Manual Sort or Sort by custom column

[Dethmaul]

I see that manual book sorting has been added as a potential feature down the road. That is great.
My question or request would be this:

Allow Marvin to use a search based on a calibre custom column. It allows you sideload books into collections already.

I have calibre setup so that I can define the collection, but it also has a custom metadata field for reading order.

I created this because I read ALOT of Star Wars books. I have them defined by series, but I am also working on breaking them into Eras based on the Star Wars Timeline.

My custom column allows me to define Eras, just like I would a book series, just on a larger scale.

I would like Marvin to read this field and be able to automatically sort my books in the order I have defined.

For most series, just sorting by series works well, but when you are dealing with books across an multiverse with multiple authors, series, etc. it becomes a HUGE headache, especially without an option to manually arrange my collections.

Thanks for your time.

[kguil]

@Dethmaul - you should consider checking out Marvin XD (see here and here). I think it will cover your needs almost perfectly.

[Dethmaul]

So here is what I am running into:

Here is an example of what I have.

Legend of Drizzt

Homeland - Book1 Dark Elf Trilogy
Exile - Book2 Dark Elf Trilogy
Sojourn - Book3 Dark Elf Trilogy
The Crystal Shard - Book1 Icewind Dale Trilogy
Streams of Silver - Book2 Icewind Dale Trilogy
The Halfling's Gem - Book3 Icewind Dale Trilogy

This collection has 32 books currently, spanning 9 different series.

I setup Calibre to have custom columns for Reading Order, Reading Order#, so my Calibre setup ends up sorting my books like this:

Homeland - Book1 Legend of Drizzt
Exile - Book2 Legend of Drizzt
Sojourn - Book3 Legend of Drizzt
The Crystal Shard - Book4 Legend of Drizzt
Streams of Silver - Book5 Legend of Drizzt
The Halfling's Gem - Book6 Legend of Drizzt

I created plugboards so that when I send a book to my device, Calibre sends the book with the title set to reflect my collections.

[ 1 ] Homeland
[ 2 ] Exile
[ 3 ] Sojourn
[ 4 ] The Crystal Shard
[ 5 ] Streams of Silver
[ 6 ] The Halfling's Gem

Unfortunately, Marvin does not update metadata when books are sent from Calibre.

I thought I could get around this by setting up my Save to disk in Calibre to do the same thing. It saves my books with the collection read order# appended to the front of the book. If a collection is not defined, and the book is in a series, it appends the series number to the front. If it is a stand alone novel, it doesn't do anything.

I verified that this is working correctly by uploading some books from my Dropbox into Marvin. They show up with the correct Collection number appended, but when I sort by series, it does just that, it reads the series number. I kind of expected that. What I did NOT expect is that when I sort by title, Marvin completely ignores the appended number and sort alphabetically so my books sort like this:

[ 2 ] Exile
[ 1 ] Homeland
[ 3 ] Sojourn
[ 5 ] Streams of Silver
[ 4 ] The Crystal Shard
[ 6 ] The Halfling's Gem

I really want to stop using iBooks, but I cannot get Marvin to behave the way I need it to.

Am I missing something in Calibre to make this happen the way I want?

What I would love to see happen is this.

I select the book in Calibre I want.
When I click send, it send my books to the correct collection in Marvin. This would be based either on the series defined, or if a part of a multiverse like Star Wars, or Drizzt, or Honor Harrington, it would use the field I define.

When in Marvin, the books would already be sorted by either series, or multiverse, AND be in the correct reading order.

If you need more information about my Calibre setup or anything else to help me make this happen, let me know.

Like I said before I read a ton of Star Wars, but I also read other series.
My Star Wars books are broke down like this:

Old Republic Era - 14 Books - 3 Series + Stand Alone Novels
Rise of the Empire Era - 135 Books - 19 Series + Stand Alone Novels
Rebellion Era - 45 Books - 9 Series + Stand Alone Novels
New Republic Era - 65 Books - 10 Series + Stand Alone Novels
New Jedi Order Era - 25 Books - 7 Series + Stand Alone Novels
Legacy Era - 23 Books - 2 Series + Stand Alone Novels

All my books have the series defined if they are part of one, but if they are a part of a multiverse, they are also defined in that as well. My send to device and save to disk will use the multiverse order first, then series order to append a number to the front of the book.