Sorting when viewing the Editions page

Okay, this isn't that big a deal when there are fifty works and one ISBN. But when looking over some of the classics, where the list is extensive, it might be helpful to have sort options when viewing the editions or the combine/separate pages.

By title
By ISBN
By author/editor

Something more than just by number of entries. This would help when sifting through several thousand, trying to find the lone incorrect book, or to make sure the right sets are gathered together.

That would be brilliant.

Second the request - brilliant!

>1 gilroy:-3
Agreed.

Even better if the list were collapsible, with the most common version of said ISBN followed by "and __ other editions (see)" or something. That would make it even easier to find and weed out crap combined in.

I third it. I actually hacked up something like this with greasemonkey and then put it aside. It was actually quite handy to be able to sort the different columns (plus, I put them in a table so it was easier to read). I really should resurrect that code...

Someone made a greasemonkey script that sorts the editions page alphabetically. It's not by ISBN or author/editor, but it has helped immensely when I've used it, simply by grouping similar variations of titles together. Actually, I think it was you, brightcopy, who made it. Maybe?

6> Oh yeah, forgot about that :D Thanks!

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/69620

This one was a bit more beefed up version of that one. Allowed you to sort on the other fields and view it as a grid. I'll try to quit experimenting and finish it off to a usable state.

It would be great if we could not only sort/group by ISBN, but also perhaps be able to bulk separate as well.

Yeah, well, greasemonkey scripts don't work with IE, do they? I've not changed over to Firefox yet.

Sadly, no, but I think I've seen some sort of work-around for IE, and I know there are Greasemonkey options for Chrome.

The greasemonkey support in both IE and Chrome is horrible. I started to try to make my scripts work in the others but it takes some serious work and throwing out of features.

I switched to Firefox in order to use brightcopy's scripts and I've never regretted it.

FYI, I finally finished off the sortable grid version of the editions page script for Greasemonkey:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/113902

Please direct any discussion of it there. Thanks!

@4

Yes to collapsibility.

4/14> On the collapsibility question, exactly how would you envision it working? Check out the screenshots from the link I posted in #13. What I found while developing this is that the ISBNs are often interwoven with different titles and author names. I'm trying to grasp just what you would expect it to look like and how it would act based on these variations. Would it just ignore everything but the ISBN?

>15 brightcopy:
Your screenshots look like "sortable" which, while nothing to sneeze at, aren't quite what I meant. By "collapsable" I meant that editions would be bundled if they have 1) a nearly identical title, 2) a nearly identical author, and 3) a (nearly) identical ISBN; the group would be semi-hidden by a generic edition with a "show" link.

For example, using a small work, the edition page lists:

Anne of the Thousand Days. / Anderson, Maxwell (ISBN 082220049X) (27 copies separate)
Anne of the thousand days / Anderson, Maxwell (2 copies separate)
Anne of the Thousand Days / Anderson, Maxwell (ISBN 082220049X) (2 copies separate)
Anne of the Thousand Days / Anderson, Maxwell (1 copy separate)
Anne of the Thousand Days, Acting Edition / Anderson, Maxwell (1 copy separate)
Anne Of The Thousand Days / Anderson, Maxwell (1 copy separate)
Anne of the thousand days: By Maxwell Anderson / Anderson, Maxwell (1 copy separate)
anne of the thousand days / anderson, maxwell (ISBN 082220049X) (1 copy separate)
Anne of the Thousand Days. / maxwell anderson (no current copies separate)
Anne of the Thousand Days. / Maxwell Anderson (ISBN 082220049X) (no current copies separate)
Anne of the Thousand Days / Maxwell Anderson (ISBN 082220049X) (no current copies separate)
anne of the thousand days / maxwell anderson (no current copies separate)

Note the ones in bold. Those five editions would be reduced to something like

Anne of the Thousand Days. / Anderson, Maxwell (ISBN 082220049X) and 4 other editions (30 copies) -- show more

While it would make very little difference for small works like this one (a mere three dozen copies of Anne of the Thousand Days have been cataloged), the difference would be substantial indeed if applied to larger works like Hamlet or Jane Eyre or whatever popular book you choose to apply it to. The list would be much easier to wade through, and would probably load faster, too.

16> I understand what you meant by collapsible. I'm doing a variation of that (granted, it doesn't collapse, but it comes from the same intention) by graying out subsequent variation of the same title, author name or ISBN.

But thanks for the example as it shows me more of how you would actually collapse it. I assume the title and author would be chosen from the edition that has the most copies. Though I suppose since I break the title and author out, I could find the most common one across all editions by copies. In other words, if for the same ISBN you had:

anne of the thousand days / anderson, maxwell (ISBN 082220049X) (11 copies separate)
Anne of the Thousand Days. / Anderson, Maxwell (ISBN 082220049X) (10 copies separate)
Anne of the Thousand Days. / Maxwell Anderson (ISBN 082220049X) (10 copies separate)
Ann of the Thousand Days. / Anderson, Maxwell (ISBN 082220049X) (2 copies separate)

it could know to pick "Anne of the Thousand Days." instead of "anne of the thousand days" and "Anderson, Maxwell" instead of "anderson, maxwell" since those actually show up more if you bundle the copies together rather than take the single edition with the most copies.

Sounds like something I might want to add to my script. Sure, doesn't directly help anyone who isn't using the script, but it might be a nice proof of concept to show Tim.

I'm one of those people who don't use Greasemonkey scripts generally, but I agree with you about proof of concept. That said, you might want to demonstrate it on something a bit bigger than Anne of the Thousand Days which essentially has only one edition (though some don't have an ISBN). Something with a few different editions but still fairly small should suit -- American Creation, for example.

18> Right, I should probably do a bunch of different ones and link to a screenshot gallery.

Another thing I wanted to play with is collapsing all 0 copy editions under one entry.

Just re-read and thought of something. What do you mean by "nearly" identical ISBNs? Some examples on how you'd expect that to work would be cool.

>19 brightcopy:
A good idea!

>20 brightcopy:
It was just a thought. I suppose if everything else is within a character or two of identical, but there's a typo in the ISBN, it could somehow come up as a possibly-the-same-edition. Like I was saying, just a thought.

21> It was just a thought. I suppose if everything else is within a character or two of identical, but there's a typo in the ISBN, it could somehow come up as a possibly-the-same-edition. Like I was saying, just a thought.

I'm just trying to wrap my head around how it'd work. If you run across some real-world examples where you actually notice some where they have a typoed ISBN that's "nearly" identical, post or PM them to me so I'll have an example to dink with.

I'll keep an eye open, but I can't get on active search at the moment. The identical-ISBN version is more likely/important than the not-quite-identical-ISBN one in any event.