charlieCollins / and-bookworm

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Sort authors by LAST name -- this is harder than it sounds #98

Open GoogleCodeExporter opened 9 years ago

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago
I know it sounds simple, but the
reason we sort by full name right now, and not last, is that some
sources just give us "name" and not first/last. Then once you have a
name it's tricky to tell what is first and last. It's not just the
last word is the last name, for example "Dr. Mary Joe Van Der Vorst."

We should look into using Cooper's name algorithm separator/class to split, and 
then store separately first/last, and then we could do it. (His class is pretty 
good at sorting it out.) We would need a DB update script to run on people's 
existing data and split them -- that will be tricky too. 

Original issue reported on code.google.com by charlie....@gmail.com on 9 Aug 2010 at 12:40

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago
This is also complicated by the fact that we use CursorAdapter. If we could do 
some sort of fancy sort using SQL, that would be ideal, but we don't know the 
"first" vs "last" names (as prev stated), and we don't have them in sep columns 
(just have name) because of this.

Original comment by charlie....@gmail.com on 19 Oct 2010 at 7:54

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago
Actually, we could just use Cooper's name parser AT THE TIME we insert. So, 
we'll have to change DB to have first/middle/last columns, then parse at 
insert, and also migrate existing data. 

Original comment by charlie....@gmail.com on 19 Oct 2010 at 7:58