Relative path names inside m3u playlists : possible ?

[Andre Gosselin]

(21-10-2016 19:24)DavidHB Wrote:  

(21-10-2016 15:23)Andre Gosselin Wrote:  I am just curious about this. I would like to know if I can permanently count on this feature with minimserver on windows.

Removing the drive letter prefix (C:, C:\ or whatever in Windows) makes the specified absolute path into a relative path commencing in the current directory. If that is what you want, fair enough, but it does take a fair amount of mental attention and effort to keep track.

The purpose of the folder structure I described in my previous post is to maintain a more or less consistent structure, which makes this process a good deal easier. If playlists are always in the same place relative to the top level music folder, the 'relative' part of the path to each listed track will be the same. Personally, I prefer the better known (and explicit) conventions of using '.\' to refer to the current directory and '..\' to refer to the parent directory to just omitting the drive letters. These also work in the Unix type systems typically installed on NASs (though with forward slashes of course).

All these conventions are part of the relevant file system(s); they are not features of MinimServer, which, like any other application, has to comply with them.

David

David,
Thanks for the time taken to discuss about this subject in a very informed and elaborated way.

First about why omitting the windows drive letter from the playlist contents works in my case, which was the question I asked. I now clearly understand that if, on windows, a playlist entry reads "/a/b/c/...", the path name is taken to be relative to the drive storing the m3u playlist. If the playlist is stored in the C: drive, minimserver will look for file with full path name "C:/a/b/c/...". If stored on a M: drive, it will look for path name "M:/a/b/c/...", etc. I verified this my moving my playlists to drive C:, while the music files were left in an M: drive. Minim could'nt find any music file referred to by the playlists.

Now for the use of relative "../../.." prefixes in the path names inside a playlist. I am not a stong supporter of this usage, for the following reasons. As I have a huge number of playlists (> 15,000), it is clearly impossible to manage them all in a "flat" list inside a single directory. Browsing this directory through the top-level Minimsever "Playlists" index would be painfully slow. I rather store them inside a "playlists" hierarchy divided along composers and then composition types, and possibly more subdirectories according whatever groupings you may like. For ex., in the case of J.S Bach:

Code:

playlists/
    ...
   Bach, J.S./
      Catalogue/
        BWV-001-0099/
          BWV 0001 - Cantata "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern" - Koopman.m3u
          BWV 0001 - Cantata "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern" - Richter.m3u
        ...
      Cantatas/
         BWV 0001 - Cantata "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern" - Koopman.m3u
         BWV 0001 - Cantata "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern" - Richter.m3u
        ...

The above "playlists" folder can be entered as one of the MinimServer "contentDir" directories, and then browsed as a hierarchy in your UPnP control point by going to the MinimServer "[Folder view]".

Two important points must be underlined here.
1- MinimServer will let you browse the above "playlists" hierarchy, folder by folder, up and down. To my knowledge, MinimServer is the only music server that allows that. All others that I have tried will scan the folder hierarchy for playlists, but will then present to the control point all the found playlists at the same level inside an endless flat list. This completely defeats the purpose of managing the playlists inside a hierarchy, and makes the hierarchy totally useless. In my opinion, this MinimServer feature has too often been underrated, if not ignored, even if it allows one of the best way to organize your playlists and build all sorts of meaningfull groupings inside your music library.

2- Once a playslist has been created, it can be duplicated it in any number of subdirectories directories that suit your taste. For ex., the playlist shown above in the "Catalogue" directory and holding the BWV 0001 performance by Koopman was duplicated in another "Cantatas" directory specific to the Bach cantatas. It could as well be duplicated inside a "Favorite Bach Cantatas" directory, a "Favorite Cantatas" directory holding playlists for many different composers like Bach, Telemann, Handel, etc.
In order to duplicate a playlist inside any subdirectory at any level of the "playlists" directory, you must make sure that the path names stored inside the playlist will remain valid whatever the level of the subdirectory into which it is copied. Fully relative path names (using "../../ ..." prefixes) will make this impossible, because the pathnames will needed to be adjusted according to the "deepness" of the subdirectory holding the playlist relative to the music files. Tying the path names to the the deepness of the playlist in the file system amounts to creating a new playlist for each different level, instead of a simple copy.

This explains why I much prefer the use of "lightly" relative pathnames inside playlists stored on the same file system as the music files they refer to, and omitting the drive letter (on windows). Such playlists can be used on linux, provided that forward slashes are used inside path names and that the file system is correctly mounted.

I hope that this can throw light on my use of playlists in MinimServer, and the reason of my post in the first place.

Regards to all,
André