supra92 wrote:Agreed with Gary -- the whole point of databases is to present any data in any form for its users. It would be, however, incumbent upon Sindre to implement something that would provide that level of flexibility to the rest of us... and his time is indeed limited.
Having used EAC (Exact Audio Copy) for years to rip FLACs from CDs, I think EAC's naming convention method provides the utmost in flexibility, albeit perhaps not in the most entry-level-user-friendly sort of way:
This is pretty much the ultimate because it not only allows you to choose *what* you want to see, but also *how* it is displayed. In the "Naming Scheme" textbox, for example, one types in:
%A\%Y - %C\%N - %A - %T to get: Beatles\1969 - Abbey Road\01 - Beatles - Come Together.flac
Not only do you get to pick which ID3 tags to show, it allows you define the spacing and the separator characters as well.
So for Subsonic, for example, there could be an "Album Display Scheme" textbox in Settings, where one could do the following (and we could add %G for Genre):
- %C Abbey Road
- %Y - %C 1969 - Abbey Road
- %Y-%C 1969-Abbey Road
- %C (%Y) Abbey Road (1969)
- %C [%Y] Abbey Road [1969]
- %G - %C Rock - Abbey Road
- %G ... %C Rock ... Abbey Road
- %G -- %Y -- %C Rock -- 1969 -- Abbey Road
- %Y, %C (%G) 1969, Abbey Road (Rock)
etcetera, etcetera...
The options are unlimited, really, so each of us can custom-tailor the display of albums under an artist to exactly how we want. Then, beneath that Album Display Scheme textbox, there's a simple pair of radio buttons: "Sort Ascending", and "Sort Descending".
This solution, naturally, would require a return to 4.7b1's practice of no longer displaying the foldername (because we're creating our own display from the ID3 tags).
From what I can tell from this thread thus far, it's possible this might address the concern of everyone who's posted. Even for someone like me who has previously wanted foldernames so that SS would display things chronologically, that is now achievable through ID3 tags by simply choosing "%Y - %C" and selecting the "Sort Ascending" radio button.
I don't know if that would be an overly-complicated solution for the average SS user, but.... who IS the average SS user? I'd suggest that most people using SS know music and know computers... and if a person can figure out SS's transcoding mechanism, one would think the Album Display Scheme should be a piece of cake.
I don't know how easy or difficult this would be for Sindre to implement, but it sure seems like it would do the trick.
Cheers,
Supra92
