@benji - have you tried whether you can get the type of sorting you want using types? I strongly recommend testing this exhaustively before you commit to it - I don't think it has ever been done, so we can't tell you what types of issues you might face.

What you refer to as "dir" in the book example is also called an editor in English - I believe support for both forms of editor in French (dir. de publication and editeur) is forthcoming.

benji - my warning had nothing to do with the type field (although I do agree that it should exist for books) - I'm just saying that if you're planning to sort a bibliography by item type you should test this out thoroughly before relying on it, because it hasn't been done yet. A type field for books would likely not help you to sort the bibliography anyway, though.

Gracile has dealt with the various names for editors in the past, I think that should be covered, but she'll know for sure.

2° The university differs from the publisher. However, all things considered, it's not necessary to indicate the name of the university when the thesis is published.

I think that ajlyon wanted to say that you should use the publisher field to enter the university's name.

3° The directory of the thesis show up this way for published thesis

This is not the supervisor's name ("director of thesis") which is displayed but the author of a preface. That might coincide but not always.
At the moment, there is no way to cite a book with the name of the preface's author.
In the "Book Section" item, two roles ("book author" and "author") are distinguished : that's because you cite directly the preface, not the book itself. See that.

For the unpublished thesis the name of the director is followed by the symbols "(dir.)" instead of "(préf.).

I've never seen that in a French academic work. If it's just for the sake of reference, I woud recommend you use "Collaborateur" role (that's what I'm doing actually).

If this development was maid, it would be great to add the possibilty to specify that, in collective books, the author cited has not write all the chapter but has only coordonate the work.

You should use "Book Section" (Chapitre de livre) item for that and choose "Éditeur" instead of "Auteur" (if you click the triangle to the left of the field you'll be able to change it)

In french a director of publication is indeed different from a publisher. Maybe it's just a problem of translation because in the field "author" I can chose also "éditeur" and "éditeur de la série" which should rather be translated by "directeur" and "directeur de la série". What do you thing Gracile.

"Editeur" is right (éd.).
The issue is for "dir."/"sous la dir." as you can't use one zotero field for two roles. But, as adamsmith said "support for both forms of editor in French (dir. de publication and editeur) is forthcoming." (see this thread and this for more details)
"Éditeur de la série" will become "Directeur de collection" in the next release.


@adamsmith:

Gracile has dealt with the various names for editors in the past, I think that should be covered, but she'll know for sure.

I'm a woman as much as you're Adam Smith, ;-)

Has there been a solution to this?
I am not entirerly sure that this is the same problem but could be:

Let's say I want to save this thesis:

http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?dswid=4072&faces-redirect=true&language=en&searchType=SIMPLE&query=&af=[]&aq=[[]]&aq2=[[]]&aqe=[]&pid=diva2%3A533836&noOfRows=50&sortOrder=author_sort_asc&onlyFullText=false&sf=all

Zotero saves it as source type Book. There is an ISBN on the page, but it is not included in the ISBN field.

Is this to do with Zotero or the catalog (uu.diva-portal.org) ?