Changing sort order of Browse Artwork

[cbemoore]

My server settings are "Group compilation albums together" and "List albums by band".

If I change my server settings to display artwork in album order, then "Browse Artwork" correctly displays the album under "R" (Romeo Must Die"), but the caption still incorrectly reads "Romeo Must Die by Stanley Clarke".

However, if I go to "Browse Albums", the album correctly appears as "Romeo Must Die by Various Artists"

So in summary, "Browse Artwork (sorted by album)" and "Browse Albums" identify the album artist in different ways, even though they should use exactly the same logic. If you can work out how to fix this, I reckon everything else will fall into place....

Chris

[MrC]

At 5743, with artist,year,album, I still have:


1 2 3 V C 3 C 4 V 8 V A V A N A O V A V A V A O A V A V A V A V R O A V A B V B V B P B S B V B V O B V S W B V B C B T B V B V B O B V B V B O V K B T V O V B L B V J B V B H B E B O B R B M T C V C V C O C O C V C V C T C B C V C V C P C F C D O V D V D S D V D O V D E D V D C V D V D V D V D V E D O A D E V O E O E B V E O E O E V E F V F T F V G V G V G J G O G M H I P I O I S I O J O J V J V U O J O J V J V J V J K L K O K V L V L V L V L O L R V L O L O L V B L V M O M V M O M O M V M O M V N V N O V N V N O V O P O P O P V P V P O V P V P Q R T R O R V R V R V R S V S V S O V S V S T O T U V W X Y Z


and various artists are showing up as before.

[Dan Sully]

Changing sort order of Browse Artwork

* MrC shaped the electrons to say...

>At 5743, with artist,year,album, I still have:
>
>1 2 3 V C 3 C 4 V 8 V A V A N A O V A V A V A O A V A V A V A V R O A V
>A B V B V B P B S B V B V O B V S W B V B C B T B V B V B O B V B V B O
>V K B T V O V B L B V J B V B H B E B O B R B M T C V C V C O C O C V C
>V C T C B C V C V C P C F C D O V D V D S D V D O V D E D V D C V D V D
>V D V D V E D O A D E V O E O E B V E O E O E V E F V F T F V G V G V G
>J G O G M H I P I O I S I O J O J V J V U O J O J V J V J V J K L K O K
>V L V L V L V L O L R V L O L O L V B L V M O M V M O M O M V M O M V N
>V N O V N V N O V O P O P O P V P V P O V P V P Q R T R O R V R V R V R
>S V S V S O V S V S T O T U V W X Y Z

Personally, I despise the "alpha page bar", and would love to get rid of it.
I'm sure Dean doesn't agree. However, I'd like to start a discussion on
alternatives. Obviously the numeric pagebar is available, but not extremely
useful. Other thoughts?

-D
--
There is no emergency. Nothing to see here. Move along.

[MrC]

Personally, I despise the "alpha page bar", and would love to get rid of it.
I'm sure Dean doesn't agree. However, I'd like to start a discussion on
alternatives. Obviously the numeric pagebar is available, but not extremely
useful. Other thoughts?

It certainly seems like it causes a lot of grief for the developers!

Unless all album covers can appear on a single page, you need some way to accurately seek to your artwork. Playing the "click the Next button until you find what you seek" game is really painful. Being able to skip directly to the area of choice is pretty important in my mind.

With Adrian's work on artwork sort underway, being able to seek seems even more useful. I'd love to see the preference for sort order moved to the top of the artwork page (and others too), so that a click of the mouse just re-sorts.

I've been using a app on Windows called OrangeCD to catalog my rips, CDs, and DVDs. It presents all artwork on a single page, and lazy-fills as necessary upon scrolling. Its pretty darned responsive, but then its not browser based and doesn't suffer the ill-affects of some browsers with large pages and objects. OrangeCD handles some things really nicely (but I can't say much about the Author's responsiveness). I think of it often when I think of how Slimserver could evolve. If you care to see how it looks, I can post a screenshot.

Other than that, I don't have any other ideas to replace the index.

[JJZolx]

Personally, I despise the "alpha page bar", and would love to get rid of it.

Why is that?

If it's an implementation issue then it's really not a question for end users.

I'm sure Dean doesn't agree. However, I'd like to start a discussion on
alternatives. Obviously the numeric pagebar is available, but not extremely
useful. Other thoughts?

The alpha bar is more useful than the numeric bar. It could be better, though. I think there should be "Next" and "Previous" links to make browsing from page to page a little easier. Also, it needs to take you to the point in the page where the selected letter begins. I seem to recall this was done at one point, but seems to be missing form the latest 6.5 Default skin.

[Dan Sully]

Changing sort order of Browse Artwork

* JJZolx shaped the electrons to say...

>Why is that?
>
>If it's an implementation issue then it's really not a question for end
>users.

It is an implementation issue - but it has an impact on end users.

>The alpha bar is more useful than the numeric bar. It could be better,
>though. I think there should be "Next" and "Previous" links to make
>browsing from page to page a little easier. Also, it needs to take you
>to the point in the page where the selected letter begins. I seem to
>recall this was done at one point, but seems to be missing form the
>latest 6.5 Default skin.

Yes - Next and Prev would be very useful.

