Rockbox Technical Forums
Support and General Use => User Interface and Voice => Topic started by: thatcrazycommie on January 01, 2006, 10:38:22 AM
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Has the possibility been considered of, when browsing the ID3 database, making bands that start with "the" be put on the list alphabatically as if the "the" was not there?
As in:
Dead Kennedys
The Epoxies
Frequency Needs A Mate
Most jukebox-type things do this, and I think it'd be a good option to have in the setting.
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what about the the?
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lol nobby
I retagged/renamed my artists so that they were "artist, the" (the godfather works well)
It make sense to have an option like you said, but I think I'd still do the "artist, the" way even if I had the option. that way it works/looks consistent anywhere you take your music
just my opinion
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what about the the?
The point is, it's annoying to scroll through like thirty bands in a row that start with "the" and it's easier to browse if they're spread out.
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I don't think you get it.
Read this (wikipedia.org) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_The)
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Damn, I done gone and missed the joke.
That is a band I had never heard of.
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I used The Godfather (http://users.otenet.gr/~jtcliper/tgf/) to rename all my music-folders to "Artist Name, The".
Allows your music to be sorted "correctly" on any platform. : )
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I used The Godfather (http://users.otenet.gr/~jtcliper/tgf/) to rename all my music-folders to "Artist Name, The".
Allows your music to be sorted "correctly" on any platform. : )
That's what I was trying to say! :D
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I used The Godfather (http://users.otenet.gr/~jtcliper/tgf/) to rename all my music-folders to "Artist Name, The".
Allows your music to be sorted "correctly" on any platform. : )
That's what I was trying to say! :D
I understand what you mean, and it makes sense to want consistancy when viewing your music collection on different platfroms, it's a valid opinion. But what about people who think that "XXXX, The" doesn't looks nice? I think this is a valid opinion as well. To accomidate both opinions, there could be a setting which would give you the option (Ignore "The"), and you can set it to on, or off. Pretty much like the option of sorting by "case" or not.
I was actually discussing this "wish-list" feature with Markun last night, and he noted that if such an option was added, that it would only make sense to ignore other words such as "Le" or "Das" for other languages.
Btw, I noticed that iPods actually do ignore "The" when sorting artists alphabeticaly. I don't think there's a way to turn this off however.
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I've thrown together a patch to implement this and submitted it to the patch tracker. It's pretty hacky and doesn't deal with any other languages, but it's a start.
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1397896&group_id=44306&atid=439120
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Hmm... I used this patch, but it didn't do what it's supposed to do.
After patching filetree.c, it didn't create a backup of the original "filetree.c.orig", isn't it supposed to do that?
Am I doing something wrong?
I assume that when I browse folders with names containing "The", it would be ignored when sorting.
Or does this only apply to file names, and not folder names?
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After patching filetree.c, it didn't create a backup of the original "filetree.c.orig", isn't it supposed to do that?
No. Try editing the first line of the patch to read "filetree.c" instead of "filetree.c.orig". Then cd into rockbox/apps/ and try to apply the patch.
It works fine on my H120.
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I must be doing something wrong. I modified the patch file as you said from:
--- ./filetree.c.orig 2006-01-05 11:52:45.000000000 -0500
+++ ./filetree.c 2006-01-05 11:59:43.000000000 -0500to:
--- ./filetree.c 2006-01-05 11:52:45.000000000 -0500
+++ ./filetree.c 2006-01-05 11:59:43.000000000 -0500
Using both of the above patches doesn't return with an error after patching. However, from my experience, any patch which was successful usually created backups of the patched files with the additional ".orig" extension.
As you can see from this screen dump, directories starting with "The" are still sorted as "T".
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I'm not sure what to tell you, saab_rider, but you must not be patching the file correctly. Patch on Unix/Linux does not create .orig files. Can you open filetree.c manually and check to see that the patch was actually applied?
For what it's worth, here's the patched filetree.c from my source tree (fresh CVS as of yesterday). You can try dropping that into your source (after renaming from filetree.c.txt to filetree.c, obviously) and compiling.
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Ok, I just replaced my filetree.c with yours, and re-compiled.
Still the same :| could it be something with the way my directories are named? or by any chance is there anything different between the H100 and H300 that's causing this? Could this have anything to do with folder caching, or something??
I have no idea what I'm talking about, but for somereason the patch isn't working for me.
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I have no idea what I'm talking about, but for somereason the patch isn't working for me.
Could it be that you're in the file browser, and that this patch is only intended for navigating via the database?
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SOLVED!!!!!!!!!
To answer your question belly, yes I was in the file browser, but that wasn't the problem!
The problem was in the "Sort Directories" setting (General Settings/ File View/ Sort Directories). I had "by date" selected rather than "Alphabetical".
So the patch works! Sorry for all the trouble BK!
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Heh. Not a problem, glad it works!
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I tried the patch and think its really cool.
but why are "the" (without ending space) ignored? what about folders like "There ..."???
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edit: Fixed.
Latest version of the patch is attached.
