Cannot get indexFormat to do anything

[paultaylor]

I was trying to see if I could the Artists (note the s) index to give me more information, so I tried setting

Code:

Artists.indexFormat={$artists$artists_sort^^^:}

but it had no effect, why is that ?

I read

Quote:The indexFormat option doesn't replace any existing tags in the item. For example, the option
WorkByTitle.indexFormat={$title$tonality$opusnumber$subtitle}
would add a WorkByTitle tag if it doesn't exist in this item. No tag would be added if the item already has a WorkByTitle tag. This limitation doesn't apply to the Artist tag.

in the manual, is that saying the indexFormat only does anything if you dont have a value for the field you are using (Artists), is there a way round this ?

Out of interest I also tried

Code:

Artists.displayFormat={$artists$artists_sort^^^:}

but that failed giving error

Code:

MinimServer: conflicting option 'displayFormat' for tag 'Artists' in property 'tagFormat'

I couldn't work out exactly what the problem was.

[simoncn]

As it says in the documentation, you cannot replace an existing tag value using indexFormat (except for Artist). This limitation cannot be removed. You should be able to do something like this:

In aliasTags:
artists:my_artists

In itemTags:
add my_artists to the list of tag names

In tagFomat:
Artists.indexFormat={$my_artists$artists_sort^^^:}

The "conflicting option" message will be produced if you have tried to set both Artists.displayFormat and multiTag={Artists}.

[paultaylor]

Hi, thanks that works but Im also seeing this affect the artist roles at item level

e.g
<upnp:artist role="Artists">The Beautiful South:Beautiful South, The</upnp:artist>

I assumed this would be the data changed by using displayFormat rather than indexFormat, I do have artists set for multi tag and roletags which may be the issue.

multiTag={Artists},roleTags={Artists}

(27-06-2022 09:55)simoncn Wrote:  The "conflicting option" message will be produced if you have tried to set both Artists.displayFormat and multiTag={Artists}.

Yes I did have that.

[paultaylor]

Oh, there is a more serious problem for me. Because the value of the index has changed it no longer matches the names in the indexArtwork folder and therefore no longer picking up artist images. So the only potential solution I can think of it set the displayFormat instead of indexFormat, however this conflicts if I have multiTag={Artists}, not clear why that is a problem though.

[simoncn]

displayFormat is used to produce a single formatted display value for the control point that combines multiple values for a tag (for example, multiple artists on a track or album) together with any other information that is specified in the format string. For almost all control points, this is the right way for MinimServer to handle multiple values for a tag.

multiTag is used to send multiple values for a tag to the control point without combining these values or performing any other formatting. The expectation is that all formatting, processing or combining of these values will be performed by the control point. There are only a small number of control points that are able to handle this.

As these options treat multiple values for a tag in different ways, they are mutually exclusive.

[paultaylor]

Okay, thanks for explaining, doesn't matter really as it was the index format it wanted to change

I'm interested to know why when using indexFormat you can change the value for Artist index but nothing else, however I tried it and when the Artist Index value did change it seemed would not pick up the image (because names dont match) so wouldnt work anyway.

Could it be possible so that the restriction for Artist index be removed, and could it be possible for indexArtwork to check the original value rather than the indexFormat value when looking for images?

[simoncn]

When indexFormat is used for Artist, the Artist.indexFormat string is used to produce a single composite formatted value for all Artist values (single or multiple) tagged on each item. This composite value is used to find the indexArtwork image for the Artist index entry.

When indexFormat is not used for Artist, the tagged Artist values (single or multiple) for each item are used to create one or more entries in the Artist index. For each of these Artist index entries, the tagged Artist value is used to find the indexArtwork image for the Artist index entry.

In both the above cases, the tagged Artist values (single or multiple) for each item are used to create one or more entries in the All Artists index. For each of these All Artists index entries, the tagged Artist value is used to find the indexArtwork image for the All Artists index entry.

This means you can use Artist.indexFormat to change what appears in the Artist index and you can use the All Artists index to find the indexArtwork image(s) for the original unformatted artist name(s).

The Artist index is treated specially because it is a synthetic index containing a combination of Artist and AlbumArtist information. This makes it possible to remove the restriction on indexFormat for this index only.