Default Database Screen

[GodEater]

We're looking at refactoring the current tagnavi file which is responsible for the default layout of the "Database" screen in Rockbox.

It may be that a lot of you out there have customised your tagnavi files in interesting ways, but there's currently no formal way to share these with other users, and so we have no visiblity of changes people make.

It's also the case that the tagnavi syntax takes a bit of getting used to, so some users may be daunted by the prospect of trying to change it, and would welcome submissions from other more capable users that provide more complex ways of viewing their music / podcasts.

If you fall into either of these cases, please give us a "Yes" above, so that we can measure interest in this. It's possible going forward that we may find a way to share these customisations in the same way we do with themes at the moment - but only if there is sufficient interest.

If you don't use the database at all, could you please answer with the latter option, since we don't want to get a lot of "No" votes from people who never use the feature and skew the results.

Finally, if you're absolutely happy with the way the database is laid out now - please answer no.

Thanks everyone!

[pondlife]

I'd find it useful if multiple tagnavi.config files could be used as the root menu.  IIUC, currently they can only be included as submenus (e.g. under "Custom").

Maybe have the database read tagnavi.* or tag*.config and auto-concatenate them?  Does a tagnavi change require a database rebuild?

pondlife

[Llorean]

Tagnavi changes shouldn't require a database rebuild. The tagnavi basically just tells it what order to run through the existing database files.

Maybe concatenate tagnavi.1.config, tagnavi.2.config, tagnavi.3.config, etc?

[bascule]

Count me in if you need a hand with setting up examples or tutorials etc.
As an enthusiastic database user since day one (because of coming to Rockbox from the Rio Karma) and a sometime-maintainer of the DataBase wiki page, I'd like to be involved.

[GodEater]

I'm amazed at the lack of attention this thread has drawn from our user base

[ThaCrip]

well i used the database here and there but i answered 'no' simply because the database is 'good enough' for me as is.

in fact, i never knew you could customize that... but even if you can, i cant really think of a better more efficient way off the top of my head to make it any better than it currently is.

so take this post for whatever it's worth

[pabouk]

Currently I am using special trees under the custom menu item:
- for classical music: sorted by author (interpreter), by composer, by work
- for podcasts: because of some misuse of original tag meanings
  Once I tried to show only unlistened podcasts but it did not work as I expected.

I would prefer a way to mark manually some podcasts as to be listened while to mark others to skip but playlists are probably more suitable for this.

I would welcome a better way how to add custom items to the man database menu without modifying tagnavi.config (because of updates). Using only the custom submenu is not very practical.

[grantmasterflash]

I'm amazed at the lack of attention this thread has drawn from our user base

Maybe a lot of users don't know what "tagnavi" is and since the question says "Would you like to customize your tagnavi?", they are just skipping over it.  Then again, the topic title says "Default Database Screen", so that and the first post do give some context.

I didn't know what it was until reading this post and then searching the site for tagnavi, which brought me to this:
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/DataBase

And also looking in the .rockbox folder on my device and viewing the contents of tagnavi.config.

But as for answering the question, now that I know what it is, yes, definitely I think this would be a great feature (and answered the poll as such).  Is the thought to simply make the tagnavi syntax easier to use, or to put some controls in the Rockbox Settings->General Settings-> Database to turn on/off certain Database layout menu items, etc?

I guess this is a slightly different topic, but it would really be nice to get the sorting of Artists without "The " added into the default database settings (like an option that says "Ignore 'The ' in Artist view" -> yes/no, then initialize or reinitialize the db to effect the change).  From my searches, it seems like this is still a manual feature involving either editing your tagnavi.config file and/or applying some sorting patch from Flyspray (#7287) that appears to have quite a long history.  I don't really understand the need for a patch that keys off of extra sort fields in tags, when the standard Artist tag in ID3, Vorbis, whatever could just be parsed for "The " and then use the string after "The " for sorting it in the Artist list.

[Llorean]

Because "The " is very language dependent, and is also not the only word people might commonly wish to ignore - the feature needs to work for everyone, rather than just one word in one language.

[GodEater]

But as for answering the question, now that I know what it is, yes, definitely I think this would be a great feature (and answered the poll as such).  Is the thought to simply make the tagnavi syntax easier to use, or to put some controls in the Rockbox Settings->General Settings-> Database to turn on/off certain Database layout menu items, etc?

