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I never stated "You can't sort by year, then by Album". You can, and have been able to for quite some time.
I stated that no information is stored about an album.
I even said "if you do "Year" then "Album" then you'll see all albums from that year, assuming all your songs have the same year marked on any given album," which sounds like exactly what you want.
Given that you could always do this, since about the addition of the tagnavi file, I could only reasonably assume that you wanted it to actually care about the year the album was released, rather than simply hijacking the existing Year tag, since your first post said you'd done thorough research on what you wanted and gotten "No" as a result, and an actual Album Year tag is not currently doable, while apparently what you wanted is.
Most of the flexibility of tagnavi is that you can create nearly any hierarchy of tags and use it, and this is pretty well discussed, so when you said you had researched it, I could only really assume that you'd gotten this basic concept and were looking for a more advanced feature.
This sounds like it comes back to support for sort tags in tagcache. There's a (not working) patch here http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/task/7287 and a really long thread about it here http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=10689.105If someone picks up that patch and makes it work it would be awesome since it would let people sort tracks/albums by whatever they want, including year. Assuming they use the TSOA/TSOP tags.
KindOfBlues71, you said you found a bit of information but since you didn't state what exactly, I thought I could post a link to what helped me to understand it back when I played around with a custom tagnavi file (and wanting to achieve the same).http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=9570.msg73668#msg73668
/* Uniqued tags (we can use these tags with filters and conditional clauses). */static const int unique_tags[] = { tag_artist, tag_album, tag_genre, tag_composer };/* Numeric tags (we can use these tags with conditional clauses). */static const int numeric_tags[] = { tag_year, tag_tracknumber, tag_length, tag_bitrate,tag_playcount, tag_playtime, tag_lastplayed, tag_virt_autoscore };
A FILTER (i.e. a level in the database tree that is not the title level and not a custom menu - see http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/RobertKukla?topic=DataBase) currently needs to be a single tag. It is used for splitting and sorting.
is a tag (see below for supported tags) it will introduce another level in the database tree with entries for all possible values for of the (e.g. all artists) if there is more than one the selection will be limited by the filter above (e.g. if you pick genre "Rock", you will only find "Rock" artists in the next level) if necessary there will also be an entry "" for files without an entry for that tag (e.g. no artists entered) another entry "" will give a shortcut for all the titles selected so far
So in order to achieve your goal you either:1) create a single tag that contains the year followed by the album (e.g. abuse the comment field) pro:- works now without code modificationcon:- needs to be populated manually- "uses up" a tag
2) implement sort fields where you put the year before the album namepro:- quite flexible solutioncon:- need to be populated manually- complex to implement, as there are no provisions for sorting filters; I also see two implementation options: a) hide and use for sorting only b) treat as normal fields, where the latter is significantly easier to implement- nearly double the size requirements for the database
3) create a virtual tag that is composed of year and album; a) dynamically and not stored in database b) on update and stored in the database.pro:- relatively easy to implementcon:- 3a) has a performance penalty - need to be tested how severe
4) allow format strings to be used for filters.pro:- most flexiblecon:- massive performance overhead
I favour 3) . While it is only the solution to one particular scenario, it is the one the comes up most often (if not the only one) If I find the time I even might have a go.
And no, I don't think we should pick the (year-) tag from a random file to do the sorting - some reasons already given in the thread.
Quote from: roolkuA FILTER (i.e. a level in the database tree that is not the title level and not a custom menu - see http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/RobertKukla?topic=DataBase) currently needs to be a single tag. It is used for splitting and sorting.You created the Database wiki, right roolku?
Would you please clarify your reference to the filter definition above? That definition isn't in the database wiki, and I'm not sure if you're saying the Year tag is used as a filter, or should be.
The Supported Tags section of the wiki shows that the Year tag can be used as a filter, condition and formatting, and I referenced a thread where you showed that the tagcache.c file clearly states that the Year tag can only be used as a condition.
The wiki has the following:Quote is a tag (see below for supported tags) it will introduce another level in the database tree with entries for all possible values for of the (e.g. all artists) if there is more than one the selection will be limited by the filter above (e.g. if you pick genre "Rock", you will only find "Rock" artists in the next level) if necessary there will also be an entry "" for files without an entry for that tag (e.g. no artists entered) another entry "" will give a shortcut for all the titles selected so farYour definition states "...currently needs to be a single tag" but the third bullet point above states "if there is more than one filter..." If a filter is a tag, how can there be only a single tag when the wiki says there can be more than one filter? Doesn't that mean there can be more than one tag to filter results by?
QuoteSo in order to achieve your goal you either:1) create a single tag that contains the year followed by the album (e.g. abuse the comment field) pro:- works now without code modificationcon:- needs to be populated manually- "uses up" a tagI might try this with my Beatles albums and see how it does. The downside is it's time-consuming if doing this for all my files, plus I'm fairly anal about my jazz collection and sometimes put song/album info in the Comments field.
Btw, the manual shows that the Comment tag is unsupported, while the Database wiki shows that it *is* a supported tag.
Quote2) implement sort fields where you put the year before the album namepro:- quite flexible solutioncon:- need to be populated manually- complex to implement, as there are no provisions for sorting filters; I also see two implementation options: a) hide and use for sorting only b) treat as normal fields, where the latter is significantly easier to implement- nearly double the size requirements for the databaseBy "sort fields" are you referring to the TSOA/TSOP tags? Why would it almost double the database size requirements?
Quote3) create a virtual tag that is composed of year and album; a) dynamically and not stored in database b) on update and stored in the database.pro:- relatively easy to implementcon:- 3a) has a performance penalty - need to be tested how severeI'm not exactly sure what you mean by this third option.
QuoteI favour 3) . While it is only the solution to one particular scenario, it is the one the comes up most often (if not the only one) If I find the time I even might have a go.Please let us know if you do, that would be very cool!
QuoteAnd no, I don't think we should pick the (year-) tag from a random file to do the sorting - some reasons already given in the thread.Same reason as Llorean or are you referring to sorting tags? I don't get peoples' issues w/ using the Year tag because that tag is already being used to browse by specific Year already.
If the Database could look for Artist > Album > Year, in that order, problem solved I'd think.
KindOfBlues71: I also would like my albums to be sorted chronologically. I'll put it on my todo and hope to ever get time to seriously look at it.
For now I just use the file browser and put my albums in folders like this:Amon Tobin:[1996] Adventures In Foam[1997] Bricolage[1998] Permutation[2000] Supermodified[2002] Out From Out Where
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