Thoughts on "negative indexes"

[beckphotonik]

MinimServer indexing is great if you know what you want but is/can/should there be a way of selecting an index to exclude rather than include items.
For example, I am currently going down the Genre/Subgenre tag route to manage what is displayed on my control point. Rather than select say: Classical>Romantic>Concerto>Piano, it would be nice to be able to say e.g. Classical but Exclude Baroque>Violin and be presented with a list of what's left.
I would appreciate your thoughts and suggestions on this.

[simoncn]

(26-10-2014 14:58)beckphotonik Wrote:  MinimServer indexing is great if you know what you want but is/can/should there be a way of selecting an index to exclude rather than include items.
For example, I am currently going down the Genre/Subgenre tag route to manage what is displayed on my control point. Rather than select say: Classical>Romantic>Concerto>Piano, it would be nice to be able to say e.g. Classical but Exclude Baroque>Violin and be presented with a list of what's left.
I would appreciate your thoughts and suggestions on this.

It would be possible to support this but the user interface is problematical. For example, every tag could have both include and exclude choices but most users wouldn't appreciate this. Another option is to allow specific tags in indexTags to be designated as include/exclude tags, so these tags would have both include and exclude choices wherever they appear and all other tags would have only include choices. Is your requirement specific to Baroque or would you want to see it for all tag choices in all menus?

[beckphotonik]

Thanks for the prompt reply Simon. It's not a requirement as such but nice extension to what is already provided and it would apply to any index tag choice. I can fully appreciate the problems of how it could be implemented from a UI point of view. Personally, when I sit down to listen to music with no specific thought in mind, I would find it advantageous to exclude what I am not in the mood for that day rather than have to search through a plethora of music that does not fit the bill.

[simoncn]

(26-10-2014 16:14)beckphotonik Wrote:  Thanks for the prompt reply Simon. It's not a requirement as such but nice extension to what is already provided and it would apply to any index tag choice. I can fully appreciate the problems of how it could be implemented from a UI point of view. Personally, when I sit down to listen to music with no specific thought in mind, I would find it advantageous to exclude what I am not in the mood for that day rather than have to search through a plethora of music that does not fit the bill.

If you are deciding between include and exclude on a tag-by-tag and day-by-day basis, I think the only way to support this in the UI would be to duplicate every tag choice with an include and exclude version. For example, instead of Genre you would see Genre+ and Genre- and selecting Genre- would give you choices like Baroque- and Classical-.

[beckphotonik]

(26-10-2014 18:34)simoncn Wrote:  

(26-10-2014 16:14)beckphotonik Wrote:  Thanks for the prompt reply Simon. It's not a requirement as such but nice extension to what is already provided and it would apply to any index tag choice. I can fully appreciate the problems of how it could be implemented from a UI point of view. Personally, when I sit down to listen to music with no specific thought in mind, I would find it advantageous to exclude what I am not in the mood for that day rather than have to search through a plethora of music that does not fit the bill.

If you are deciding between include and exclude on a tag-by-tag and day-by-day basis, I think the only way to support this in the UI would be to duplicate every tag choice with an include and exclude version. For example, instead of Genre you would see Genre+ and Genre- and selecting Genre- would give you choices like Baroque- and Classical-.

Sounds a reasonable solution to me. If you get some positive feedback on this, could you please consider including it in a future release.

[Dieter Stockert]

(26-10-2014 14:58)beckphotonik Wrote:  should there be a way of selecting an index to exclude rather than include items

I like the idea.