Orchestra Tag

[Wammer]

(26-06-2012 09:12)simoncn Wrote:  

(25-06-2012 18:54)Wammer Wrote:  Of course, having a separate Orchestra/Ensemble tag would mean that the Artist field would be blank for any music without a soloist, including most orchestral and much chamber music. Is there any reason why it is advisable or good practice that Artist should always have a value?

I don't think so, as long as you're using MinimServer. In this situation, MinimServer creates an artist value for sending to the control point. If there are Conductor and Orchestra tags, but no Artist tag, the artist value will be "Conductor, Orchestra" (which will change to "Orchestra, Conductor" soon).

At present, this won't work if you've used other tags, such as Director instead of Conductor, or Ensemble instead of Orchestra. There are two options for handling this:

1) MinimServer could support any names for these tags and provide a way to customize how the control point artist value gets built from named tags.

2) MinimServer could support specific names for these tags ("Conductor" and "Orchestra") and provide a way to substitute different names when it displays index entries for these tags in the control point browse tree.

I prefer the second of these because it promotes the adoption of consistent tagging standards in the industry (for example, in music databases and record company downloads). It also provides a way for English tag names to be translated into other languages when displayed in the browse tree.

So my suggestion is to use Orchestra for this tag rather than Ensemble. If you want to see it as Ensemble in your control point, a future release of MinimServer will give you a way to do this.

Thanks, Simon. I don't have a major hang up about the name, though I appreciate that others will feel differently. I would support the second option, as I am a firm advocate of a consistent approach both within MinimServer and for tagging standards.

Keep up the good work. MinimServer is far superior to any rival as is your level of support and like others I would happily pay for it.