-D
--
<dmercer> Because that is what our industry does.
Churns out useless shit. Followed by inferior re-implementations of useless shit.

[Philip Meyer]

Re: Changing sort order of Browse Artwork

>Personally, I despise the "alpha page bar", and would love to get rid of it.
>I'm sure Dean doesn't agree. However, I'd like to start a discussion on
>alternatives. Obviously the numeric pagebar is available, but not extremely
>useful. Other thoughts?
>
I can't think of any alternatives that would work instead of the alpha page bar, but I think it could be enhanced and perhaps simplified:

To make it easier, why not just have fixed alpha links. Some letters could perhaps be fixed together (eg. xyz). I think that all items begining with non-alphabetic characters could be grouped together (eg under a link "0-9"?). Clicking a link that has no associated entries would just not display any items.

Some of my letter groups are large. Would it be possible to have numeric page links within a group. So for example, select "T", then see there are 5 pages of albums begining with "T". It might make navigation a bit quicker and keep page sizes down.

Phil

[Triode]

Beginning to agree with Dan on the alphaPageBar...

Anyway back to the original problems. I'm strugging to reproduce it due to my database. Would one of the people with the problem be able to mail me their database? [triode1 | at | btinternet.com].

I think there are two halves to the problem:
1) the database returns albums sorted in some order, and for various artist albums uses one criteria for sorting artist name.

2) the pagebar is using a different name for various artist hence the strange entries. I had hoped I'd hidden this by not creating pagebar entries base on compilation albums, but obviously this is not working with people's databases... [the idea behind this was that as long as there are enough non compilation albums, the alpha bar is generated without out of order letters]

Adrian

[MrC]

Would one of the people with the problem be able to mail me their database?

I sent you an email, with a download location.

[Dan Sully]

Changing sort order of Browse Artwork

* Dan Sully shaped the electrons to say...

>It is an implementation issue - but it has an impact on end users.

Thinking about this more - not only is it an implementation issue, but a bit
of a UI issue as well. How do we handle non-latin "alpha page bar". It's not
really alpha at that point anymore. Hebrew, Kanji, etc.

Even extended latin will get you funky results.

-D
--
dd if=/dev/sarcasm of=/dev/clue

[JJZolx]

* Dan Sully shaped the electrons to say...

>It is an implementation issue - but it has an impact on end users.

Thinking about this more - not only is it an implementation issue, but a bit
of a UI issue as well. How do we handle non-latin "alpha page bar". It's not
really alpha at that point anymore. Hebrew, Kanji, etc.

Even extended latin will get you funky results.

Are you saying you can't sort on these characters sets? If so, that would be a separate problem. Obviously if the displayed results are unsorted, then there's no logical use for a non-numeric pagebar.

If you can produce a logical sort, then the pagebar just needs to list the first character of the first item on each page.

[Dan Sully]

Changing sort order of Browse Artwork

* JJZolx shaped the electrons to say...

>Are you saying you can't sort on these characters sets? If so, that
>would be a separate problem. Obviously if the displayed results are
>unsorted, then there's no logical use for a non-numeric pagebar.

No - I'm not. I can sort on them, no problem. But what is a the first letter
in '戀愛的力量 CD1' ? And if it's: '戀' - does that even make sense?

-D
--
"Hey, careful, man, there's a beverage here!"

[JJZolx]

* JJZolx shaped the electrons to say...

>Are you saying you can't sort on these characters sets? If so, that
>would be a separate problem. Obviously if the displayed results are
>unsorted, then there's no logical use for a non-numeric pagebar.

No - I'm not. I can sort on them, no problem. But what is a the first letter
in '戀愛的力量 CD1' ? And if it's: '戀' - does that even make sense?

Granted, you can "sort" them (it's not going to fail), but does the sort order have any meaning? I wouldn't think so. For all practical purposes, the items are likely in random order after you've sorted them.

[Dan Sully]

Changing sort order of Browse Artwork

* JJZolx shaped the electrons to say...

>Granted, you can "sort" them (it's not going to fail), but does the
>sort order have any meaning? I wouldn't think so. For all practical
>purposes, the items are likely in random order after you've sorted
>them.

I've edited the Unicode characters I pasted - they got mangled in the
posting - please see the forum:

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=20199&page=3

And yes - they do have an order that means something, according to the
current locale when sorted.

-D
--
This knob controls the thing that changes when you turn it. - noah

[gregklanderman]

Dan Sully wrote:
> Thinking about this more - not only is it an implementation
> issue, but a bit of a UI issue as well. How do we handle
> non-latin "alpha page bar". It's not really alpha at that point
> anymore. Hebrew, Kanji, etc.

Well, IMO the biggest problem with the alpha page bar is that
there is no indication of the page breakup. If I hit "Q" will
it take me to the next page or back to the top of this page?
There's no way to know, just try and see.

It'd probably be harder to implement, but what I'd like to see
is (the brackets indicate two separate hyperlinks):

[1-T] [U-Z]

or maybe better (and this may address your Kanji issue):

[10000 Maniacs - Uncle Tupelo] [Urge Overkill - Frank Zappa]

(that's how my database currently stands, at 200 artists per page)

Is "Various Artists" supposed to always show as the second
artist on every page now, after "All Albums"? Rather than
sorted under "V"?