Automatic Dimension Sorting?

For most works Height > Length > Thickness. Where data is pulled from other sources these are sometimes swapped. While the power edit function is useful for resolving this, would it be possible to take (a) work(s) and have the dimensions sorted into that order?

If you have the dimensions as a part of one of your catalog views, you can click on the column header to sort by one of these dimensions.

You can also click on the up down arrow icon at the top to select them in the drop down.

OP doesn't want to sort works by dimensions, but to sort the dimensions of a work from greatest to least.

Right, he wants to have LT force height to be greater than length, which sounds like a bad idea to me since some books are longer than they are high. I could support a function in the catalog that would select all of your books where height is less than length so you could easily fix them yourself

>4 jjwilson61: That could fit in nicely as a section within our Charts & Graphs, eg. in Books, Measurements. A table that showed 'shape' stats such as:
portrait (height the biggest dimension)
landscape (length the biggest dimension)
other (thickness the biggest dimension)
Allowing click through to view the books of each type in our catalog.

Could be convenient when looking for errors such as transposed dimensions.

>1 crossestman: Having a dimensions tab within power edit, to allow entire swapping around of "On these books I want to move all the length to height, height to thickness, thickness to length" seems the sort of thing that would fit with the concept of power edit.

I'm reading the main request to say, "I want to Add that book from that source, but please swap the dimensions as I can see they are backwards". I don't know if that's the sort of thing (intermediary steps between identifying a data source and creating your book record) that they'd be interested in looking at in any redesign to the Add Books feature. As it is now, the principle seems to be: create your book from the chosen data source, then adjust it afterwards (because there has to be a book first in order to edit the data).

I'm trying to imagine if even 1% of my 9,000+ books are "landscape" format. It might depend on the genres one collects but it feels like an edge case to me to deal with the exceptions.

Having to manually shuffle the values is indeed tedious since you have no simple way to cut-paste without having to remember one to manually reenter it.

The orientation of the cover image should be a hint as well and information that is easy to obtain.

James

>6 Keeline: I just counted mine.

137 Landscape
8187 Portrait
39 Square

I also have 395 on a "to find and measure" list :-)

Keeline (#6):

Many if not most picture books for young children are landscape format, and plenty of parents enter the books they read to their kids. I don't think that's enough of an edge case to warrant creating a "solution" that specifically fails for them.

>5 Nevov: I like the idea of the "shape" as an indicator, I suspect I've got far more portrait than landscape but I know I've got some. I suspect most of the ones I have that are squares are either childrens' or art books.

>6 Keeline: It is tedious! I understand why and how the data is arranged these ways in the sources, but it does seem something that'd be useful for a power edit. Copy & pasting only gets you so far.

>8 lorax: I concur that landscape books are common enough as a form that it'd be a shame to exclude them. It was not my intent to do so, just that proportionately portrait oriented books are common enough (if not the default, albeit possibly not within individual genres) that it'd be worthwhile to have it as an option within power edit.

However, to the end of inclusivity, what if there was a power edit "orientation" setting/button or similar?

Acting upon a selection of entered books selecting "portrait" would sort the three dimensions given from largest to smallest as Height > Length > Thickness and "landscape" would sort the three dimension given from largest to smallest as Length > Height > Thickness. Within a power edit using dimensions a column of "orientation" or "format" or whatever seems clearest. Select the ones you want, hit "portrait", wait. Or "landscape", and wait.

Inevitably there will be an edge case that is actually thicker than it is tall or long, but I don't see anyone here with a copy of 9780007297191 in the original briefcase or the single volume of Shree Haricharitramrut Sagar. There will, doubtless, be others, and I'd guess there's at least one work that's physically a cube though I've not found it yet.

Oh, also...
>2 gilroy: Yes, thanks, I have been able to sort by dimensions. It was doing so that made it clear how many had them swapped, and while I've been able to use the double-click edit to some extent to swap them it's tedious, especially when there's a relatively obvious mathematical relationship between them. Though as has been pointed out, portrait is more common than landscape is more common than cube, but the proportion of the middle form (pun intended) isn't trivial.

If you had a view that showed the cover and physical characteristics in power edit and then had the ability to select them with checkboxes to apply the sort, it would be workable. I think this is the nucleus of the request.

So long as a cover image does not come from Amazon with the white area to make it square, there should be a hint of the orientation from that.

Even though a very large portion of our books are children's books and we have some landscape picture books, it is still a vast vast minority of the entire collection. The numbers bnielsen provided look like 1.5% and mine could be less than 1%. It depends entirely upon the kind of books one collects, as I mentioned. So not everyone would use such a feature. But that's not a reason to avoid providing it.

I can provide exceptions, often very significant ones, to many standards used in LT. But that doesn't change the functions and policies used. it is more of a matter of what the LT folks personally prefer and care to implement. Their preferences and willingness to listen to suggestions are more reasonable than some big software companies I can think of but it still comes down to whether they will spend the time and money to make a change.

James

Now I think I understand a little better. However, i also want to point out that how LT puts the measurements isn't always the same as how the sources put the measurements. Height is more or less the right one. But length and width can get flip flopped. Because some libraries consider the thickness to be from spine to end of cover, rather than the width of the spine.

>12 gilroy:

Some of my strangest dimensions come from Amazon data. I've seen books that default to something equivalent to 10 x 10 x 10 inches. By sorting by dimensions (particularly thickness) I could better spot the outliers. Physical dimensions were not at hand when I started my cataloging and it was too much of an effort to back fill with correct data so I live with what is provided by the data source.

James

If I recall, Amazon uses the cubic dimensions as a placeholder when they don't know the actual ones.

FWIW, I don't add my daughter's picture books, many of which are more-or-less square, partly because they're not mine (I don't add my wife's books either), partly to avoid the pain of removing them when she tears them apart ...

>13 Keeline: I think I've seen some where " ", i.e. white space, was converted to %20 and then to 20 :-) giving some 20" x 20" x 20" books.

>9 crossestman: This book is pretty much a cube: The Writer's Block