Something Weird Going on in 0.7.6

Lady Fitzgerald · 07-02-2010, 06:13 PM

I noticed the other day since upgrading to 0.7.6 (it might have happend before then but I recently caught it) when I did an author sort, about 8 of the books had the author first and last name reversed from what I had originally set it at (last name first). I had to go back in and correct those entries. The only common denominator was all the changed books had multiple authors. Has anyone else run into this? Any guesses what caused it?

Also, sorts are taking much longer than they used to. Even though I have only 151 books in calibre, sorts are taking 10 seconds. They used to take on a couple of seconds. I shudder to think what it will be like when I get over a thousand books in there.

Post edit: The Author sort in the left hand panel is jacked up. In past versions, I had to make both of the author fields show last name first so the left panel would sort the authors by last name in the left panel. Now it sorts by first name or middle initial. When the heck did that change?

Post post edit: After some further digging, I've found someone fixed the left panel author sort so now I have to go through and unfix my fix (last name first in both author fields) on every damned book I have in Calibre. It's nice the author sort got fixed but I preferred having the last name first on screen. And I'm not happy about having to redo all my books! Thank God it happened before I put more than 151 books in!

speakingtohe · 07-02-2010, 09:26 PM

It happened in 7.4

Lady Fitzgerald · 07-02-2010, 09:52 PM

Well, I can live with the authors being listed first name first (it will actually save me a tiny bit of time). Unfixing my metadata took less time than I expected. I'm still wondering why some of the entries changed without my intervention and I hope it never happens again.

Btw, please forgive my venting; I was going nutz trying to figure out what was going on.

kovidgoyal · 07-02-2010, 11:36 PM

Sorting 500 books takes less than a second for me.

As for the authors, it was a one time change to allow users to set the author sort for individual authors, not just books (you can do this by right clicking on any author in the tag browser).

This way the Tag Browser will be sorted by those author sort values.

Lady Fitzgerald · 07-02-2010, 11:58 PM

Thanks, Kovid.

Like I said, I've "unfixed" my metadata so my authors now display and sort correctly (and I'm glad to hear it was one time). Sorts are now running around seven seconds for only 151 books; it used to be roughly twice as fast.

I'm still curious why the author metadata changed, apparently spontaneously. Hopefully, it was a fluke.

DoctorOhh · 07-03-2010, 02:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

Thanks, Kovid.

Like I said, I've "unfixed" my metadata so my authors now display and sort correctly (and I'm glad to hear it was one time). Sorts are now running around seven seconds for only 151 books; it used to be roughly twice as fast.

I have 1700 books and it takes less then 2 seconds to sort any column.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

I'm still curious why the author metadata changed, apparently spontaneously. Hopefully, it was a fluke.

You can be assured that it wasn't a fluke. More likely it was a feature.

The common reason this happens is when downloading metadata the downloaded Title and Author will overwrite what is there by default. Go to Preferences - General and uncheck the option to Overwrite author and title by default when fetching metadata. Unchecking this will ensure your author or title field will not be changed when fetching comments, tags, or ratings.

chaley · 07-03-2010, 05:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

Post post edit: After some further digging, I've found someone fixed the left panel author sort so now I have to go through and unfix my fix (last name first in both author fields) on every damned book I have in Calibre. It's nice the author sort got fixed but I preferred having the last name first on screen. And I'm not happy about having to redo all my books! Thank God it happened before I put more than 151 books in!

Uhhh... that someone was me. The change was made in 0.7.3. For the rationale, please see https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=86800, and in particular post 23.

Depending on how you want to maintain authors (fn ln or ln, fn), you might want to look at the author_sort 'tweak' that has been around for quite some time. The tweak tells calibre how to compute author_sort from author. See https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...30&postcount=8 and the file tweaks.py in your configuration folder.

kovidgoyal · 07-03-2010, 09:21 AM

@LF: Can you start calibre as

calibre-debug -g

from a command prompt and see if any messages are printed out at the prompt, they may give us a clue as to why sorting is slow for you

Lady Fitzgerald · 07-03-2010, 09:52 AM

Chaly, I'm not concerned about the change in the author sort now that I know what was going on; it fixed what I considered to be a long standing bug. Thank you for that. It just caught me with my cyber pants down.

Walt, if the spontaneous change was a "feature," then I am concerned because when it occurred, I had made no changes to the metadata. The affected books were already in Calibre and, short of possibly viewing the entries (but not from the edit screen), I had made no changes.

I put feature in quotes because of a running joke we used to have on a forum for my music notation program. Some of the fan boys would try to dismiss a bug as being a design feature. In some cases, it was true that an alleged bug was a poorly designed feature that wrecked a function everyone had been happy with up to the time of the change but too often, the so called design feature was actually caused by an oversight by the programmers that was not caught due to poor beta testing (that line of notation programs is notorious for the number of bugs and "design features" that slip through; to be fair, I must point out that they are very complex programs that one could say suffer from feature bloat except all the features are there because there are people who use them). Many of of us, to avoid argument (and because we were sagacious donkeys), started using "design feature" (in quotes) to refer to bugs.

Lady Fitzgerald · 07-03-2010, 09:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

@LF: Can you start calibre as

calibre-debug -g

from a command prompt and see if any messages are printed out at the prompt, they may give us a clue as to why sorting is slow for you

How do I do that?

Lady Fitzgerald · 07-03-2010, 10:07 AM

Never mind; I missed rthe part about "command prompt." I tried it and the only error messages were several dozen about pixels being out of range when calibre was booting up. Nothing new showed up when I did a few sorts.

