How to change title sort

[Fred95901]

I want my titles to read "the time is now" not "time is now, the"

When I add a book to Calibre then edit metadata this always happens

Thanks for your help

[BetterRed]

Search for Control sorting of titles and set the tweak to strictly_alphabetic rather than library_order

BR

[AlessandroC]

Hi theducks,

I have a similar problem: I have the library order OK (I see the title "The time is now"), I've set the Save to disk option to "Update metadata in saved copies" but when I copy the books to my Kobo Clara HD (through the USB cable, not directly from Calibre) the title sort is wrong. So, for example:
- The beginners
- Cape Code
is what Kobo shows me. The article "The" it is not considered and so "beginners" comes before "Cape Code"

You suggest to do the following:
Preferences: Tweaks. search for 'Strictly Alphabetical' <<< that is what you want to set
There are 2 tweaks: one for title, one for Series

But I can't find 2 tweaks! I found only the "title_series_sorting" tweak and, in my case, this is set to
'strictly_alphabetic'.

As I understand from Calibre, there's only this "title_series_sorting" and I've understood that it affects both Title and Series, isn't it?
If this is wrong, could you please tell me which is the tweak to establish the title order? Or any kind of trick to achieve my goal?

Thank you!

[theducks]

If you are using the OS to copy, then Calibre is not in the picture AT ALL.

The tweaks only affect the transfers and display. Internal filing within the Library is not going to change. Ever.

Sorry but I just can't understand the current generations 'strictly alphabetic' passion.
Everything in my life has been similar to Library order. My name in the phone book was lastname, first. I waited in the S-Z last name line. Books / videos were found on the store shelf in Library order

[AlessandroC]

theducks,
thank you very much for your kind reply.
But I'm not sure I understand what you mean: if I save books on disk, they do not keep the metadata they have on Calibre? But the option "Update metadata in saved copies" what is it for?

Every book I have "edited" in Calibre has kept all the changes after having saved it on the disk, including cover (I have often changed it), authors, comments, and so on. So in my experience save on disk and then copy with drag and drop with usb cable works perfectly. The only wrong thing is the title metadata because it does not keep the article before the rest.

As for the "passion" of the alphabetical order, I imagine that this is a personal taste, a choice, and so I would like to do mine. On my reader there is the possibility to sort (alphabetically) the titles, it is a possibility that I would like to use, why not?
On the other hand, I do not understand what advantage there is with hundreds of books ordered like this:
"The blackberries"
"Carnival"
"The ducks"
"Elephant"
"These figures"

[theducks]

Devices can pull metadata from various places and arrange them in various ways.
The device driver may have a setting that says Use Title sort (instead of Title).
But , DC standards (required fields) may overrule Calibre settings.
I don't any of us will 'win' getting it to work the same across multiple devices

[goldilocks]

Originally Posted by Fred95901

I want my titles to read "the time is now" not "time is now, the"

When I add a book to Calibre then edit metadata this always happens

Thanks for your help

Fred95901,

did you try what BetterRed has recommended below? This is how I have mine set up and works fine. But if it is an eReader issue...

Originally Posted by BetterRed

'Strictly Alphabetical' wont find it

Search for Control sorting of titles and set the tweak to strictly_alphabetic rather than library_order

BR

Originally Posted by theducks

If you are using the OS to copy, then Calibre is not in the picture AT ALL.

The tweaks only affect the transfers and display. Internal filing within the Library is not going to change. Ever.

Sorry but I just can't understand the current generations 'strictly alphabetic' passion.
Everything in my life has been similar to Library order. My name in the phone book was lastname, first. I waited in the S-Z last name line. Books / videos were found on the store shelf in Library order

theducks
So what generation are you referring to?
I'm retirement age and I like mine sorted 'Strictly Alphabetical'.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by goldilocks

Fred95901,

theducks
So what generation are you referring to?
I'm retirement age and I like mine sorted 'Strictly Alphabetical'.

Retirement + a decade, folk who only had a B&W TV, Milk was still delivered, and Cokes were 5 cents (as well as Local calls), and Elvis was a New kind of singer

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by goldilocks

So what generation are you referring to?
I'm retirement age and I like mine sorted 'Strictly Alphabetical'.

Reminds of one temp maternity leave replacement quite a few years back. Nothing like trying to find a file when 75% of them were filed under "The City of Delta" instead of "Delta, The City of", "The District of North Vancouver" instead of "North Vancouver, The District of", etc. It took two weeks to clean up the files when she left after a week.

