Open GoogleCodeExporter opened 9 years ago
No. A song may belong to more than 1 genre - Cantata, and MPD support multiple
genres per track. Grouping under genre would break this.
Why is it easier to scroll a list of genres (as per Clementine, etc) - but not
to scroll a list on a combo? A list is a list.
Cantata has always been this way, and will continue to be. I realise its
different to other music players - but so be it. If this is not acceptable to
you, then please provide a patch to achieve what you wish - whilst keeping
existing features.
Original comment by craig.p....@gmail.com
on 19 Feb 2015 at 5:56
[deleted comment]
Thanks for your quick reply.
Maybe I can show you what I mean to make my request more clear. Here are some
screenshots of Clementine and Cantata displaying similar data from my music
library:
http://imgur.com/ko5Ajgv,EqMlgbu,Yn2Bz64 (I'm also attaching them to this
message.)
In the first picture, you can see Clementine displaying all tracks filtered by
the query "assad", and displayed in a tree sorted first by genre, then by
artist, then by album. You can see how the album "Echoes of Brazil" contains
tracks in different genres, so the same album is listed under more than one
genre, with the appropriate tracks from that album listed in the appropriate
genre.
In the second picture, you can see Cantata with the genre list displayed.
There are a few ways that this is less than optimal:
1) It covers the entire Cantata window, obscuring the current view of tracks.
2) It doesn't fit on the screen, but rather than a scrollbar, there are only
the very narrow buttons that appear at the top and bottom edges of the list,
which cause the list to scroll when the cursor is hovered over them.
3) The genres cannot be seen except while the list is expanded, which means
they can't be seen at the same time as the artists, albums, or tracks.
Basically, a drop-down list like this is not the best widget to use for a long
list of data. The genre is a property of the tracks in the music library
nearly as important as the artist or album names, but it's relegated to a
widget at the bottom of the screen that prevents it from being very useful.
It's actually not very noticeable either: I almost didn't notice that it
existed, thinking that there was no genre support at all in Cantata. I'm sure
I'm not the only one who's experienced this. :)
In the third picture, you can see Cantata displaying tracks matching the query
"assad", like in Clementine in the first picture. But since the genre isn't
displayed in the tree, it's not possible to distinguish tracks in different
genres. To do this you have to filter by each genre in turn and try to
remember which tracks are in which genre, or hover over each track and wait for
the tooltip.
Also, notice that the two tracks in the "Echoes of Brazil" album are displayed
separately, under two "Echoes of Brazil" album entries, instead of being under
the same album entry. This is because one track is in the "Brazilian" genre
while the other is in the "Classical Guitar" genre. The only way to find this
out is to hover over each track and wait for the tooltip to be displayed. In
contrast, with grouping by genre like in the Clementine example, it's easy to
understand and visually sort through.
You said that grouping by genre would break multiple-genre-per-track support.
I don't think that would be the case. Albums can have tracks in multiple
genres already, and the album is displayed for each genre separately in the
tree, even though the genre is hidden from view. A track in multiple genres
could simply be displayed under each genre separately, just as albums covering
multiple genres are now.
I hope this clarifies what I'm requesting and the reasons why. I only recently
discovered and started using Cantata when I started using mpd, and I'm quite
impressed by it. It seems like by far the best mpd client, and I just want to
help make it even better. :)
Original comment by alphadel...@gmail.com
on 19 Feb 2015 at 10:57
Attachments:
I am well aware of how Clementine and Amarok handle genres - I used Amarok 1.4
for many years. However, I do *not* like the splitting of albums - how do you
play a full album? It's a mess that *I* do not like.
A drop down list is *fine* for a large amount of data - its the same as a
listview (in fact I think Qt uses a listview widget). your problem is that the
*style* you are using is not adding scrollbars, and is allowing the list to be
so large. If you used Oxygen, you would find a much smaller list. (The genre
combo did have code to work-around this (force scrollbars, restrict height),
but I removed it for some reason - perhaps I can re-add this) Also using the
combo allows *me* to mouse-wheel through the genres...
No *tracks* *can* have multiple genres - Cantata gets its album genres by
creating the set of all track genres. A track could be 'Rock;Classic Rock' for
instance - this is two genres. (I know this is a highly made up example, but it
is possible - and I *have* had users ask about multiple tags (genres
specifically) per *track*)
Your method of splitting per genre would *not* work for tracks with multiple
genres.
