Bill> If the user checks for browsing on Composer or conductor, > should that contributor still be added to the artist > tag values for an artist browse?
Ceejay> I can see that the scheme gives more flexibility, > though I was hoping to keep it simple (to code and to use!) > and I'm not sure this buys a lot. > Given a capability to browse on Composer/conductor/band, > I'd have thought you could drop the functionality > to merge these tags with "artist", though > backwards compatibility is of course a good thing. I agree that it would be simple and clean to drop the merge capability. I asked because it hadn't been settled. > If you are narrowing down your selection I think it is critical to show the reduced data set as you go... There is a distinction here between the web interface and the SB/remote interface. On a webpage, we can show the number of albums, artists, tracks that match. And you might as well display some values on the web page. On the SB display, you can't show much and scrolling takes more time than does scanning down the web page. How about incorporating the number of matches into the menu choices: Browse again for 6 Albums Browse again for 75 Songs (Tracks) Browse Again for 3 Conductors ... With this feedback, you can see how the search is going at each stage and pick the best next step. If you want to tack a list of matching albums on after the browse choices, OK. For the web interface, I think displaying a list of Albums (or Tracks if you have narrowed it to one Album) is reasonable. > Agreed that if you ever select an album on your list, it > must be time to drop into the tracks. Good. Allowing the user to browse tracks at any stage gives him a way to choose whether to end with an album or a track. Bill> The user should be able to press the "Play" or "Add" > buttons to play the displayed Track or Album. However, > the selections the user has already made may eliminate > some tracks because they don't have the right tag values. > That is how "Browse Artist" works now. That is how I > think the multi-level browse should work. Ceejay> OK, this is definitely more complex than I was > thinking of but I think I can see where you are going. Well, the SS does this logic for Browses now. I makes sense and it is consistent with what's being done now. I think you are building up the role of the Album in a way that is not necessary. > This note has reminded me of an unstated assumption that > we should check. Is is safe to assume that all of the > tracks within a single album will always have the same tags? > In my collection I have ensured that this is ALWAYS > the case, because I can foresee some nasty sideeffects > were it to be otherwise. It would certainly simplify > things here if we could assume it. So far I've thought > of just one case where this might realistically occur > - you have an album of short songs (not long enought > to be tagged as Albums in their own right) with different > singers. Does this browser need to take this into account? It is fairly common for the tags to be different for tracks on one classical CD. I recommended a Sony CD recently with an excellent performance of Beethoven's 4th symphony by Bruno Walter and an excellent performance of Beethoven's 8th symphony by George Szell. And it is common for a CD to have a concerto and a sonata. Same soloist but no conductor and orchestra for the sonata. Sometimes a CD has a symphony and a concerto. Sometimes a Cd has several symphonies or concerti with different composers, conductors, soloists and orchestras. You might be careful to creat a different album name for each work but not everyone knows to do that or will make the effort. It isn't a safe assumption for SS to make. Outside classical music, there are lots of Songbook CDs where the greatest hits of a composer like Gershwin, Porter or Berlin (or someone who is not yet dead) are song by various artists. You would want to keep the same album name for all tracks because you want to be able to find and play all the songs from the album. Maybe you could use the composer, but the name of the songbook is the natural way to do it. SS does rely on the album name as a way to group tracks and collect properties. And you have gone farther in building a conceptual model. I think that extending the browse facilities in SS will go better if you don't organize browsing around your concept of an album. If you browse tags in a uniform way for all (browsable) tags, you get a better interface and one that handles things like tag values that are not the same for every track in an album. And it can better handle tracks with multiple values for a tag such as Artist. > So, yes, present the same list of searchable tags each time. > The coding might well have to impose a limit on the number > of levels of search you can do, though. Showing the number of Albums, etc. left to browse would help the user get to the end and stop there. It seems as though we are converging on a detailed proposal. Bill -- Listener ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Listener's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2508 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18767 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
