A breakthrough of sorts. I finally get what MrSinatra doesn't understand. But let's hit some lighter notes first:
MrSinatra;368459 Wrote: > couldn't agree more! Yaay lovefest! *hugs* MrSinatra;368459 Wrote: > i also have had certain wishlist features recognized, and guess what it > was? TCMP. Kudos to you for that. I've been in the tech business long enough to know that there's nothing vendors like to do more than blame each other for bugs. And a typical response is to open a bug with all possible vendors hoping that one of them actually fixes it. But in this case, WinAmp is the only one that can fix this. The wait may be long, but you can at least be glad you're waiting in the right line, right? MrSinatra;368459 Wrote: > in your second example, i'm not sure people call anything a comp if its > the same artist on every track Multiple artists with the same name. Not likely but possible. And then regarding the discussion of guessing, I have to lend support to MrSinatra. Let's say someone has a deck of cards and asks you to guess if the top card is black or red. You don't have enough information to make that determination, right? Just like SqueezeCenter when it encounters an album without COMPILATION tags. You can have a system though. You can maybe know what color the last cards were, and get some probabilities. Maybe you can see the bottom card in a reflection on your shoe. So you figure out whether red or black has a greater probability, and then you choose the color with the greatest probability. That's a system that can produce consistent and predictable results, but you're still going to guess wrong sometimes because the underlying fact is you're lacking sufficient data. And I'd call that a guess. MrSinatra;368459 Wrote: > ok, and?....i don't understand at all what you mean here...and what do > you mean by namespace?....but perhaps i'm just not following you here. Imagine designing a database. That database has fields to hold certain types of data. Let's say that this database is missing a field for a fax number. Now, when the guys in data entry need to enter a phone number, they use the phone number field. But every now and then they need to enter a fax number, so they decide to use the phone number field for that too. Suddenly the data in your database isn't as reliable as it once was. You can't say with any certainty whether the data in the phone field is actually a phone number. Now you suddenly have a need for that data to be accurate (let's say it's something legal just to add pressure). Oops. Now the PRIMARY fault lies with the database designer for not including a fax field. Even if he didn't see the need right away, he should have modified the database to include that field later. Depending on database security, there's two things the data entry guys could have done on their own. One is to do exactly what they did, and appropriate a field to do something different than what it was designed for. The second would be to create their own custom field, use it, and tell everyone else to use it. In the first example, they violate the "phone number" namespace, and in the second example, they flaunt authority and pretend to be official database admins. So now let's take a deep dive into extended metaphor. The ID3 database has no fax field, but hardly anyone used the phone field as designed anyway, so that became the de-facto fax field. I'd have done it differently but what's done is done and it's not that big of a deal in my opinion. But what we're talking about (compilation, for those keeping score) is ANOTHER field that's missing: let's say a checkbox for whether it's okay for advertisers and partners to call/fax this number. The guys at Apple said "I've got it! I'll create another field called TCMP and everyone should use it!" And everyone else in the office has been sick and tired of those Apple guys telling them what to do and rolled their eyes. And the guys at WinAmp said "I've got it! If it's okay for advertisers and partners to call, we should all enter (293)582-4921 into the phone number field!" And that's the problem, roughly. WinAmp's method obliterates potentially useful album artist information by forcing all compilations to use the same album artist. And if someone happens to have an album artist that matches the compilation value, who knows what you're supposed to do. The important thing to note is that it's the data that matters, not the software. If the data is unambiguous, then you can always easily convert the database to match another vendor's needs. Once you start polluting the data because of some vendor's harebrained scheme, you're screwed, because now your data is no good. And that's that. I really don't think anyone's mind is going to be changed in this thread so I'm not going to bother checking back. I've done my best. -- CatBus ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CatBus's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7461 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=56078 _______________________________________________ ripping mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/ripping
