Changing sort order of Browse Artwork

[JJZolx]

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's easy enough to mark the current page by using a different font color and/or different sized font for the letters on the page. I do this in the skin I've customized for my own use. Seeing where the pages break is a lot less important. If you want to go to the T's, who cares if T is on its own page, or if it's grouped with S, U & V? You want to go to the top of that letter in the sorted items.

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"?

If you do something like that, it's going to spread all over the page. Someone with 50 items per page and 1000 albums is going to have a mess.

You also loose the ability to jump to the beginning of a letter within another page.

IMO, it also requires just a bit too much thought. You'd be surprised at how many people won't instantly know where, say, the letter 'P' lies within the alphabet when using a scheme like this.

[gregklanderman]

Re: Changing sort order of Browse Artwork

>>>>> JJZolx <JJZolx.222mhb (AT) no-mx (DOT) forums.slimdevices.com> writes:

> If you want to go to the T's, who
> cares if T is on its own page, or if it's grouped with S, U & V? You
> want to go to the top of that letter in the sorted items.

I don't recall it ever working that way, always goes to the top
of whichever page contains the letter I select. I do see the
links have a "start" parameter, so I guess the intent is there.

The alpha page bar is just way too busy for me, and I feel a
smaller number of meaningful links would be better.

Seems we really need to get away from linear access interfaces.
I only have 610 albums by 230 artists and the current web and SB
interfaces are not scaling well.

I recall someone on the discuss list a while back talking about
being able to incrementally spell the artist with the number
pad, have to go find that, but I imagine going through "browse
artists" much like isearch in Emacs.

greg

[Triode]

Could those of you who had problems with the sorting of various artist albums please try svn 5911 or later and report back?

Thanks,

Adrian

[MrC]

Could those of you who had problems with the sorting of various artist albums please try svn 5911 or later and report back?

Thanks,

Adrian

Much better! It looks like it is working. I've only checked a couple of pages, but the index looks correct, and albums seem to be sorted by artist,year,album correctly. Various Artists show up under V now.

Nice work, and I send thanks for not only myself, but for others as well!

[gregklanderman]

Re: Changing sort order of Browse Artwork

>>>>> Triode <Triode.22d03b (AT) no-mx (DOT) forums.slimdevices.com> writes:

> Could those of you who had problems with the sorting of various artist
> albums please try svn 5911 or later and report back?

Hi Adrian, no change here, running r5941, and I deleted and rebuilt my
db just to be sure.

I have two types of "Various Artists" albums: compilations I don't
actually know who is playing/singing on, for which all tracks have the
artist set to "Various Artists", and albums that have different
artist tags on different tracks.

In Browse Artwork, the former are showing up under "Various Artists",
sorted under "V". The later are randomly showing up under one of the
artists from one of the tracks. This is the same as before updating.

Under Browse Artists, both types show up under "Various Artists",
which is sorted to the top, but below "All Albums".

thanks
Greg

[gregklanderman]

Re: Changing sort order of Browse Artwork

>>>>> Greg Klanderman <gak (AT) klanderman (DOT) net> writes:

> I have two types of "Various Artists" albums: compilations I don't
> actually know who is playing/singing on, for which all tracks have the
> artist set to "Various Artists", and albums that have different
> artist tags on different tracks.

Adrian,

I looked at the database, and both types of albums have the
"compilation" flag set. Anything else you need from me?

greg

[Triode]

Greg, the latest version should sort by the album contributor. What is this set to for your compilation albums?

If you enable --d_sql you can see the database query being done. For sort by artist it is now essentially:

SELECT * FROM albums, contributors WHERE albums.contibutors = contributor.id ORDER BY contributors.namesort;

[gregklanderman]

Re: Changing sort order of Browse Artwork

[My mailreader confirms I replied to this, but I have not seen it come
through on the beta list..]

>>>>> Triode <Triode.22gmnb (AT) no-mx (DOT) forums.slimdevices.com> writes:

> Greg, the latest version should sort by the album contributor. What is
> this set to for your compilation albums?

You've hit upon my problem: for the albums that have different artists
on different tracks, the album contributor is randomly set to one of
the track artists.

> If you enable --d_sql you can see the database query being done. For
> sort by artist it is now essentially:

> SELECT * FROM albums, contributors WHERE albums.contibutors =
> contributor.id ORDER BY contributors.namesort;

I wonder if I should add a bit of code to mergeVariousArtistsAlbums so
that when it sets the compilation bit, it also sets the contributor to
"Various Artists"?

