Hi all
I'm on the verge of ordering my first SB3 (server's built, am now
ripping!) and have been thinking about how to differentiate between my
stuff, my gf's stuff, and the stuff we both have. _'This_thread'
(http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18164)_ seems to be
along the same lines of what I was thinking... at the risk of
re-treading old ground:
*Collections*. ('Libraries' would work too, but I think 'Collections'
is slightly more appropriate :)
A *collection* is simply a set of songs. I might define:
- "Everything" = All music
- "Oktup's songs" = All music WHERE owner CONTAINS oktup
(or maybe)
- "Oktup's songs" = All music WHERE filepath CONTAINS music/oktup/
And so on for other users. But there's nothing to stop you creating
collections for other purposes, too, for example:
- "Polite Company" = All music WHERE genre DOESN'T CONTAIN explicit
AND comments DOESN'T CONTAIN explicit
- "Retroelectro" = All music WHERE year STARTS WITH 198 AND genre IS
IN electro, synthpop, new-wave
- "So last century" = All music WHERE year BEFORE 2000
So basically, collections are pretty much like Smart Playlists. The
difference being, when you pick one, all songs *not* in that collection
no longer exist (or so it seems). Whereas playlists live 'on top' of
your library, collections 'become' your library.
So, if I go to "Change Collection" on my Squeezebox and select "Oktup's
songs", I can browse around the albums, play random tracks etc, without
ever coming across any of my gf's stuff. If I choose the "Polite
Company" collection, I can hand over the remote and leave the room,
safe in the knowledge that the vicar won't accidentally stumble across
"Killing in the Name Of". And so on.
>From a technical POV, this would be enacted by using views on the
database, eg by issuing a CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW bedroom_squeezebox AS
SELECT * FROM whatever WHERE [my_collection_parameters].
The criteria defined for Collections could also be used to filter
selections at any stage of browsing - in effect, becoming Smart
Playlists. So I might Browse Artists, pick They Might Be Giants, then
choose to 'Filter By' 'So Last Century' (leaving me with all TMBG music
released before 2000), then filter again by 'Polite Company', 'Most
Recently Played' and so on. If I 'over-specify' and end up with no
matching songs, I'll get a notification, and will be backed out a
level. I can obviously step back out manually, if desired, eventually
ending up back with the full set of whatever 'root collection' I had
currently selected.
Similar, but complementary, would be 'ownership' in the security sense,
where every item has an owner(s) and can be made public/shared/private
as appropriate. But I'll stop waffling for now. Does that make sense?
Is it intuitive or rubbish? Any improvements?
--
oktup
------------------------------------------------------------------------
oktup's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1117
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=21108
_______________________________________________
Discuss mailing list
Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com
http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