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thanks!
like it much more this way!
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Here's another (hopefully final) revision of the patch. Reorganized and now handles files/dirs named with punctuation delimiters: ie, "The.Henry.Rollins.Band", or "the_new_pornographers", etc.
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I am sorry - I have no idea how to use patches. That is a text file. Where do I put it/do with it?
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Hi. I've been trying to patch to the current CVS, and "1 out of 3 hunks FAILED"
Can we get an update please? I tried to patch using p0 and p1,
also moved the patch to /apps/ (where filetree.c was, but still couldn't patch it successfully.
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If hunks fail, the patch is out of date. You'll have to figure out how to update it to apply.
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thanks..
That's why I asked for an update.
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Only a small change was necessary.
I made a new patch:
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Thanks Mr. Brownstone!
Wish I undestand the code :)
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This seems to be as good a place as any to ask this question. First, some background: I am one of those people who has tagged all of their music "Artistname, The" and "Lastname, Firstname" so that it sorts correctly. And to answer everyone's perennial question, "The The" is tagged "The, The"--simple, logical, and consistent.
The problem of Artist "Display" Name vs. Artist "Organizational" Name seems to be a fundamental problem with existing music file tagging conventions. Has there ever been any discussion anywhere that music files should use one tag for display and another tag entirely for organization?
I mean, software can do some clever things and figure out that leading "The" (and incidentally "A" and "An", which are much less frequently used) should be ignored for organizational purposes. But you're still stuck with Bob Dylan getting misfiled under "B" for most people. And any attempts by software to automate Lastname sorting would misfile Jethro Tull under "T", have difficulty with multi-word last names, etc.
To me, the simple answer is: have one tag called "Artist" (the current tag). This is the display name. Then create a new tag called "File Under" (or something). This is used for sorting. If the "File Under" tag is empty, fall back to "Artist" for organizing.
Tadaa! We now have a system that's backwards-compatible with existing music files, makes most people happy by not displaying the "ugly" name with commas, and makes people like me happy by sorting correctly. You could even tweak the "File Under" tag to make multi-artist collaborations get filed under the artist of your choice, etc.
Why on Earth isn't this how things are done already? Has this discussion never happened before? Anyone? My only guess is: nobody cares enough to go through the effort. Which is a shame because it doesn't really seem like a lot of work.
PLEASE NOTE: I am not sugesting that Rockbox add support for a unique tagging system that nobody else uses. I'm simply wondering why nobody uses it.
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If you ask me ID3 tags aren't used to their fullest potential at all.
Even though we have track numbers within ID3 tags, we still resort to adding the track number in the file name to be able to have an album in the correct order rather than have the tracks sorted out alphabeticaly.
Another problematic issue is having a "feat. artist". For example, having the artist as "50 Cent feat. Eminem" (it's the only thing I could think of right now) would cause problems when using a data base. This causes having two entries; "50 cent" and "50 cent feat. Eminem". Soloution? add the featured artist at the end of the title. But then that looks ugly, and doesn't look like it should.
Why not have a feat. ID3 tag?
But forget about tags that don't exist. So many tags already exist, and very very few programs/ hardware (eg DAPs) make use of the existing tags. Rockbox makes it possible to view what ever tag you need.
Anyway, back to your problem. I suggest you keep the "artist" name in the ID3 normal (eg Bob Dylan), but have the file name as "Dylan, Bob".
When you browse, it's sorted the way you want, and in the WPS, you don't get the commas, and doesn't look like you're looking at the yellow pages.
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I think it would be useful for the id3 database generator to move the "the"s to the end too, or ignore them (even though the band is The Clash, they show up under "C"). That way, it would work more like most of my other music software (iTunes, Winamp, Mediamonkey), works.
I added it as a feature request on the wiki some time ago. Perhaps I'll try the patch, but I have to first figure out how to make my own Rockbox.
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To be honest, I first became aware of this feature while I was browsing my friend's iPod. After that I made the request here in the forums, and bk was kind enough to provide the patch.
Since Rockbox is mainly used through the file browser, the patch was the perfect soloution for sorting folders with disregard to "The".
The only thing I see that's keeping this patch from being commited to CVS is that it doesn't add an option to turn this feature on or off. If someone can add such an option to the RB menu, maybe we can have this commited to CVS.
Regarding the database, it shouldn't be a problem at all to have this implemented. Only TagCache is fairly new, so just wait for a bit. I'm sure someone will come up with a soloution.
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Actually, saab, a "File Under" tag would take care of the "featured artist" problem too. In your example, the artist would be "50 Cent feat. Eminem" and the File Under would be either "50 Cent" or "Fifty Cent" (depending on whether you wanted it sorted literally with numbers or phonetically (that's another great option I'd like to have!).
But actually I'm fine with my Lastname, Firstname filenames and tags and don't really have a problem to solve per se. I was just wondering aloud why I should have to develop a system that's "weird" to make myself happy, instead of there being a way to make everyone happy with the same system.
