Separators in custom fields

[lyapounov]

(10-03-2023 20:01)DavidHB Wrote:  

(09-03-2023 22:22)lyapounov Wrote:  Just one question: you mention to use relative paths, but the norm accepts absolute paths ?

I think that Simon is saying that the choice between absolute and relative paths is a 'horses for courses' thing; if so, I agree with him. But consider this

We can pretty much control how we organise our content directory, and it makes sense that, once a music album is put in a particular place in the folder tree, it should stay in that place, so that its position relative to the content directory remains constant. But we cannot always so easily control where the content directory itself is located in the device file system.

If we only have one instance of MinimServer running and only one content directory, this will not matter in the short term; both absolute and file paths sin .m3u playlists will work equally well. But there always will come a time when a device has to be replaced, and the file system on the new device may well be differently organised to the file system on the predecessor device. If playlist file paths are relative within the content directory, this will not matter; all that will need to change is the contentDir setting in MinimServer properties. With absolute file paths, all the playlists would have to be edited.

I actually have three identical versions of my music library on different devices, each associated with its own local instance of MinimServer. With relative file paths, playlist files can be copied from one device to another and work equally well, when indexed by MinimServer, on all devices.

If you use Windows, the now ancient but still very usable Playlist Creator (latest version 3.6.2) utility is still available on a number of download sites, even though the original author's website has now disappeared. Playlist Creator enables you to create .m3u or .m3u8 playlists using a drag and drop interface. It supports both relative and absolute file paths and the creation of files with either back or forward slashes as path separators. It is great for experimenting with playlists without needing to get too deeply into text editing.

David

I have 4 replica of my music, all on synology servers (one being on an external drive, though it is 10T and soon full...).

But I get your point; what I may do, as all my music's info are stored in a database on my synology, is create a program to automatically generate the m3u.

Thx !