Multiple composition tags

[simoncn]

(14-01-2014 01:23)DavidHB Wrote:  I'm sorry if this was not clear. In the example previously given, I browsed Genre -> Composer -> Composition, and selected the entry for The Swan of Tuonela. This produced a list of (say) two items. One is a separate recording with the title The Swan of Tuonela, while the other is the whole Lemminkäinen Suite; if I select the latter (which is the group containing the other recording of The Swan of Tuonela), all four movements of the Suite are listed. I suggested that, ideally, this should not happen; only the two recordings of The Swan of Tuonela should be listed against the relevant composition tag. But, as I explain below, I now realise that this ideal is not achievable.

Thanks for this more detailed explanation. This is happening because MinimServer treats the entire group as a single item when browsing and searching, and all the tags for all the group's contents are merged together and applied to the group as a whole.

To do what you want, it would be necessary to refine the concept of grouping by exposing the individual items with all their tags for browsing and searching operations. Selected items would be "reconstituted" as a complete group if and only if all of the items in the group are selected by the browse or search operation. If some items are selected but not others (as in the case you have described), only the selected items would be shown. It might also be desirable to extend the "Complete Album" selection mechanism to add a similar "Complete Group" concept.

This is an interesting idea, but it would be quite a large amount of work to implement it and it probably wouldn't perform as efficiently as the current mechanism. Given that the case you're describing is rare and only requires one extra click to navigate into the group, I'm inclined to add this to the "interesting ideas to think about" list for now.