Bruji

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.