Tags used as Sort Order Only ( Feature Request? )

[simoncn]

(12-07-2013 20:33)rjplummer Wrote:  ARTISTSORT isn't part of any of the Vorbis Comment Spec, Windows Media spec or the APE spec. As best as I can tell, Apple doesn't specify this for their MP4 metadata.

The Vorbis comment spec allows any value for the tag name, so ARTISTSORT is valid. The Vorbis comment spec also allows repeated values for any tag name.

MinimServer doesn't support WMA or APE tagging.

Apple uses the 'soar' tag for the artist sort value in their MP4 metadata. See this section for details of how MinimServer handles iTunes MP4 tags.

Quote:The ID3 spec is silent on the behavior when multiple values of TSOP or TPE2 are used.

Section 4.2 of the ID3 v2.4 spec says: "All text information frames supports multiple strings, stored as a null separated list, where null is reperesented by the termination code for the charater encoding." This means there is no need to use repeated TSOP (artist sort) or TPE1 (artist) frames, because a single frame can contain an ordered sequence of values.

Quote:No popular tagging software enforces these constraints.

I have never had any problems when using Mp3tag to edit an ordered list of tag values. The correct ordering is displayed and preserved.

Quote:But since you're breaking ground here, you might consider supporting multiple ARTISTSORT tags for a single ARTIST tag, e.g., allow ARTIST="Chet Atkins and Les Paul" and ARTISTSORT="Atkins, Chet","Paul Les"

MinimServer currently maintains a one-to-one correspondence between the display value and the sort value. Changing this to allow multiple sort values for the same display value wouldn't be easy to implement and wouldn't perform as well as the current design (which is important for libraries containing thousands of artists).

Quote:Ah! I think I understand. If this option is checked, I wouldn't have to populate ARTISTSORT for two word human names, e.g., if ARTIST="Atkins, Chet" and the flag was enabled, your server would display "Chet Atkins".

Yes, that's the idea. Automatic reversing could take care of nearly all artist names containing a comma, and the rare exceptions could be handed with ARTISTSORT tags.

Quote:If my understanding is correct I think you could extend this rule to every case where there's exactly one comma and there are exactly one or two words after the comma.
This would work for:

• Walker, Jerry Jeff
• Van Halen, Eddie
• Smith, Huey "Piano"
• Giacobassi (english horn), Julie Ann
  

It would also correctly not reverse:

• Peter, Paul & Mary [3 words after the comma]
• Peter, Paul, and Mary [2 commas]
• Ross, Diana and the Supremes [> 2 words after the comma, need to make this the ARTISTSORT]
• Smith, Huey "Piano" and the Clowns [need to make this the ARTISTSORT]
  

I can't think of an example where the extended rule fails, though I'm sure there's some obscure band with a comma in its name.

This is similar to what I had in mind. The final details of the reversing algorithm are not yet decided, and I'll take this input into consideration.

Quote:This flag should also apply to ALBUMARTIST, ARRANGER, AUTHOR, COMPOSER, CONDUCTOR, LYRICIST, PERFORMER

This is a useful feature, especially since ARTISTSORT is not very useful.

MinimServer supports user-defined custom tags, so it's hard to come up with a fixed list of tag names that would be right for all users. I'm planning to start with the existing standard names: TITLE/TITLESORT, ALBUM/ALBUMSORT, ARTIST/ARTISTSORT, ALBUMARTIST/ALBUMARTISTSORT and COMPOSER/COMPOSERSORT. I think any additions to this list should be configurable by the user.

Quote:I assume you also have implemented a method for displaying multiple tags, e.g., putting " and " or "&" before the last tag and commas between the others.

By default, the values are separated by ', '. This separator can be customized using the tagFormat property.