I prefer to sort my books in library order with the leading article left out of the sort. Nothing to do with the title display but with how the books are sorted for display.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by AlessandroC

Every book I have "edited" in Calibre has kept all the changes after having saved it on the disk, including cover (I have often changed it), authors, comments, and so on. So in my experience save on disk and then copy with drag and drop with usb cable works perfectly. The only wrong thing is the title metadata because it does not keep the article before the rest.

As for the "passion" of the alphabetical order, I imagine that this is a personal taste, a choice, and so I would like to do mine. On my reader there is the possibility to sort (alphabetically) the titles, it is a possibility that I would like to use, why not?
On the other hand, I do not understand what advantage there is with hundreds of books ordered like this:
"The blackberries"
"Carnival"
"The ducks"
"Elephant"
"These figures"

Minor nit: 'These' would sort with the T's.

Another question is you appear to be saying the title is sorted library order on your ereader. Perhaps you might want to check your ereader instead of blaming calibre? I know on my Kobo ereaders, 'the' is disregarded when I sort by title. I.e., The Spring Suit is placed just after Spring Sorrows while The Spy Who Loved Me is placed before SQL Server 2014 Tutorials.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Another question is you appear to be saying the title is sorted library order on your ereader. Perhaps you might want to check your ereader instead of blaming calibre? I know on my Kobo ereaders, 'the' is disregarded when I sort by title. I.e., The Spring Suit is placed just after Spring Sorrows while The Spy Who Loved Me is placed before SQL Server 2014 Tutorials.

And for completeness, the Kobo devices only looks at the title. The title sort appears to be a calibre specific attribute (I'd never looked before). Sorting of titles, as DNSB said, is done using "library order".

Similarly, only the author is used. And only the first dc:creator tag found in the OPF is used. The author is expected to be "FN LN" or "FN1 LN1, FN2 LN2" for multiple authors. Series are sorted in library order.

[AlessandroC]

Hello everyone and thank you for your kind help.

Unfortunately no success:

- title_series_sorting: 'strictly_alphabetical'
In this case the article is disregarded in both cases by my Kobo: when I copy the ebook with drag and drop, or if I transfer it to the device with Calibre.

- title_series_sorting: 'library_order'
Also in this case the article is discarded by my Kobo, regardless of how I transferred the ebook on the device.

Ultimately, when I use the sort by title, my Kobo shows "The acoustics of the prairies" before "Dark in Yellow" all the "tests" I've done.

Can we conclude that I can no longer do anything to achieve my goal with Calibre because this behavior is up to Kobo (as DNSB said two comments ago), or is there anything else I can try?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by AlessandroC

Hello everyone and thank you for your kind help.

Unfortunately no success:

- title_series_sorting: 'strictly_alphabetical'
In this case the article is disregarded in both cases by my Kobo: when I copy the ebook with drag and drop, or if I transfer it to the device with Calibre.

- title_series_sorting: 'library_order'
Also in this case the article is discarded by my Kobo, regardless of how I transferred the ebook on the device.

Ultimately, when I use the sort by title, my Kobo shows "The acoustics of the prairies" before "Dark in Yellow" all the "tests" I've done.

Can we conclude that I can no longer do anything to achieve my goal with Calibre because this behavior is up to Kobo (as DNSB said two comments ago), or is there anything else I can try?

YES. Sorting in on the device has absolutely NOTHING to do with sorting in calibre. The Kobo devices sort as we stated. You cannot change that on the device.

You can use a metadata plugboard to change what calibre writes to the title when sending the book to the device. The simplest method is to put the title sort into the title. That will mean the book will be displayed as "acoustics of the prairies, The" in the book list on the device. Alternatively, you replace the spaces between words with a non-breaking space. There has been a fair bit of discussion about sorting on the devices in the Kobo forum, though more often about the author sorting. A search should find this.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by AlessandroC

- title_series_sorting: 'strictly_alphabetical'

In this case the article is disregarded in both cases by my Kobo: when I copy the ebook with drag and drop, or if I transfer it to the device with Calibre.

FWIW - the allowable values of title_series_sorting: are 'strictly_alphabetic' and 'library_order'

For tweaks such as this, I cut and paste the value I want from the descriptive text.

---

@theducks - I removed your post #2, and removed my reference to it.

Can I respectfully suggest that you actually open up a tweak first before posting about it. Not only was the suggested value wrong, your assertion that there were separate items for Title and Series was also wrong.

BR