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Really, with the arbitrary tags in WPS patch (if it were updated to allow arbitrary tags in TagCache, maybe a user-defined list of tags beyond the basic set to search for) one could fairly easily implement a "File Under" tag for Rockbox with it being completely optional and not affecting users who doesn't use it at all. You could even go beyond that to have File_Under_Album and File_Under_Artist and File_Under_Genre tags.
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I'm not advocating Rockbox-only tagging systems because I, and I suspect most others, use other software to play our music too. From other DAP firmware (sorry, it happens!) to PC software. For example, if my music sorts differently on my Rockbox-enabled DAP than it does in Amarok, I think I would have actually made things harder on myself than if I'd just left things alone.
I could, I suppose, use Rockbox as a starting point for launching a new standard in tagging conventions, which could eventually spread to all software and firmware, but frankly I'm not really sure that's the best use of this project. Or even remotely likely. I guess deep down I'm pretty defeatist on this topic. So it goes.
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Well it seems to me it's better to be bullheaded and figure out how YOU want to sort your files, then stop using things that can't be bent to your will. But then, I'm an ornery sorta person.
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With all of this talk about display names vs. sort names, and "file under" tags, I'm surprised no one has mentioned that this already exists in the id3 spec. No need to come up with a new system, or anything rockbox specific. Not a whole lot of other programs use/recognise the sorting tags yet, but it is compatible with those that have implemented similar features, and it's invisible to those who don't use it. Just sort by the sorting tags if they exist, and by the "standard" tags if they don't. (always display using the "standard" tag of course.)
for id3, you'll want to use:
'TSOP' -- Performer Sort Order
'TSOA' -- Album Sort Order
'TSOT' -- Title Sort Order
and if you really want to be compatible with systems that started working on this problem before direct id3 support...
'XSOP' 'XSOA' and 'XSOT' were the experimental predecessors of the same tags. There's probably enough of these stil arround that's it's worth supporting them as well.
as for the vorbis/flac equivalent... 'ARTISTSORT', 'ALBUMSORT', and 'TITLESORT' seem to be gaining some ground.
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As I said, software/hardware doesn't take full advantage of ID3's true pottential
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I rename my folders (but not the actual song tags) to this:
Artist (The)
except in cases where i'd consider "the" to be a part of the phrase (or, is accentuated) and not a modifier...
"Who (The)" doesn't sound quite right ;-)
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I just chopped off "The " from the folder names. Except for "The The" which didn't seem right. :)
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I just have them listed as "The Police" or "The Lisa Marr Experiment" and don't worry about it :D
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Oddly enough, I like having all my "The" bands clumped together. But, I'm strange.
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Oddly enough, I like having all my "The" bands clumped together. But, I'm strange.
There's an arabic proverb that closely translates to: "admitting one selve's true strength (in this case quirkeness) is a vertue" :p
It's not that easy to translate, I tried to keep it as close to context as possible, but beleive me, it applies in this situation! :D
By no means is this ment to be disrespectfull!
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That being said, I do agree it'd be nice to have a sorting method.
It seems that in the future tagcache could index by TSOP if present, then XSOP if the first isn't found, then the regular artist tag if neither of those is found (of course always displaying the Artist tag). That would be maximum compatibility, not require anyone to go out of their way to use special tags, and solve everyone's problems, 'eh?
:)
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For me this is not a real problem.
My musical tastes aren't fully oriented to "english-named" artists.
So, I have artists beginnin with "the" (english), but also with "i" or "le" (italian), "les" (french), "los" (espanol, portoges), "die" (german)...
So, why put a similar english-centric option in RB? ;)
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Did you not read about the TSOP / XSOP method? It'd be entirely language independent.
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Personally I would never remove the "The" from band names.
I think this is a confusion between "the" the definite article and "The" the part of a proper noun.
Why would you trim (or ignore) part of a proper noun?
Sorry for the off topic.
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I think it comes down to personal preference. When you wanna hear "Roxanne" do you instantly think "P" for "Police" or "T" for "The Police"? Your answer to that quesion will determine if you're a The-er or an Anti-The-Er. Neither is right or wrong, really. I think of "The Police" so I leave the "The" in and add it when I notice it's missing.
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Re: Llorean--I think adding TSOP/XSOP support would be great. But let's not forget Vorbis (and its different method, mentioned earlier)!
Others: Although it is ultimately a personal choice whether or not to use a standard organizational system, omitting "a" and "the" is very standard thing to do. It's not confusion over definite articles and proper nouns--bookstores do it, libraries do it, record stores do it, APA-style footnotes and endnotes do it, and they have done it this way for many many years, long before ID3 existed. I'm probably just more sensitive about it because I once worked in a record store. It's not bad or wrong to file everyone under "T", but a standard organizational method does exist, and that's not it.
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Well, I was just referring to it as TSOP/XSOP for MP3.
For Vorbis, and other formats, you'd use appropriate equivalents.
For formats that don't have an equivalent, I'm sure many support multiple "comment" fields. In those you could create a comment with a certain prefix, or something and use that. An informal method.