No, it's not about making the syntax easier, that would be a seperate piece of work (if it was deemed necessary), or about putting controls in the Menu to turn on/off features, that would be yet another piece.

It's more about changing the content of the tagnavi file which ships with Rockbox by default currently it implement more or different searches from the ones it does at present.

[grantmasterflash]

Because "The " is very language dependent, and is also not the only word people might commonly wish to ignore - the feature needs to work for everyone, rather than just one word in one language.

I understand this point, however, since Rockbox supports many different languages, perhaps the sorting rules could be implemented based on the current language setting of Rockbox and a list of common words in each language that would need to be ignored when sorting the database list.  Or a user-created/-edited config file where you can list the words of your choice that you wish to be ignored.

My real point is that it seems there is a lot that could be done simply based off of very common metadata fields (Artist being the main one), rather than implementing functionality (that only currently works via a patch) that is going to require extensive re-tagging by any user that hasn't had the foresight to add sort fields to their whole collection over the years.

No, it's not about making the syntax easier, that would be a seperate piece of work (if it was deemed necessary), or about putting controls in the Menu to turn on/off features, that would be yet another piece.

It's more about changing the content of the tagnavi file which ships with Rockbox by default currently it implement more or different searches from the ones it does at present.

Guess I still misunderstood what the intent is then.  To be honest I've never really used the "Search by" function, if that's what you're referring to.  I'm more interested in editing out views I don't use (Composer, Genre, etc.), which I can do via the tagnavi.config or tagnavi_custom.config file and the sorting issues I've referred to here.

[Llorean]

It's still limited in that it can't handle multiple languages of files at once (Die, for example, being an article in German but a word you wouldn't want to ignore in English titles or artists).

The solution in the patch not only solves this case, but allows for a greater flexibility in general. And "only currently work via a patch" is going to be true of any method until it's actually implemented well enough to be accepted.

The topic of this thread, though, was about whether the default tagnavi should be changed, and if so, how. It says so in the very first post.

If you'd like less options, then I guess your answer is "yes" you'd like it to be changed.

[grantmasterflash]

It's still limited in that it can't handle multiple languages of files at once (Die, for example, being an article in German but a word you wouldn't want to ignore in English titles or artists).

The solution in the patch not only solves this case, but allows for a greater flexibility in general. And "only currently work via a patch" is going to be true of any method until it's actually implemented well enough to be accepted.

I understand how a patch works, however, this one has been in the works for 2 years and, assuming it gets to a point where it's actually put into the general code, is still only going to resolve the issue for those that have sort tags in their metadata.  It's clearly a good idea to implement support for ArtistSort, AlbumSort, AlbumArtistSort, etc.  I've got a Squeezebox that uses these tags and I use Musicbrainz Picard to tag files, so I understand the usefulness, but I don't think it's going to make much difference for most users, since most only have the standard Artist, Album, etc tags in their files.

This is an issue that has been handled in, for example, gtkpod/libgpod and does not need to be based solely on sort tags.  For example, in gtkpod, you allow the user to set a list of words to be ignored during sorting.  To use your example, if you have multiple 'Die ' German bands and multiple English 'Die ' bands, then it's up to you to decide if you want to put 'Die ' in your list for ignoring during sorting.  I don't think it's going to be very common to have a load of 'Die ' German bands and also have one or more English bands that happen to start their names with the word 'Die ', but of course, it will happen.  But how often?

There may not be a great solution for folks that have lots of bands with names in various languages, but it seems that improving sorting for the majority of scenarios using the most common tags would be better than only improving sorting for people that know a lot about metadata or are just lucky to be using the right tagger.

[Llorean]

Or have read the manual, you mean?

You could extend the argument further by saying the database shouldn't need to require tags at all, but instead work based on a format string provided by the user to interpret filenames.

[GodEater]

Seriously, this argument about not sorting on various common articles has been round and round.

a) It's not what this thread is about, so quit talking about it here.

b) The solution that WILL be implemented in Rockbox's code is using the SORT tags. End of argument. If you wish to re-read the reasons why, please search for the plethora of older posts where this topic was done to death. We are NOT implenting it any other way.