Author names display order in version 5

[Orac]

Hi Nora

When my database was upgraded today with Bookpedia 5 the display order of the names was changed to firstname lastname. It was still sorted alphabetically by lastname, but I can't find a way of returning the display to the way I find more practical: Lastname, Firstname.

Can this be done in the new version?

[Nora]

Since the author field is a multi-value field now (the blue bubble fields), the listing cannot be changed to Lastname, Firstname since the comma works as a separator for the bubbles.

If you would prefer to return to version 4.6.8, you can download that version here.

[Orac]

Thanks Nora. I never like to go backwards with software, and I won't with my favourites either - the 'Pedias. I will live with the new presentation, though being trained as a library cataloguer in a former life it does seem for me to be "wrong". However, as you've mentioned, they payoff is that version 5 does deal better with multiple authors than version 4 and I like the way the field auto-completes as you are typing in a new entry, so that you can get some authority control working. This was the one part of BookPedia that I was hoping for a future improvement and now the future is here!

During the upgrade the installer asked which filing order I used for authors and it did a fairly good job of converting the data. I had only a handful of author names to repair after it was done. However, I did notice a few minor quirks which I'll note for everybody in a separate post so that they don't go unnoticed in this one.

[Nora]

Please do let us know about any quirks you discovered with the author field update. There are certain combinations which are simply too tricky to handle for a computer but if you can give us some examples we'll try to improve our code for future updaters.

[juc]

Hi Nora,
thanks a lot for the new version of your great bookpedia. but it would be nice to find a better way to display the sorting order of the 'author' field. It's a pity that we have to accept the rules of a programme (comma is a separator), it should be the other way round. it would be better if the blue bubble displayed 'lastname firstname'. i'm not a programmer, but my osx-mail-prog displays displays blue bubbles with 'lastname firstname' recipients. is lastname. firstname a possible workaround?

[Nora]

Check out this post on our blog about the commas in the blue bubbles and a possible work around. The post deals with CDpedia in detail but the idea is the same for Bookpedia.