My third wish

[x-stefan]

After joining the discussion "Hide number of albums and items", starting the thread "listViewAlbums per index tag" I have now a third wish for MinimServer.

I read the answer of simbum in the other thread and tried his approach of AlbumGroup with my collection. This turned out to be very usefull to me, as I have a lot of discs that belong to series.

But when browsing the series the disc are displayed alphabetically, while I would prefer to have it sorted by a tag the number of the cd in the series. An example for this is the naive vivaldi edition, which is a collection of discs published unders the label vivaldi edition while the singel disc habve a volume number within the series but not in the discname.

It would be nice to set the sorting per index - what would be my third wish.

I promise to stop wishing now.

[simoncn]

It would be difficult to provide this because of the way sorting is implemented in MinimServer.

I think a better solution would be for MinimServer to automatically recognise AlbumGroup and AlbumNumber tags, as it does for Album and DiscNumber tags. The AlbumNumber tag would control the sort order when an album group is viewed.

The list of albums would include album groups and clicking on an album group would show the albums it contains. This is just like the way track groups are displayed in the "n items" list.

[simbun]

(03-08-2023 16:36)x-stefan Wrote:  I read the answer of simbum in the other thread and tried his approach of AlbumGroup with my collection. This turned out to be very usefull to me, as I have a lot of discs that belong to series.

But when browsing the series the disc are displayed alphabetically, while I would prefer to have it sorted by a tag the number of the cd in the series. An example for this is the naive vivaldi edition, which is a collection of discs published unders the label vivaldi edition while the singel disc habve a volume number within the series but not in the discname.

Using The Vilvaldi Edition as an example, what you could do is add a SERIESSORT tag.

SERIES:The Vivaldi Edition
SERIESSORT:The Vivaldi Edition Vol 1
ALBUM:Concerti da camera

SERIES:The Vivaldi Edition
SERIESSORT:The Vivaldi Edition Vol 2
ALBUM:Juditha triumphans

Then modify the album sort to use SeriesSort where it's populated:

Code:

tagOptions: Album.sortTags={SeriesSort, Album}

This will mean though that if you viewed 'n albums' from anywhere other than the Series index, the albums will appear out of order, because they're first sorted by SeriesSort then album name. I hope that makes sense.

[simbun]

(03-08-2023 18:16)simoncn Wrote:  I think a better solution would be for MinimServer to automatically recognise AlbumGroup and AlbumNumber tags, as it does for Album and DiscNumber tags. The AlbumNumber tag would control the sort order when an album group is viewed.

The list of albums would include album groups and clicking on an album group would show the albums it contains. This is just like the way track groups are displayed in the "n items" list.

This would be a far better solution than my current one (even with the possible listViewAlbums enhancement) as it'll include AlbumArtist in the listing and it would descend straight into the track listing (or the album if part of a group), so I'd be very happy for a solution like this.
I'm hoping MinimServer would look for AlbumGroup artwork in the same way it does DiscSubtitle, Album e.t.c.? With my current solution I need to add it to indexArtwork.

I know box-set functionality has been discussed many times before, do you see the above solution falling short of that in any way?

If we could get something like this into MinimServer I think it would really set it apart from other media servers.

[simoncn]

(03-08-2023 21:39)simbun Wrote:  This will mean though that if you viewed 'n albums' from anywhere other than the Series index, the albums will appear out of order, because they're first sorted by SeriesSort then album name. I hope that makes sense.

I think it would make all the "series" albums appear first in their "series sort" order followed by other albums in their "album" order. This seems fairly intuitive.

[simoncn]

The main reason "box set" hasn't been implemented yet has been the lack of any clear standard or obviously intuitive way to add an extra level to the containment hierarchy. My proposal builds on the current approach for albums/discs and tracks/groups, so it should (hopefully) be fairly straightforward to implement and also easy to explain to users. As far as I know, the AlbumGroup and AlbumNumber tags are not currently used for any other purpose. Perhaps AlbumGroupNumber or AlbumGroupIndex would be better than AlbumNumber, as AlbumNumber could mean something else. I am currently leaning towards AlbumGroupIndex but might have changed my preference by tomorrow

I would expect album groups to be incorporated into the current artwork search hierarchy for album/disc/group/track. I think this proposal meets all the "box set" requirements that have been discussed on the forum.

[simbun]

(03-08-2023 22:01)simoncn Wrote:  

(03-08-2023 21:39)simbun Wrote:  This will mean though that if you viewed 'n albums' from anywhere other than the Series index, the albums will appear out of order, because they're first sorted by SeriesSort then album name. I hope that makes sense.

I think it would make all the "series" albums appear first in their "series sort" order followed by other albums in their "album" order. This seems fairly intuitive.

It is if you're expecting it, just wanted to head off any confusion.
I did think you could have defined a succinct SERIESORT then used it in:

Code:

Album.displayFormat={$SeriesSort^^ - ^$Album}

So it would have made it more obvious, but it would have made the Series album listing a bit repetitive.

(03-08-2023 22:19)simoncn Wrote:  My proposal builds on the current approach for albums/discs and tracks/groups, so it should (hopefully) be fairly straightforward to implement and also easy to explain to users. As far as I know, the AlbumGroup and AlbumNumber tags are not currently used for any other purpose. Perhaps AlbumGroupNumber or AlbumGroupIndex would be better than AlbumNumber, as AlbumNumber could mean something else. I am currently leaning towards AlbumGroupIndex but might have changed my preference by tomorrow

I currently use TrackIndex where a track contains sub-indexes (and I've split them out), so Index gets my vote.

[simbun]

It would be great if AlbumGroup could be defined with a .default={}, likewise AlbumIndex

[simoncn]

I am not sure what you mean by this. Is it related to whether the .default option is processed before or after DiscNumber and TrackNumber are processed?

[simbun]

When MinimServer performs the processing to group albums it reads the incoming Album tag, the only way I can affect that processing is by using aliasTags because all other processing is performed post album grouping.

I was hoping that, rather than just use a single incoming tag for AlbumGroup'ing I could perhaps use this functionality for other purposes, and thus define it using .default{} e.g.

Code:

AlbumGroup.default={BoxSet, Series}

Series may not be a good fit for this functionality as it groups albums across different AlbumArtists e.g. MTV Unplugged.

In retrospect, if it's easier for you to implement just after the album grouping then it's still a big win.