Problem with some dates and custom properties

[DuckyCB]

App: Flatpak v7.7.0

Context: I saw I had multiple songs with dates like 'YYYY-MM-DD'. Most other apps I've tested (nautilus, tagger, easyTAG) show the date in the 'YYYY' format, but some (easyTAG) throw a warning about the format. The only app that showed the original date and property name is Metadata Cleaner (https://flathub.org/apps/fr.romainvigier.MetadataCleaner)

Those inconsistencies made difficult to edit or even find the problem, since other music apps showed the 'YYYY' date and trying to edit this date wouldn't fix this issue.

It seems multiple albums use some custom properties like TDRC and others to add dates.

How to reproduce:

• Pick a random song without metadata
• Download the Tagger app from Flathub (https://flathub.org/apps/org.nickvision.tagger) or another similar tagger app.
• Edit the metadata from the song, creating a custom property 'TDRC' with a date with the format 'YYYY-MM-DD'

  Note: Trying to set this date directly on the Year field will not work

• Save and open the song on Tauon

Expected behaviour: Just show the date as 'YYYY' or give the option to edit it.

Another note: Overwriting the custom property is the way I found to fix this.

[Taiko2k]

Currently Tauon displays the date metadata as is with no reformatting. For MP3 Tauon currently only looks at the TDRC for date information, not any custom fields. I gather what you're saying is having the full date shown is the issue and you'd rather only have the year shown?

[DuckyCB]

I don't know much about metadata, you are the expert here. But, my problem is the inconsistency, most apps show just the year, so I'm not able to fix it or even see it outside Tauon (at least easily). In summary, yes, I'd rather just have the year shown or have the option to toggle full date / year

[Laurence-NZ]

I would appreciate the option to only show the year (YYYY). Currently I edit the metadata manually to just have the year; but this of course prevents accurate ordering by release when albums are release in the same year.

[Taiko2k]

So there are three main cases a date may be shown:

1. The folder separator title in the main tracklist
   • I think it makes sense to save space and have the formatting more consistent here, so I've now committed a change so that Tauon will try only display the year component here. No user setting for this but just new default behavior.
2. The "Date" column in the columns view
   • Not sure what to do here. I think a "year" column would need to be a new column since this is explicitly a "date" column.
3. In the now playing track info side panel
   • Not sure what to do here.
4. The track info display box
   • I think it makes sense to display the full date information here.

[DuckyCB]

2. A year column is a good idea.
3. I'm not completely sure, because both date or year are useful there. Probably the full date is better since you want more info about the song? 1 and 4. Both makes sense

Side question about my original comment: Most metadata editor apps do not allow to add the full date, because by default the field is just the year. Is there a recommended way to set this kind of metadata so Tauon works the best (the way you expect the users have their metadata)?

[Taiko2k]

Tauon treats date as a free form text field. There's no exact expectation for how that is formatted. Usually it's YYYY or YYYY-MM-DD. Most tags don't offically define a seperate year tag, and that would probably be a bad idea anyway as it would make 2 sources of truth for the year.