Rejection of "ignore the" patch (split from the Evil_G unsupported build thread)

[lalittle]

The ignore the patch is not included because the dev's rejected it, meaning that it is not likely to ever be included in SVN.

When you say "rejected," do you mean they decided it wasn't something that they thought was necessary?  If so, that seems really odd to me.  I'd think that EVERYBODY who uses the database view would want this.

I tried to find out more information on this, but I couldn't -- it's hard to search for issues where one of the search terms is the word "the."

Thanks,

Larry

[magnumforce2006]

The ignore the patch is not included because the dev's rejected it, meaning that it is not likely to ever be included in SVN.

When you say "rejected," do you mean they decided it wasn't something that they thought was necessary?  If so, that seems really odd to me.  I'd think that EVERYBODY who uses the database view would want this.

I'm puzzled about this as well  

[Llorean]

It's not the right way to solve the problem.

The proper solution is this:
There are in many tagging formats two tags each for Title, Artist, and Album. One for display, and one for use in sorting. If you want The to be ignored, for the sorting tag, you put "Blah, The" instead of "The Blah" (which you use for the display tag).

So a correct solution would be for someone to make a patch to use all of the tags effectively, rather than for it to intentionaly ignore a string of characters.

Until then, simply tag your files "Blah, The" if you want "The" not to be used in the search.

[magnumforce2006]

It's not the right way to solve the problem.

The proper solution is this:
There are in many tagging formats two tags each for Title, Artist, and Album. One for display, and one for use in sorting. If you want The to be ignored, for the sorting tag, you put "Blah, The" instead of "The Blah" (which you use for the display tag).

So a correct solution would be for someone to make a patch to use all of the tags effectively, rather than for it to intentionaly ignore a string of characters.

Until then, simply tag your files "Blah, The" if you want "The" not to be used in the search.

This is not the proper formatting for those artists, however, and will screw up many last.fm submissions.

[Llorean]

Then write the patch to use both the Sort and Display tags.

A halfway solution should not be accepted just because nobody who wants to use it can be bothered to do it the right way.

[magnumforce2006]

Then write the patch to use both the Sort and Display tags.

A halfway solution should not be accepted just because nobody who wants to use it can be bothered to do it the right way.

And who deems this the "right way?" Why is shifting around a "the" field somehow sacrilege? I just don't really understand your reasoning.

Additionally, what do you even mean by sort and display tags? ID3V1 vs V2?

[Yotto]

Because it's arbitrary, and only works for one language (or maybe a couple, I'm not language... ologist).  Are you willing to code for Spanish, French, Italian... Maybe have a section where you can choose the language?  What about people who have multiple languages in their song titles?  What about Americans who would never be able to find "Bamba, La" because they don't think of that as the song title?

That's the first problem I can see, thinking about this for 5 seconds.  The "Right way" Llorean's talking about isn't "Keep all your songs that start with 'the' together," it's "Think up a more intelligent way to sort the songs that fixes the problem."

[lalittle]

It's not the right way to solve the problem.

So you're saying that while you're in favor of (or at least don't object to) the behavior that's being sought, it's the particular method that you disagree with, correct?

I'm still confused about what it is you dislike about the concept of "ignoring" certain text strings (plus one space) that appear at the beginning of the tag.  Isn't this literally the concept behind what needs to be done in order to sort the tags properly?  In JR Media Center, the option for this is called "Ignore articles (a, an, the)," and it works perfectly.  The articles are still present, but the sort order is correct.

Thanks for clarification,

Larry

[magnumforce2006]

All I'm saying you guys, is that the default apple firmware and my old rio firmware, AND the creative players (I believe) all have databases with this sorting behavior.

It's what a lot of people are accustomed to, and I don't quite understand the resistance against it... Different languages? How would this adversely affect those users? And to add on to all of that... why not just make it an option? If you don't want that sorting behavior, don't use it.

I'm not a programmer so I'll stop there, because I know I really have no leverage in arguments due to that fact.

[Llorean]

Your method: Clutters the code to solve the problem for ONE language in a firmware that supports many, and it does so in a manner that can conflict if for some albums you consider "The" a valid part of the sorting, while for others you don't (this is possible in many music collections).

My method: Works for any language or combination of languages, uses existing standards, and adds greater flexibility up to and including adding in one swoop the possibility to ignore The, ignore any other part of the title you want, have albums by various artists show up as a single album, have two disk sets have their disks labelled properly but still show up as a single album, all with one "feature".

The Rockbox developers decide what the "Right" way is, and reject patches that aren't the "Right" way because the patch tracker is the ROCKBOX patch tracker. It's for submitting patches to be included, and if we don't want them, they get rejected and closed. And by "Right" I mean "The way that is Right for Rockbox." Just because someone else chose to do it a different way is absolutely NO argument for Rockbox to use a halfway measure.

And no, I do not mean "ID3v1 vs ID3v2". Do some research in the tagging formats, or read the explanation I've given several times before when this same subject has come up. I'm getting tired of repeating myself on the same topic. See information on the TSOP, TSOT, and TSOA tags for ID3v2.4, and their equivalent tags in other tagging specs.

[lalittle]

I'm pretty convinced I'm missing a fundamental piece of the "The" issue here because I'm honestly confused by some of the points being made.

