling, J. K. and author name should display J. K. Rowling. All works well while at Calibre, but after transfering the file to Kindle, the name I get for author is J Rowling
Get the picture?

I know it's a simple thing and I know I'm being stubborn (I could just remove the damn periods and be happy) but I was wondering if there is a way to make Kindle display them correctly, maybe with some tweaking on Calibre configs (and I feel dumb for not being able to make it work hahaha)

[Manichean]

That's a Kindle problem, not a calibre one...
You could always just remove the dots from the authors name e.g. via plugboard, though I confess I have no idea how to do this for the general case. I'm thinking regular expressions, and I suspect Charles would tell me that it's impossible to do that way...

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Manichean

That's a Kindle problem, not a calibre one...
You could always just remove the dots from the authors name e.g. via plugboard, though I confess I have no idea how to do this for the general case. I'm thinking regular expressions, and I suspect Charles would tell me that it's impossible to do that way...

Unfortunately, he wants to dots to appear. The kindle is already quite handily removing them (the kindle seems to be very good at screwing up authors' names). But that aside, the plugboard template entry {authors:re(\.,)} removes all the dots.

@bpugliese: What happens if the name is 'Rowling, J.K.' (no spaces after the periods)? Does the kindle turn that into J.K Rowling? If that is preferable, then the plugboard template entry {authors:re(\. +,.)} will remove all spaces after periods.

You could always use Rowling, Jdot Kdot.

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by chaley

Unfortunately, he wants to dots to appear. The kindle is already quite handily removing them (the kindle seems to be very good at screwing up authors' names). But that aside, the plugboard template entry {authors:re(\.,)} removes all the dots.

The search is unanchored, right? I was thinking along the lines of this being a similar case to the palindrome issue we discussed some time ago, because in the general case, you cannot know how many dots there are in an authors' name. Clearly, I was thinking too complicated- I thought about matching the non-dot parts as groups and using backreferences...

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Manichean

The search is unanchored, right?

Unanchored, and also global. Every occurrence found of the search pattern will be replaced.

I was thinking along the lines of this being a similar case to the palindrome issue we discussed some time ago, because in the general case, you cannot know how many dots there are in an authors' name. Clearly, I was thinking too complicated- I thought about matching the non-dot parts as groups and using backreferences...

It is so easy to start down roads that lead to perdition. I do it frequently.

[bpugliese]

Sorry for taking this long to answer the thread

Originally Posted by chaley

Unfortunately, he wants to dots to appear. The kindle is already quite handily removing them (the kindle seems to be very good at screwing up authors' names). But that aside, the plugboard template entry {authors:re(\.,)} removes all the dots.

Thanks, I'll use this solution, but I will keep looking for a better one

Originally Posted by chaley

@bpugliese: What happens if the name is 'Rowling, J.K.' (no spaces after the periods)? Does the kindle turn that into J.K Rowling? If that is preferable, then the plugboard template entry {authors:re(\. +,.)} will remove all spaces after periods.

It displays "J Rowling" the same result as if I put the spaces after the periods.

Originally Posted by chaley

You could always use Rowling, Jdot Kdot.

best idea so far ??



Anyway, thanks for your suggestions ^^

If you know anything else I could try, just let me know.

[bpugliese]

@chaley:
I accidentally discovered something today. When I copy the books directly to kindle, without using calibre to "send" tehm to the device, everything (inlucind the dots) works fine. I'm guessing the problem is with my plugboards. If you could check and point a possible problem it would be great

any format > Kindle2

TEMPLATE: {author_sort:re(\, (.).*?( &|$),\, \1\2)}
DESTINATION FIELD: authors

TEMPLATE: {#stripped_series:lookup(.\s,#initials,.,#shortene d,series)}{series_index:0>2s| [|] }{title}
DESTINATION FIELD: title

TEMPLATE: {authors:re(\.,)}
DESTINATION FIELD: authors


* The first one is for making author sort by last name but display the author name normal

* The second is for Seriesorganization

* The third is the one you suggested for removing the periods from authors' name, which worked nice btw

[chaley]

Originally Posted by bpugliese

@chaley:
I accidentally discovered something today. When I copy the books directly to kindle, without using calibre to "send" tehm to the device, everything (inlucind the dots) works fine. I'm guessing the problem is with my plugboards. If you could check and point a possible problem it would be great

Could you tell me what isn't currently working? I am having trouble following the chain of posts through the changes.

Two notes: the first plugboard entry changes the authors' names from
Lastname, Firstname
to
Lastname FirstInitial

Is this what you want?

2) More importantly, you are assigning to the authors field twice. The second assignment will overwrite the first one. Because of this, the operation done by the first plugboard statement will be overwritten by the second.

Problem number 2 is arguably a bug. I will look at whether that behavior can safely be changed.

[bpugliese]

The first 2 plugboards were taken from this thread:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=100949

1st one apparently "Show author name as Initial and Surname (Kindle)" (Kindle/Kobo Metadata 'section', last plugboard)

2nd one is about series in the title "Put series into the title, using either initials or a shortened form. Strip leading articles from the series name (any) (inspired by Gary_M_Mugford)" (General Metadata 'section')


The 3rd plugboard was suggested by you in this thread, as I said above.
I don't have the knowledge to argue with you what these plugboards were supposed to do, but they seem to work nicely, except for the 'dot problems' I mentioned in the first post. And using 2 plugboard to authors actually solved the problem, by removing the dots on authors' names.
I was kind of satified with this, but as I pointed out, I accidentally discovered that when I copied the files directly (in windows explorer) to kindle instead of using calibre 'send to device' the dots do work properly. The downside of doing this, is that I lose the plugboards features (auto-sorting the authors and including the series on title).

As I said, I'm pretty much convinced that the best solution is to keep the plugboards as they are right now, and let go of the dots, but I was just curious on what might be going wrong with the conversion while 'sending to device' through kindle, and thought someone could give some explanation by looking at the plugboards which I think are the actual cause of the problem (some syntax error, maybe?)

Anyway, don't overthink this, it's somehow insignificant issue, and you solved it by presenting the 'dot removal' plugboard.
Thanks for the attention given to this matter though