Rockbox General > Rockbox General Discussion
Option to display albums in Database by year?
Llorean:
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 [quoute]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.[/quote] 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.
Anyway, sorry for making assumptions about what you were saying.
KindOfBlues71:
--- Quote from: Llorean ---I never stated "You can't sort by year, then by Album". You can, and have been able to for quite some time.
--- End quote ---
And I never stated that you did! Please re-read my post...
--- Quote ---I stated that no information is stored about an album.
--- End quote ---
Right, metadata is stored in the track - I got it. I stated several times that I understood. You said that an album name is a series of letters that several songs have in common, too. Same goes for artist, right? And every other tag, right?
--- Quote ---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.
--- End quote ---
No, this is how Rockbox works right now when I select Year. I've stated many times in this thread that is not what I want to do! I even posted earlier today exactly what I was wanting to do, sort albums chronologically by year, and even gave an example. I don't want to sort by one year, two years, ten years, or even a decade. I want the sorting built-in so that when I click (from Main Menu) Database > Artist > The Beatles, I get the albums listed in chronological order by year. Again, I don't want to click
Database > Year > 1969 > The Beatles > Abbey Road, nor do I want to click Year > 1969 > Abbey Road. I want to click Database > Artist > The Beatles and see all the Beatles albums currently in my iPod displayed in chronological order by year.
--- Quote ---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.
--- End quote ---
In my first post I stated I did a lot of searching for info on sorting albums chronologically by year, for about a week straight. Many times people simply said no, but without an explanation. My goal is to find out why and then try and figure out how to make it happen, whether by feature request or by patch. Since people have posted questions about it there is obviously some interest in this type of sorting. And I DO want the database to care about the year tag. I want it to care so damn much that it lists albums in chronological order by year when I select, for example, (from the Main Menu) Database > Artists > The Beatles!
--- Quote ---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.
--- End quote ---
So I can create nearly any hierarchy of tags and use it....except to do exactly what I'm wanting it to do: sort albums chronologically by year by clicking (from Main Menu) Database > Artists > The Beatles.
We are obviously not understanding one another and our posts are going in circles. I've read lots of your posts in other topics and you're an admin for a reason, but you're just not understanding my point I guess.
Btw, I found something in the tagtree.c file that may explain things, guided there from another post about this very same issue. I'll post about it tomorrow because I'm spent. We'll continue tomorrow, Llorean.
safetydan:
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=10689.105
If 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.
pixelma:
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
roolku:
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.
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 modification
con:
- needs to be populated manually
- "uses up" a tag
2) implement sort fields where you put the year before the album name
pro:
- quite flexible solution
con:
- 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 implement
con:
- 3a) has a performance penalty - need to be tested how severe
4) allow format strings to be used for filters.
pro:
- most flexible
con:
- 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.
Anyway, just a few thoughts, based on my understanding on how the database works in rockbox - not necessarily a complete list.
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