Lady Fitzgerald · 07-03-2010, 10:23 AM

On a whim, I downloaded and installed 0.7.7 and now my sorts are happening almost instantaneously (a hair less than a second). It also takes less time to open and the lag that had been occurring after keypresses is gone. Cool! Thanks for your patience.

07-02-2010, 06:13 PM	#1
Lady Fitzgerald Wizard Posts: 2,013 Karma: 251649 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Tempe, AZ, USA, Earth Device: JetBook Lite (away from home) + 1 spare, 32" TV (at home)	Something Weird Going on in 0.7.6 I noticed the other day since upgrading to 0.7.6 (it might have happend before then but I recently caught it) when I did an author sort, about 8 of the books had the author first and last name reversed from what I had originally set it at (last name first). I had to go back in and correct those entries. The only common denominator was all the changed books had multiple authors. Has anyone else run into this? Any guesses what caused it? Also, sorts are taking much longer than they used to. Even though I have only 151 books in calibre, sorts are taking 10 seconds. They used to take on a couple of seconds. I shudder to think what it will be like when I get over a thousand books in there. Post edit: The Author sort in the left hand panel is jacked up. In past versions, I had to make both of the author fields show last name first so the left panel would sort the authors by last name in the left panel. Now it sorts by first name or middle initial. When the heck did that change? Post post edit: After some further digging, I've found someone fixed the left panel author sort so now I have to go through and unfix my fix (last name first in both author fields) on every damned book I have in Calibre. It's nice the author sort got fixed but I preferred having the last name first on screen. And I'm not happy about having to redo all my books! Thank God it happened before I put more than 151 books in! Last edited by Lady Fitzgerald; 07-02-2010 at 08:37 PM.

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07-02-2010, 09:26 PM	#2
speakingtohe Wizard Posts: 4,812 Karma: 26912940 Join Date: Apr 2010 Device: sony PRS-T1 and T3, Kobo Mini and Aura HD, Tablet	It happened in 7.4

07-02-2010, 09:52 PM	#3
Lady Fitzgerald Wizard Posts: 2,013 Karma: 251649 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Tempe, AZ, USA, Earth Device: JetBook Lite (away from home) + 1 spare, 32" TV (at home)	Well, I can live with the authors being listed first name first (it will actually save me a tiny bit of time). Unfixing my metadata took less time than I expected. I'm still wondering why some of the entries changed without my intervention and I hope it never happens again. Btw, please forgive my venting; I was going nutz trying to figure out what was going on.

07-02-2010, 11:36 PM	#4
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,860 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Sorting 500 books takes less than a second for me. As for the authors, it was a one time change to allow users to set the author sort for individual authors, not just books (you can do this by right clicking on any author in the tag browser). This way the Tag Browser will be sorted by those author sort values.

07-02-2010, 11:58 PM	#5
Lady Fitzgerald Wizard Posts: 2,013 Karma: 251649 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Tempe, AZ, USA, Earth Device: JetBook Lite (away from home) + 1 spare, 32" TV (at home)	Thanks, Kovid. Like I said, I've "unfixed" my metadata so my authors now display and sort correctly (and I'm glad to hear it was one time). Sorts are now running around seven seconds for only 151 books; it used to be roughly twice as fast. I'm still curious why the author metadata changed, apparently spontaneously. Hopefully, it was a fluke.

07-03-2010, 09:21 AM	#8
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,860 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	@LF: Can you start calibre as calibre-debug -g from a command prompt and see if any messages are printed out at the prompt, they may give us a clue as to why sorting is slow for you

07-03-2010, 09:52 AM	#9
Lady Fitzgerald Wizard Posts: 2,013 Karma: 251649 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Tempe, AZ, USA, Earth Device: JetBook Lite (away from home) + 1 spare, 32" TV (at home)	Chaly, I'm not concerned about the change in the author sort now that I know what was going on; it fixed what I considered to be a long standing bug. Thank you for that. It just caught me with my cyber pants down. Walt, if the spontaneous change was a "feature," then I am concerned because when it occurred, I had made no changes to the metadata. The affected books were already in Calibre and, short of possibly viewing the entries (but not from the edit screen), I had made no changes. I put feature in quotes because of a running joke we used to have on a forum for my music notation program. Some of the fan boys would try to dismiss a bug as being a design feature. In some cases, it was true that an alleged bug was a poorly designed feature that wrecked a function everyone had been happy with up to the time of the change but too often, the so called design feature was actually caused by an oversight by the programmers that was not caught due to poor beta testing (that line of notation programs is notorious for the number of bugs and "design features" that slip through; to be fair, I must point out that they are very complex programs that one could say suffer from feature bloat except all the features are there because there are people who use them). Many of of us, to avoid argument (and because we were sagacious donkeys), started using "design feature" (in quotes) to refer to bugs.

07-03-2010, 10:07 AM	#11
Lady Fitzgerald Wizard Posts: 2,013 Karma: 251649 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Tempe, AZ, USA, Earth Device: JetBook Lite (away from home) + 1 spare, 32" TV (at home)	Never mind; I missed rthe part about "command prompt." I tried it and the only error messages were several dozen about pixels being out of range when calibre was booting up. Nothing new showed up when I did a few sorts.

07-03-2010, 10:23 AM	#12
Lady Fitzgerald Wizard Posts: 2,013 Karma: 251649 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Tempe, AZ, USA, Earth Device: JetBook Lite (away from home) + 1 spare, 32" TV (at home)	On a whim, I downloaded and installed 0.7.7 and now my sorts are happening almost instantaneously (a hair less than a second). It also takes less time to open and the lag that had been occurring after keypresses is gone. Cool! Thanks for your patience.

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