Author a z sort bug

[stumped]

Latest cc version. About says 5.2.5.2.(539)
Seven books on device. Grouping by author confirms that my author surname groups are
one a
two c
three h
one l
to the right, where I set display to a z by author, I expect an a z ordering of cover thumbnails
But That thumbnail list places the l between two of the h and it places ho before ha.
So I get this order Corey, hobb, lallo , harari, helton

All other sorts e.g. by title seem well behaved.
I have tried added, removed some of the books and exited restarted cc. The sort order is consistently wrong. The same wrong order is applied if I ask to see the seven books on a shelf.
I prefer to e-mail screen shots rather than type full author names. Is there a known bug. Is a z a full sort or only first letter. I.e.should ha precede ho or is that random.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by stumped

Latest cc version. About says 5.2.5.2.(539)
Seven books on device. Grouping by author confirms that my author surname groups are
one a
two c
three h
one l
to the right, where I set display to a z by author, I expect an a z ordering of cover thumbnails
But That thumbnail list places the l between two of the h and it places ho before ha.
So I get this order Corey, hobb, lallo , harari, helton

All other sorts e.g. by title seem well behaved.
I have tried added, removed some of the books and exited restarted cc. The sort order is consistently wrong. The same wrong order is applied if I ask to see the seven books on a shelf.
I prefer to e-mail screen shots rather than type full author names. Is there a known bug. Is a z a full sort or only first letter. I.e.should ha precede ho or is that random.

Get the Calibre plugin: Quality Check
Run the section that checks Author sort. I suspect that will find a lot of red (in the MDE window)
Select all those: Tap E (bulk mode MDE), and tick the recalculate Author sort: OK

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by stumped

All other sorts e.g. by title seem well behaved.
I have tried added, removed some of the books and exited restarted cc. The sort order is consistently wrong. The same wrong order is applied if I ask to see the seven books on a shelf.
I prefer to e-mail screen shots rather than type full author names. Is there a known bug. Is a z a full sort or only first letter. I.e.should ha precede ho or is that random.

As theducks points out the sort works great. It is most likely your metadata in calibre's Author sort field that is in error. Following theducks advice should get your "Author sort" metadata field consistent with the Author field you see in the listing.

Once you correct the data in calibre simply connecting your device via CC as a wireless device will correct the metadata in CC on your device.

[stumped]

ok - a couple of author sort were wrong. my main calibre window also show author, not author , so my calibre filter of read in progress books in calibre things looked correct.

but author sort for Pter Heldon had him as a P for peter, so he was at the bottom of the list. under P [ despite the CC grouping option saying I had no "P" authors ]
I think what threw me is that CC groupings do not ? use author sort, so it showed me I had 3 authors under H, none under P, but the thumbnails alongside that grouping are sorted by author-sort, despite the a-z menu choice for that list only offering by author and not author sort ?
maybe the documentation needs a tweak. I could not see any way to get CC to explicity show me the author sort entry. in book details it only shows author, as a link ?
so a click there on Peter H in details to me to the H grouping
to sum up , for CC,
within grouping: group authors by 1st initial groups on author , not on author sort
BUT to the right of that - list as a-z by author ( as thumbnail shelf or column ) lists by author-sort, not by author
that is confusing, as you can have both on screen at once

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by stumped

so a click there on Peter H in details to me to the H grouping to sum up , for CC, within grouping: group authors by 1st initial groups on author , not on author sort
BUT to the right of that - list as a-z by author ( as thumbnail shelf or column ) lists by author-sort, not by author
that is confusing, as you can have both on screen at once

I can't explain what you're seeing. All I ever see is Authors grouped by Author sort. My sort within grouping group authors by 1st initial is by author sort as is my thumbnail shelf.

Maybe Chaley can shed some light.

[stumped]

what i saw is the previous screenshot. on that screen I can optionally turn on author grouping by 1st name, that changes the left side of the screen but the 7 thumbnails & book info entries on the right are unaffected.
I have done that as a new attachment.
From the feedback supplied hereI am confident that author grouping on letters works by author surname somehow, but the a-z of books on device is using the ( hidden) author srot supplied by calibre.
NB I always use connect to content server for transfers , not connect as wireless - dunno if that is a factor.
in this new screen shot - he author groupings shows 3 x H, 1 x L, 0 x P
but we now know that Peter Helton has an (wrong) author sort of Peter Helton, so it is sorted as a P in the thumbnails column, below Lallo, but counted as an H in the author grouping

so the screen in its entirety appears to contradict itself. it maybe only happens with content server, not with wireless device ?
does that make sense now ?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by stumped

what i see is the previous screenshot. on that screen I can optionally turn on author grouping by 1st name, tht changes the left side of the scren but the 7 thumbnails & book info entries on the right are unaffected.
from the feedback supplied I am confident that author grouping on letters works by author surname somehow, but the a-z of books on device is using the ( hidden) author srot supplied by calibre.
NB I always use connect to content server for transfers , not connect as wireless - dunno if that is a factor.