Your method: Clutters the code to solve the problem for ONE language in a firmware that supports many,

I don't understand what constitutes "clutters the code."  Why is this particular feature considered "clutter" any more than any other aspect of the code that doesn't necessarily apply to everybody?  Rockbox contains lots of features that are of absolutely no interest to me personally, but I don't consider these things to be "clutter" just because I don't use them.

Also, why couldn't the patch be made to work in any language?  This is what other programs do.  Isn't it just a matter of adding a little extra code so that Rockbox takes into account what language you're using and acts appropriately?  It only has to do this for one to three words (the, a, an).  If the patch did this for all languages supported by Rockbox, would this make it a viable patch to the developers?

and it does so in a manner that can conflict if for some albums you consider "The" a valid part of the sorting, while for others you don't (this is possible in many music collections).

It seems really odd to give this weight when the VAST majority of artists/albums/songs will not conflict with the idea of sorting without the "The."  I assume that there are such examples, but I can't think of any, and I find it strange to give the .0001% of albums so much weight as to use it as one reason to reject this feature.  That said, nobody is saying that this feature shouldn't be disable-able for those that don't want to use it.

Just because someone else chose to do it a different way is absolutely NO argument for Rockbox to use a halfway measure.

Isn't it?  Doesn't the fact that so many other applications DO offer this feature essentially imply that a LOT of people want and use it?  The argument is not "others do it so we should also."  Rather, the argument is "others do it because it makes sense."  The reason iTunes and Media Center and iPod etc. offer this feature is because the commonly accepted standard is that you don't utilize articles (the, a, an) at the beginning of a "title" when sorting.

That aside, isn't the idea of Rockbox to offer MORE features in this regard -- i.e. to allow users to do things that you wouldn't otherwise be able to do?  I understand that the Rockbox developers get to make these decisions, but don't the general public's opinions factor into this?  I think this is where I'm missing something, so forgive me if the answer to this seems obvious to anybody.  I'm just trying to fully understand the conversation.

Llorean -- are you saying that we should tag material with "Name, The" rather than "The Name"?  It sounded like you were saying we should only do this as a temporary fix, but I'm not clear on this.  I strongly disagree with the idea of tagging everything with "Name, The."  Artists/albums/songs should be tagged as they appear on the album, which means not having to use the "comma" system to get them to sort properly.

Another thing I'm confused about is the idea of "sort" and "display" tags.  Are you saying that this is part of the native tag structure -- i.e. is this the way programs like iTunes and Media Center already work, or is this something that has to be "done" in order to utilize this feature?  If this is already part of the way it works, than I would agree that the patch should utilize this.  If this is something that has to be done, however, it seems like a moot point.  The sorting should work on tags in their "native" structure -- i.e. it should work on the tags that the popular programs create by default.

I apologize if this has been discussed before, or if I'm missing something that seems obvious to others.  I did try searching the forums, but I was unable to turn up the answers I was looking for.

Thanks again for any clarification,

Larry

[Llorean]

"Something else does it this way" is not an argument. This is final. Rockbox has stated this several timed: We do things the way WE think is the right way.

Just because the majority wants it doesn't mean we should do it. WE are writing the software, not you. You don't pay for it. You don't buy it. You have NO pull in the direction it goes. What gets done is the way the people writing the software feel it should work. They chose to reject the patch because they think it's the wrong solution. The majority has wanted Album Art for a long time. The patch has existed for a long time. It has worked, reliably, for a long time. You'll notice it hasn't been committed because it's not the RIGHT way yet. Rockbox is given away free, and things are done to please the users, but you are not customers. The designers don't depend on you, and if they feel something doesn't work the way they want it to, they won't do it no matter how much you pester or complain (see the Volume % vs Volume dB debate).

Files have two tags for Artist. A Display tag, and a Sort tag.

Display could say "The Name", and sort could say "Name, The". You would never, ever SEE "Name, The", but when the list is organized, "The Name" shows up where "Name, The" fits in the list, because it sorts by the sort tag, and displays the display tag.

iTunes does not make use of this tag, but it's a part of the several standards, and solves FAR more problems, without having to make arbitrary decisions as to what to ignore.

And "Clutter" is code that does something that a user can avoid easily just by having their files properly tagged. "Clutter" is a solution that solves only an aspect of a problem in a manner that can create other problems.

[lalittle]

Files have two tags for Artist. A Display tag, and a Sort tag.

Display could say "The Name", and sort could say "Name, The". You would never, ever SEE "Name, The", but when the list is organized, "The Name" shows up where "Name, The" fits in the list, because it sorts by the sort tag, and displays the display tag.

I've never heard of this being part part of the ID3v1 and/or ID3v2 mp3 tagging standards before, so I didn't know about this.  That said, I'm confused how/where the "sort" tag ends up set to "Name, The" instead of "The Name."  How is the order of words in the "sort" tag defined?  You're not advocating that users set this manually, are you?

Thanks,

Larry

[Llorean]

Yes, I am. It's a user's responsibility to properly tag their files. Or a tagging program could handle this automatically if a good enough tagging program existed, and its authors didn't mind that this solution only applied in English, and could potentially be disastrous for non-English titles if processed at the same time.

[DefineByte]

So TSOP is meant for the artist? The spec doesn't say that; or is performer analogous to artist? Why the need for both then?