With Cantata's way - the genre combo is only a filter, so it only displays
tracks that pass the filter. But, if you want to play the *full* album you just
need to click its '>' or '+' buttons - only want the tracks that pass the genre
filter, then just select all the album tracks and drag'n'drop
Your other point about the split "Echoes of Brazil" album has *nothing* to do
with genres. Cantata will group albums based upon the album name *and* its
"music brainz album id". Seeing as the track number is also wrong for these
tracks, I'm guessing there is an issue with your tags. Still, out of scope for
this issue.
p.s. Looks like you are using QtCurve - which I originally wrote years ago.
However looking at the up arrows on scrollbars, these are not drawn correctly -
I suggest you create a QtCruve bug report so that the new maintainers can fix
this (or rather un-break it!)
Original comment by craig.p....@gmail.com
on 20 Feb 2015 at 8:29
All that being said, I *might* replace the 'Artists' and 'Albums' views with a
single 'Collection' view - and have an option as to how to group the
collection; Artists, Albums, Genres :-)
Therefore the genre combo would only be required if grouped via artists or
albums...
Accepted, for now :)
Original comment by craig.p....@gmail.com
on 20 Feb 2015 at 8:42
Always nice to meet a fellow Amarok 1.4 fan. :)
I don't play by album often myself, but there are a couple of ways Clementine
can do that, if that's what you were asking: 1) Sort the library by
Artist/Album instead of Genre/Artist/Album, and then albums won't be split
across genres; then add the tracks to the playlist. 2) Add the tracks you want
to the playlist, then turn on Random Album mode.
Alas, despite being a KDE fan, I'm not an Oxygen fan. Yes, the scroll wheel
does work in the list.
Yes, I realize that some file formats' tags allow for multiple genres per
track, such as ID3v2+, or 2.1+, or whatever. :) And, of course, a format like
Ogg could support that easily, being plain key/value pairs. It doesn't sound
like many clients support it, but that's a nice feature to have.
> Your method of splitting per genre would *not* work for tracks with multiple
genres.
I'm not sure what you mean. Couldn't a track be displayed under multiple
genres, similarly to how an album can be displayed under multiple genres?
I guess it's confusing to me for genres to be handled as a filter instead of
being a tag like artist/album, etc. I've never seen a music player that
handles genre this way. I'm used to it being just another piece of data that
can be displayed and sorted and grouped by. What's probably most inconvenient
about doing it this way is that the genre list collapses to the chosen genre,
so then you can't see the genres while you're using the library view.
Thanks for the tip about the MB album ID. I didn't know Cantata uses that tag.
A few of my tracks do have that tag, since I've used Picard to adjust some of
their tags. You were right, one of those "Echoes of Brazil" tracks had an MB
album ID tag, and the other didn't. As you said, it's out of scope for this
issue, but I wonder if that feature should be on by default. I think most
people don't have MB album ID tags in their music files, and being a hidden
feature, it seems likely to confuse people, like it did me. ;)
And yes, I am indeed using QtCurve! I have for many years now! I didn't make
the connection to your name. It's a pleasure to "meet" the author of my
favorite Qt style. :) I love how it lets me customize so many settings and
make everything just how I like it.
Anyway, yes, I like your idea of having a unified collection/library view with
configurable grouping. That would be great. It would be more powerful but
also simpler to use. I'm afraid the Qt coding is beyond my area of expertise,
but please let me know if I can help with this somehow.
Thanks for talking through this with me. :)
Original comment by alphadel...@gmail.com
on 23 Feb 2015 at 8:20
Your ways of adding albums in Clementine are a bit awkward to say the least :-)
Anyhow, my proposal allows for the existing behaviour (when grouped by artists
or albums, the genre combo would still be there) and for the Clementine
behaviour.
As to having never seen a music player handle genres the way Cantata does -
that is not a valid reason for it not being that way. There are plenty of music
players - and they do not all have to be the same. If so, what would the point
be?
As to MB album ID - if you don't want to have this used, don't configure MPD to
use it. Cantata is only using the tags as supplied by MPD. The usage of this ID
was added to distinguish between multiple releases of the same album - at the
request of another user.
Please bear in mind that it is not easy (or possible?) to create a music player
that meets everyone's requirements. Cantata already meets my use cases - and
has for quite a few releases. I don't use genres, don't have multiple copies of
the same album, don't use Magantune/Jamendo/Podcasts, don't have 5000 albums in
my collection, etc. All this is added at the request of others.
Original comment by craig.p....@gmail.com
on 23 Feb 2015 at 12:56
Original issue reported on code.google.com by
alphadel...@gmail.com
on 18 Feb 2015 at 9:49