ISBN-13 is automatically created when entering ISBN-10

What happens when you complete typing the ISBN13? In the screenshot you have only added 11 digits.

If it doesn’t resolve itself then I don’t like it.

I wouldn’t have mentioned it, if it would resolve itself after completing.
But I’ve found a way to make it better, I added the ISBN-13 id backwards and the result is:

great, wonderful, love it.

I found the book that you’re referring to: Unsichtbar (Edition) – BookBrainz

The ISBN10 shown is correct so whatever you did seems to work!

yes, copy and paste works, we just have to add a warning: DON’T EVER ADD THE ISBN-13 ID MANUALLY!!! :bomb: to the manual. Problem solved. Order of Merit won…Next bug please…

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I couldn’t work out what you were doing as I tried testing a dummy Edition with the ISBN13 in your book and I had no problems but that was because I copied and pasted the number.

I just tried entering the ISBN13 manually and the ISBN10 went haywire.

There is a bug🐛

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Thanx, so I’m not seeing THINGS :wink:

But this will be easy to fix, it happens exacty after checking that it’s no correct ISBN-10 ID.
When you enter the 11th digit it doesn’t wait until the 13th digit is entered.

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There is another problem, that’s a bit more difficult to solve. When adding the ISBN-13 id manually and the ISBN-10 check is valid, guess what happens:

This should not happen when an id starts with 978, so the algorithm has to check the first 3 digits and if the 978 appears, the 10 digit validity check has to be turned off. (sorry for not using the correct terms for these things :wink:

Hey, thanks for reporting the issue. ISBN 10 having registration group (first few digits) 978 seems to be valid, although i added extra check to verify the validity of isbn(s) (verifying check digit) but it still doesn’t solve this issue. we might need some confirmation from user before adding new isbn row.

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I thought that was my eyes playing tricks, but it did happen to me as well as I manually typed the ISBN13. I should of said that the ISBN10 and ISBN13 both went haywire🤪

Copying and pasting the ISBN is the best solution at present!

I see, 978 is the country code for Nigeria and can’t be invalid… So we have the choice of banning Nigeria from the world of books (and Bookbrainz) or get a user confirmation to calculate the 2nd ISBN id. That’s a tough choice to make :wink:

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That wasn’t the problem I struck last night when I manually added ISBN13 9783257861532 to a test Edition.

What happened was as I typed the ISBN13 it went from:

to this when I added the 1:

which confused me as I ended with a totally different number.

@indy133 I have sent you a PM.

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That’s strange - when I repeat your trial I get 9789783257863, which is correct.
Your additional last 2 digits “53” are interesting. I got it: Change the type to ISBN-15 and everything will be fine :+1:

I’m glad you find it interesting as I just find it effing confusing. I don’t like the automatic ISBN generator anymore! Let’s go back to the simpler manual system:

image

One thing that I learnt during this discussion is that ISBN (and barcode) data is not searchable on BB.

That is disappointing considering that the ISBN is the publishing industry’s standard identifier.

I know I search for ISBNs on a regular basis to find particular editions.

Maybe it is a feature that has yet to be installed.

Identifiers like ISBN(s) are searchable, it is just we store ISBN(s) inconsistently :frowning: , but we already have the ticket for this so it will be fix soon :wink:

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Excellent. I thought it might be on the horizon as it is an important search tool.

Thanks for all the bug reports!

I’m compiling them and other ISBN-related improvements suggestions into a better way forward for all things ISBN-related.

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Compiling the issues reported with ISBNs as well as other related suggestions and tickets, here is our proposal for improvements:

  1. We are temporarily disabling the new automatic ISBN10 <-> ISBN13 conversion feature since we’re having so many issues with it.

    • In the future we will not do the conversion automatically (see point 5 below).
  2. Separate the identifiers to be part of the main page, and not hidden behind a button click in a popup modal ([BB-343] Move the identifier & aliases editing to be part of the main editing flow - MetaBrainz JIRA)

  3. If an identifier type has already been manually selected by a user, don’t auto-detect or automatically change the type ([BB-508] Identifier type selection issue - MetaBrainz JIRA)

  4. Separate the ISBN10, ISBN13 and barcode fields from other identifiers, and moving them in the "What else do you know about the Edition?” section.

  5. Add buttons next to the ISBN fields to transform ISBN10 to ISBN13 and vice versa

    • Proposal: also add a button to copy the barcode from IBSNs (barcode is often just the ISBN)
  6. Be more liberal with the pasted/typed formats we accept for ISBNs: with or without hyphens, spaces, etc.

  7. Store ISBNs and barcodes as a string without spaces or hyphens, and format them for displaying on the website according to ISBN authority specifications ([BB-645] Consistenly store and display ISBNs - MetaBrainz JIRA and [BB-650] Barcode (and ISBN) insertion and storage improvement - MetaBrainz JIRA)

    • This will also make searching by ISBN usable (currently users need to know the exact format including hyphens and spaces)
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Sounds like a good plan, I really like it, thx.

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Excellent. Although the automatic ISBN generator works perfectly when copying and pasting, the same can’t be said for typed insertion. Therefore it could mislead the uninitiated. I look forward to the improved version!

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