Streamlining the browsing tree & multiple configs

[DavidHB]

(23-09-2013 08:47)simoncn Wrote:  ... the tracks with a Group (not Composition) tag that would appear as a single item in the <n> items list and in the results from any index selections. This is how I find everythng in my library for a particular composer.

The Group tag creates a structural grouping of multiple tracks into a single item for browsing purposes. The Composition (or Work) tag doesn't create this structural grouping, but provides an index selection that can be applied either to groups or individual tracks.

The Composition (or Work) tag and the Group tag are independent and can be used either together or separately. For example, my double album "The Mystery Sonatas" by Biber consists of 59 tracks. It is tagged as a single Composition and I have grouped it as follows:

The Five Joyful Mysteries I (a group of 4 tracks)
....
The Five Joyful Mysteries V (a group of 5 tracks)
The Five Sorrowful Mysteries VI (a group of 3 tracks)
....
The Five Sorrowful Mysteries X (a group of 5 tracks)
The Five Glorious Mysteries XI (a group of 3 tracks)
....
The Five Glorious Mysteries XV (a group of 4 tracks)
Passacaglia (a single track)

An alternative grouping would be the following:

The Five Joyful Mysteries (a group of 18 tracks)
The Five Sorrowful Mysteries (a group of 21 tracks)
The Five Glorious Mysteries (a group of 19 tracks)
Passacaglia (a single track)

This seems clear (and very interesting), and usefully amplifies the 'Groups and Compositions' section of the User Guide. It might be helpful to provide a usage example in that section. Those who, like me, never miss an opportunity to misread a manual will then understand that Group is a specific tag that is so named. I know that the capital letter should have been a clue ...

I'd also like to check the implications for my metadata structure. Is the following correct?

• Both the 'Work' (aka 'Composition') and 'Group' tags would become standard within the structure, though not necessarily used.
• Both Work and Group would be need to be in indexTags (the User Guide is silent on this).
• Information in Work would typically not be duplicated in Track. This implies that for both to show up in the track listing on the Control Point, there would need to be a tagFormat entry of something like Track.displayFormat={$work$track$}.
• Group would not be displayed as such; but would only be used as a substitute for Track when displaying the group name rather than individual track names. The data in Group would typically be either the same as Work or (as in your example) a subset of the track data common to all tracks in the group.
• The indexing and display would still work satisfactorily (i.e. send correct and appropriately ordered data to the Control Point) irrespective of whether neither, either or both of the Work and Group fields were populated in a particular file.
  • Thank you for your help with this.
    
    David