Recent calibre changes affecting Sony readers

[chaley]

Some recent calibre changes might be of interest to owners of Sony readers.

1) [0.7.25] Collection sorting. By default, Sony collections built from series are sorted by series index, while other collections are sorted by title_sort. You can change this behavior using the tweak sony_collection_sorting_rules. The tweak permits you to specify a metadata field, including custom fields, used to sort a collection. For example, you could sort non-series collections by author instead of title, or by creating a special composite custom column you could sort non-series collections such as genre by title within series (if there is a series).

This thread provides information on this tweak, along with several other ideas that might be of interest.

2) [0.7.35] The sony driver no longer stores pre-built thumbnails when sending books. The newer Sonys such as the 650 can use thumbnails when displaying books and periodicals. For a few releases, the Sony driver has built and stored these thumbnails. The problem is that the older devices do not know what to do with them and do not clean them up. Over time as they collected, disconnecting the reader would slow down. On my 300, it got to the point where disconnecting took 45 seconds. I manually deleted the thumbnails, and now disconnecting takes the normal 2 to 3 seconds.

The thumbnails in main memory are in 'database/thumbnail/...'. For cards, they are in 'Sony Reader/database/thumbnail/...'.

3) [0.7.35] Special collections. When viewing by author, the 650 (and possibly 350) sort the titles by date instead of by title. In addition, when sorting by title, the 650 appears to do article stripping, for example sorting 'The Hobbit' under 'H' instead of 'T'. We couldn't find a way of changing either of these behaviors.

To work around these problems, it is now possible to build two special collections, 'all by author' and 'all by title'. The author collection is sorted by author_sort, then title_sort for the same author. The title collections is sorted by title_sort, then author_sort if titles are equal. In both cases, changes made by using the 'device_db' plugboard are respected.

Building these collections is specified in the Sony device plugin. To build the all by author collection, add 'aba:collection name' (no quotes) to the collections box. Choose whatever collection name you wish. To add the all by title collection, add 'abt:collection name' to the collections box.

This thread discusses the problems that led to the addition of this tweak.

4) [0.7.36] Changing collection names. For quite some time there has been a tweak sony_collection_renaming_rules used to combine collections and to give them special names. The names were of the form 'collection_value (collection name)'. For example, for a custom genre column, the name might have been 'Fiction (Genre)'.

A second tweak, sony_collection_name_template, has been added to give more control over how the name is generated. Continuing the genre example, you can now indicate that it should be 'Genre: Fiction' or '[Genre] Fiction' or other possibilities. Because of this, you can now group like values together, for example all the genres then all the tags. As you can build collections for (almost) any metadata field, grouping in this way will assist with organization. For example, the person suggesting the feature makes collections from authors and series and wanted the values separated.

This enhancement request provides some rationale for the tweak.

5) [0.7.36] Ability to make special 'all-books' collections sorted by an arbitrary column. Using this feature, you can make 'all-books' collections sorted by any calibre metadata field, such as published date, publisher, or any custom column. To create such a collection, add 'abs:name' into the collections box in device customization. The 'abs' means 'all by something'. The 'name' is the collection name. If the name is a metadata column key (including custom columns), then you are done. If the name is not a key, then you must add the sorting column information to the sony_collection_sorting_rules tweak.

[JSWolf]

I don't know how my files are dated on my 650, but sorting by author appears to be sorted by title.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I don't know how my files are dated on my 650, but sorting by author appears to be sorted by title.

Then either your device behaves differently from jackie_w's or you are lucky. Take a look at the screen shot jackie_w provided in this post -- the list is clearly not sorted by title within author.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by chaley

Then either your device behaves differently from jackie_w's or you are lucky. Take a look at the screen shot jackie_w provided in this post -- the list is clearly not sorted by title within author.

I just had another look and scrolled my list. Yes, it is by author, but not all in alphabetical order after that. Maybe this isn't a bug and that's the way it was meant to be done.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I just had another look and scrolled my list. Yes, it is by author, but not all in alphabetical order after that. Maybe this isn't a bug and that's the way it was meant to be done.

I am both glad and sorry to hear this. Glad in that we weren't crazy, and sorry in that you hadn't found a way to fix it.

As far as I can tell, the 650 sorts that list in reverse date order, where 'date' is when the book was added to the reader. That is sufficiently strange that I can't help but think that someone chose it. I can see the reasoning -- "The user must be looking for a book, and the latest book is more likely to be it. Lets give them that first." The problems are that not everyone thinks like that, and that the order is mysterious enough as to appear random (which in fact it might be). The new collections give those of us who are sufficiently compulsive a way to have predictability.

[Pinecone]

I guess .36 is coming soon.

But how would you use the name template?

I would like to group all the SciFi or Classics in to separate collections, then within that collection sort by author and series.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Pinecone

I guess .36 is coming soon.

But how would you use the name template?

I would like to group all the SciFi or Classics in to separate collections, then within that collection sort by author and series.

I am not sure what you want to do. I read what you wrote as saying that you want two collections, one named SciFi and one named Classics. The books within each collection is to be sorted as you stated. Is this true?

If so, then you can do it, but you need to think about what you want to see within the collection. You probably want to 'enhance' the title to see more information. Use one of the recipes found in the plugboard post for that. You also might need to supply a sorting column, but that depends on your enhanced title.

None of this is affected by the name template. The template is used to group multiple like collections together.

[Pinecone]

OK, thanks.

[library addict]

Thanks for these fixes.

[chaley]

There is another bit of functionality that I added because I could. We will see if anyone uses it.

(copied from post #1)

5) [0.7.36] Ability to make special 'all-books' collections sorted by an arbitrary column. Using this feature, you can make all-books collections sorted by any calibre metadata field, such as published date, publisher, or any custom column. To create such a collection, add 'abs:name' into the collections box in device customization. The 'abs' means 'all by something'. The 'name' is the collection name. If the name is a metadata column key (including custom columns), then you are done. If the name is not a key, then you must add the sorting column information to the sony_collection_sorting_rules tweak.