Author_Sort is used to SORT

Author_Sort is in the Metadata of the book , whichever CC method you transfer with

[stumped]

ps there was also an author sort error on Yuval Noah Harari, so that was an N in author sort, which explains why it is below Lallo

[stumped]

Originally Posted by theducks

Author_Sort is used to SORT

Author_Sort is in the Metadata of the book , whichever CC method you transfer with

OK well that is consistent with what I see. IF, when I go to edit metadata and correct my author sorts, calibre actually edits the metadata IN THE BOOK ? which windows says NO to. I fixed author sort yesterday via edit metadata in calibre but windows says the epub was last modified on the 25th
example 1 the noah...book

in the opf is <dc:creator opf:role="aut" opf:file-as="Noah Harari, Yuval">Yuval Noah Harari</dc:creator>
in calibre author sort is Harari, Yuval Noah. so calibre has not updated what is in the epub yet.

example 2: Peter

<dc:creator opf:role="aut" opf:file-as="Peter Helton">Peter Helton</dc:creator>
but author sort is Helton, Peter

in opf metadata, I see no explicit author sort entries

NB to " preserve the evidence" I have corrected my calibre records but I have not re-sent anything to CC, or reconverted or polished any books., All I have used in calibre is edit metadata screen to find and fix the wrong author sort fields

back to the screenshot:

author groupings must be using some other method to identify last name - probably literally that - grouping is using the text that is after the final space within the name ?

Nitpicking now, the a-z sort options offered by CC are to sort by author,or title , or series ... there is not an offer to sort by author-sort.

the "bug" as I see it is that the screen as per my 2nd screenshot appears to contradict itself.

[stumped]

PS as bugs go this is definitely a mountain from molehill case, but having launched the discussion, I'd just like to fully understand what fields are used, where, and how/when they update.

[chaley]

Here is what CC does, with some references to what calibre does as explanation:

• CC never uses metadata from inside a book. Instead it uses metadata from calibre's database. The only exception is if scan for new books is enabled then at the beginning of a connect as wireless device CC will build a temporary book record from the metadata in the book.
• When you sort the book list by author, CC uses author_sort from the calibre db book record. This ensures that books with multiple authors sort consistently.
• The grouping drawer is sorted using the individual sort values for authors. You see these values in calibre's Manage Authors dialog. Note: if in calibre you change the sort value for an author then calibre will recompute the author sort for all books with that author.
• The first letters shown in the grouping drawer are the first letter of the individual author sort values.
• In all cases, sorting is done using "International Components for Unicode" sorting rules. This matters because sort order is language specific, not alphabet specific.

From the above we see that it is possible that the grouping drawer will sort differently from the book list. This happens if the individual author sort value differs from the author_sort value for a book. If this mismatch occurs then calibre makes the author_sort line in edit metadata red. It is also possible that both the book list and grouping drawer can sort "incorrectly" but consistent with each other. This happens when the author_sort values are all green but the values are not correct.

It is generally not a good idea to change the author_sort for a book but not change it for the individual author. Said another way, it is generally not a good idea to have red author_sort values in a book.

It is worth noting that similar processing is used for titles (title_sort) and series. One difference: because a book cannot have multiple titles or series there is no notion of "individual" vs "book". Another difference: series_sort is calculated by calibre and passed to CC. Calibre does not provide a UI to change this value.

EDIT: I notice I didn't deal with the "when they update" part of the question. CC's metadata is updated on every wireless connect and every time a book is transferred using the content server or cloud connection.

[stumped]

thanks. getting there slowly.
I need to go and look at the manage author dialogue which I never use.
usually, when I add a book I look to see if author and author sort are correct, though clearly there's a couple of cases here where I forgot. If wrong i usually use the lazy drop down to get author from author sort or vice versa, always on a per book basis.
I will go try figure how to go a global scan back in calibre

[chaley]

Originally Posted by stumped

I will go try figure how to go a global scan back in calibre

If by "global scan" you mean checking all books to see if the author sort is "green", the Quality Check plugin can do that.

[BetterRed]

@stumped - not sure if its been mentioned, but QC etc won't fix author-sort where a name is double barrelled and non hyphenated - like St John, García Marquez, Garcia Lorca etc. You can override these in calibre's Manage Authors function.

BR

[stumped]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@stumped - not sure if its been mentioned, but QC etc won't fix author-sort where a name is double barrelled and non hyphenated - like St John, García Marquez, Garcia Lorca etc. You can override these in calibre's Manage Authors function.

BR

Thanks for warning but don't think on have any like that. I installed QC, it found about 30 to fix across all the library, did those individually to be safe. Some were just upper vs lower case, most were just my sloppyness. 30 from 1500 was not too bad.
Actually I do have a st John, she wrote station eleven and Lola quartet. Emily St. John Mandel. I could go check that, if I knew what the correct answer was !