It is interesting that I do not have any problems with Browse Artists.
I turned on d_sql and for Browse Artists it's doing:

SELECT DISTINCT contributors.id AS id,contributors.name AS name,contributors.namesort AS namesort,contributors.moodlogic_id AS moodlogic_id,contributors.moodlogic_mixable AS moodlogic_mixable,contributors.musicmagic_mixable AS musicmagic_mixable FROM contributor_track, tracks, contributors, albums WHERE contributor_track.track = tracks.id AND contributors.id = contributor_track.contributor AND albums.id = tracks.album AND ( albums.compilation = ? AND contributor_track.role IN ( ?, ? ) ) ORDER BY contributors.namesort

whereas for Browse Artwork it's doing:

SELECT DISTINCT albums.id AS id,albums.title AS title,albums.titlesort AS titlesort,albums.contributor AS contributor,albums.compilation AS compilation,albums.year AS year,albums.artwork AS artwork,albums.disc AS disc,albums.discc AS discc,albums.musicmagic_mixable AS musicmagic_mixable FROM tracks, contributors, albums WHERE albums.id = tracks.album AND ( contributors.id = albums.contributor ) ORDER BY contributors.namesort, tracks.year, albums.titlesort, albums.disc

Maybe you can see what the relevant difference is?

greg

[pfarrell]

Re: Changing sort order of Browse Artwork

Greg Klanderman wrote:
>
> WHERE contributor_track.track = tracks.id AND contributors.id = contributor_track.contributor AND albums.id = tracks.album AND
( albums.compilation = ? AND contributor_track.role IN ( ?, ? ) )
>
> whereas for Browse Artwork it's doing:
>
> WHERE albums.id = tracks.album AND ( contributors.id = albums.contributor )
>
> Maybe you can see what the relevant difference is?

Its a lot easier if you throw away all the field and table BS and just
look at the query's WHERE clause. Throw away the Orders clause for
clarity as well.

What you can see is that both have
"contributors.id = contributor_track.contributor
AND albums.id = tracks.album "

and the first has lots of other stuff.

There is no reason to expect the two queries to yield the same rows.


--
Pat

http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimserver/slimsoftware.html

[Triode]

I wonder if I should add a bit of code to mergeVariousArtistsAlbums so
that when it sets the compilation bit, it also sets the contributor to
"Various Artists"?

What do you have the Behaviour - Compilations settings set as. I think if you select "Group Compilation Albums Together" and rescan it should list them as VA?

The recent change for browse artwork was done to make VA albums appear together. It is sorting by the albums.namesort value for both the order and the alphaPageBar.

[gregklanderman]

Re: Changing sort order of Browse Artwork

>>>>> Triode <Triode.22ijeb (AT) no-mx (DOT) forums.slimdevices.com> writes:

> What do you have the Behaviour - Compilations settings set as. I think
> if you select "Group Compilation Albums Together" and rescan it should
> list them as VA?

That's how I have it set, my config file has

variousArtistAutoIdentification: 1

And SS does list them as VA in Browse Artists.
Just not Browse Artwork.

> The recent change for browse artwork was done to make VA albums appear
> together. It is sorting by the albums.namesort value for both the
> order and the alphaPageBar.

What would sorting by albums.namesort have to do with VA?
Maybe you mean contributors.namesort?

Here's the data in my DB for a VA (multiple artist) album (I've
elided the empty columns):

sqlite> select * from albums where title like "Folkscene%3%";
id = 526
title = Folkscene Collection, Vol. 3
titlesort = FOLKSCENE COLLECTION VOL 3
titlesearch = FOLKSCENE COLLECTION VOL 3
contributor = 308
compilation = 1
year = 2001
artwork = 7518
sqlite> select * from contributors where id = 308;
id = 308
name = Loreena McKennitt
namesort = LOREENA MCKENNITT
namesearch = LOREENA MCKENNITT

I suspect all that's needed is a patch something like this:

Index: Slim/DataStores/DBI/DBIStore.pm
================================================== =================
--- Slim/DataStores/DBI/DBIStore.pm (revision 5975)
+++ Slim/DataStores/DBI/DBIStore.pm (working copy)
@@ -992,6 +992,7 @@
$::d_import && msgf("Import: Marking album: [%s] as Various Artists.\n", $albumObj->title);

$albumObj->compilation(1);
+ $albumObj->contributor($self->variousArtistsObject->id);
$albumObj->update;
}

Hopefully you get the idea even if it is not syntactically correct.

I may have time tonight to debug and test this hypothesis.

greg

[Hellsblade]

Status Browse Artwork sort order

Hi,

Can anyone update me on the status of the browse artwork sort oder?
I'm using SlimServer Version: 6.5b1 - 6507 - EN - cp1252. Although i can see the fields the choices are empty but working. I'm using the third option. I think its Browse artwork by artist, but i can't see the text.

Any ideas would be welcome.

Rgds,
Hellsblade

[Triode]

Should all be working... Are you saying the web setttings page gives you a set of blank options to choose between, but other than that it works? [or is it more complex?]

[Hellsblade]

Should all be working... Are you saying the web setttings page gives you a set of blank options to choose between, but other than that it works? [or is it more complex?]

Right on the spot. In server settings/ interface There is a small empty sortbrowseart dropdown box with empty choices. (There is no difference in this behavior when i change skins). Take a look [url=http://img135.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sortbrowseart7oe.png]

[Triode]

This looks like a problem finding the correct strings. Does your installation have the latest strings.txt file - are there any string error messages on the error log?