Alpha Group for Albums sorted by Artist?

[Briain]

(06-01-2016 15:06)simoncn Wrote:  

(06-01-2016 14:34)Briain Wrote:  Are you thinking that navigating into the albums container, then after opening the 'Z' sub-container you would find the album 'Afterburner' (by ZZ Top), for example, or am I totally misunderstanding the request (I'm assuming you aren't suggesting that, but I'm just using that to highlight my confusion over what is being proposed)?

Yes, this is what is being proposed if you have set Album.sortTags={Artist, Album}.

I suspect you are not the only person who would find this surprising.

I think that I can see what's being requested; you select artist, then apply an alphanumeric filter on the first character of the artist's name (like all the 'Z' ones in my ZZ Top example), then show all albums (but then sorted alphabetically, by the album name) that the above filtration spits out. Personally - based on my own usage patterns - I can't quite think why this would be very useful, unless you'd forgotten the entire name of the artist, but knew it started with a 'Z', (for example) and would then recognise the album by its cover art; not a very frequently required feature, I'd have thought.

Assuming that to be the case, perhaps a better way would be to select 'artists' then have a filter field in which you could type the first character (or indeed the first few characters) then select the album filter (to show all the album names that complied with that artist filter part-entry)? So, if you had tagged all your artists in the form 'David Bowie' (as opposed to 'Bowie, David') and knew you wanted to hear an album by someone called 'Dave' or 'David', but couldn't remember his full name, you could select artist, then type 'DAV' in the filter box, then it would show all the albums whose artist began with 'DAV'.

Okay, it could be quite fun, but speaking personally, I doubt that I'd ever use it in that form, but if pondering a feature such as this, perhaps an even better way [than developing it from the output from an alpha-grouping filter based on the first - or first few - characters] would instead be an entry field such that you could type 'dav' (for example) then it showed all the albums 'under' that filter (so more like *dav*, in effect). That way, you'd see all albums where the artist contained the letters 'dav' (so all albums by David Bowie, Bowie, David and Miles Davis would appear).

To be honest, the entire concept makes my head spin, but that's not entirely surprising given the great age of my head, how few brain cells within it remain functional and also my tenancy to intake fine red wines from dawn 'til dusk! Perhaps I'm best sticking with an LP12 and a long stick to both cue the tonearm and poke the volume up/down buttons on my KK (which is now almost as obsolete as I am, according to certain people from the Eaglesham area)

Bri