Feature:90003

90003 OPEN When an Omnibus collects books in a series, it is displayed along with the series, which is probably better than displaying it with regular omnibuses. However, the fact that it is displayed at the top of the series list can make it hard to read, e.g. see "Guardians of the Flame" at http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Joel%20Rosenberg . Should we move series Omnibuses to the end of the series?

I personally like how Fantastic Fiction handles this where the site sorts unnumbered items, including omnibus titles by date in the middle of the series. I suspect it’s done by putting the numbered items in a sorted list and then for each unnumbered title you walk the list backwards and insert your unnumbered titles just before the title where the unnumbered date <= the date in the title. That'll get omnibus titles just after regular titles for the same year. Another option for ISFDB is to define a sub-series called “series name Omnibus(s)” and to drop the omnibus titles in there. Marc Kupper 13:13, 6 Dec 2006 (CST)

The problem with omnibuses is that they often come out independently of the main series sequence, often years after the first editions of the titles that they collect. See, e.g. Christopher_Stasheff. I think John Wenn's approach, i.e. listing omnibuses in series order (e.g. "/1,2,3" would be displayed after #3), is the most logical one. Unfortunately, there are omnibuses that are done in some kind of internal order, e.g. "/1,4", which makes a mess of things. Still, it would be better than what we have now, but the software would need to parse the "/X,Y,Z" syntax, which is currently not enforced programmatically. Ahasuerus 12:19, 8 Dec 2006 (CST)

Also, if you enter something like "1+2+3" in the Series Number field to indicate that this omnibus includes volumes 1, 2 and 3 of the series, the software will truncate it to "1" since it presumably expects a number. Would it be useful to allow this convention and make the software smart enough to recognize it? Ahasuerus 10:53, 1 May 2006 (CDT)

How about using the storylen thing with /1,2,3? It's related but I once tried to enter a series # as "I" and "II" but learned ISFDB wants decimal numbers. Marc Kupper 13:13, 6 Dec 2006 (CST)

That's what I have been using as my de facto standard for the last 6 months, so this 05/01/2006 feature request may need to be revised to reflect what has happened since then. Ahasuerus 12:19, 8 Dec 2006 (CST)