Plugboard help

[rkr87]

Hello all,

I've recently started using calibre to organise my Library before transferring books to my Nook, it works great but I seem to have run into a speed bump.

I created a custom field called "Read" where I can place a flag on whether or not I've read a book (the nook doesn't seem to do this), the flag I've placed is "zzz" (you'll understand why in a second).

I've created the following plugboard;

epub:NOOK_COLOR = 
([{#seriesyear:|| }{series:|| }{series_index:0>2s|[|] - }{title}] -> title), 
([{#read:||}{author_sort}] -> author_sort)

What I had hoped the above would do is place "zzz" before the author_sort field when passing books to my device, which would in turn make any books I've read go right to the bottom of the 70~ pages of books my nook currently holds when I sort by author.

It doesn't seem to do that though, the books are still left in the correct author_sort :s I know the plugboard is working fine as the series information is being carried through to the title.

Do I also have to apply a change to the author name so it's treated as a separate author?

Thanks,
Ryan.

[rkr87]

Ok, I've figured this out and thought I'd post to let anyone who finds this via search how I fixed it....

After a bit of tinkering around I found out that the Nook's author sort method is little bit backwards....

The Nook doesn't use the "author_sort" metadata field, it uses the very last word of the "authors" field, then any preceding text.

Let's for the sake of example presume a book has a completely different "author_sort" to the meta-data contained in "authors".

author_sort: Eddings, David
authors: George R R Martin

The Nook, instead of sorting by author_sort sorts by Martin George RR.

To fix this I created the following custom columns;

read - Yes/No

author_prefix - {#read:contains(Yes,zzz,)||} - Returns zzz on books I've marked as read.

unread_sort - {#author_prefix:||}{author_sort} - would return zzzMartin, George R R on book's I've marked read.

I then have the following plugboard setup;

[{#unread_sort:swap_around_comma()}] -> authors - Would return George R R zzzMartin on books I've read.

This forces all the books I've already read to the bottom of the list of my Nook which makes finding my next book to read much easier.

Hope this helps someone.

Thanks,
Ryan.