PRS-T2 Tweaking Calibre to show collections on Sony reader

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by DoctorM

Maybe I'm not understanding what you're doing, but as I've said, the sort orders available to collections are: Added Order, Date, Title, Author and File Name.
Which one do you use that sorts by the series order?

As far as I recall my experience was just as Hemmi has said, they turned up on the T1 sorted - as I described if I loaded books using Calibre and the T1 plugin with its sort metadata order as series.tags the collection it created with the series books in it was sorted in series order. I don't recall there being any sort options for that collection, but there again there is no reason why I would have looked as it would seem usual for one to want a series collection to be in series order. In the series collection it did not show the series number for each book but when I checked, as I did when I first started doing it, they were always in the correct order.

I cannot easily review how it looked exactly as I would have to spend time loading some books on my old T1 and set things up. Perhaps as you seem to be wanting the solution and if you have not created series collections using the Calibre device plugin for the T1 as I described why don't you try it and tell us what happens?

[Hemmi]

I have no extra plug-ins in Calbire for anything except stripping DRM. Using the Tags and/or Series boxes when you're editing the book's Metadata will transfer onto a Sony reader. When you sort by Collections, you will see both the Tags and the Series info you've entered. If you use both on a single book, you will find that book sorted under both of them.

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by Hemmi

I have no extra plug-ins in Calbire for anything except stripping DRM...

As far as I am aware the "Sony T1 and Newer Device" device interface plugin that I mentioned is installed and enabled by default when you first install Calibre (it does the same for a number of other common Device Interface Plugins) so if one is using Calibre then one is using that plugin by default when sending books to a T1, T2 or T3; that unless one has gone into Calibre's Preferences and disabled it.

There is a box in that into which one can put the metadata to use for collections when transferring books to the T1. It may be that if one leaves that box empty the plugin creates both tag and series collections on the T1 by default, it assuming that is what most people would want?

[DoctorM]

I think the confusion starts at "Sort By Collection".
Are you talking about Calibre sorting by collection? AFAIK no there no such thing on the T1.

I was saying that if you are on the Reader and you view "Books", sorting by Author will give you the order you loaded it into the reader, regardless of Tags or Series data.

If you all are talking about "Collections" button accessed from the main menu, they are grouped by tags. Selecting a tag that names the series does not sort by series order... unless that is something Calibre is doing to the file names when it copies to the reader and the sort order is by File Name.

When I finally get back to my place I'm going to have to load some series and play around, but I've never successfully had the Calibre/T1 sort book series orders for me automatically anywhere.

[JSWolf]

I'll have to pull out my T1 and double check how collections with series are handled.

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by DoctorM

I think the confusion starts at "Sort By Collection".
Are you talking about Calibre sorting by collection?.

No, as I have said books are sorted within the collection by their place in the series. If you create collections based on series (using Calibre, as I have explained) then the books in each of those collections are sorted on their number in the series i.e. the collection is sorted.

[DoctorM]

I had some time to check this out today.

Yes, Calibre auto-creates Collections based on series as well as Tags (not a surprise).

As far as sorting series, that's actually pretty wonky:

It appears by default that the Reader will correctly sort books in a Collection (created based on the Series column), but it is a by product.

If you look at the "Sort By" options under the collection, it is sorting by "Added Order" by default. So Calibre is merely uploading the books in the series consecutively. If you manually dragged each book to the reader in a different order (say last to first) they will NOT be sorted properly.

If you have the correct date for the books and "Sort by Date" that will always work.

"Sort by author" may also work if all books in the series are by the same author AND the books have been added in consecutive order (Added Order is the secondary sort criteria.)

"Sort by Title" won't work, obviously. "Sort by File Name" won't work unless you've manually named the files with a number as a prefix.

Like I said, unless the T2 has a "Sort By Series" option or an old version of the T1 firmware does, you are only seeing a by-product of adding the books consecutively.

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by DoctorM

I had some time to check this out today.

Yes, Calibre auto-creates Collections based on series as well as Tags (not a surprise).

As far as sorting series, that's actually pretty wonky:

It appears by default that the Reader will correctly sort books in a Collection (created based on the Series column), but it is a by product...

That is not correct, it is not "wonky" at all. While in my experience collections created on series metadata sorted on the series index number by default (I never fussed myself why they were so as it was never an issue for me as they always sorted that way) one can define the sort order when sending the books to the T1 collections.

Look under Tweaks in in Calibre's Preferences for the tweak "Specify how Sony Collections are Sorted" where you will see how to do this. Again, I found that for sorting on series index it always reliably did so for me without specifying it in the tweak.

If you want a good guide for this have a look at Jackie_W's very helpful general guide post for the T1 at https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...1&postcount=15 . When I was using my T1 I had her post clipped into OneNote for reference.

[DoctorM]

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

That is not correct, it is not "wonky" at all. While in my experience collections created on series metadata sorted on the series index number by default (I never fussed myself why they were so as it was never an issue for me as they always sorted that way) one can define the sort order when sending the books to the T1 collections.

Look under Tweaks in in Calibre's Preferences for the tweak "Specify how Sony Collections are Sorted" where you will see how to do this. Again, I found that for sorting on series index it always reliably did so for me without specifying it in the tweak.

If you want a good guide for this have a look at Jackie_W's very helpful general guide post for the T1 at https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...1&postcount=15 . When I was using my T1 I had her post clipped into OneNote for reference.

Wow, the Jackie_W post is a lot of useful info. I'll dig into that later. Thanks.