Why do some fields (not) autocomplete?

[willyvds]

It seems that some fields do, and other fields don't autocomplete. E.g. Album does, but Grouping doesn't.
Why is this? Is it possible to influence this?
I would like to have Grouping autocompleted.
Regards, Willy

[Mizery_Made]

It's due to the fact that some fields are indexed and whatnot in the Database (such as Artist, Album, Tempo, etc.) whereas others aren't (Title, Custom X, Grouping, etc.). The reason for this is, it's likely that while you may have 10,000 tracks in your library, those tracks may only be spread out over 1,000 artists or 100 genres. These fields are often used over and over again for the same values and contain a relatively small set of values.

Whereas ones like Title, Custom X, Grouping, etc could have an infinite amount of values. 10,000 tracks, 9,000 unique titles for instance. One track with Custom 1 as "X" another with "X; Y" and yet another with "X; Y; Z" for instance. There's no real way of enabling an auto-complete features on these types of fields as MM isn't currently designed for such behavior (for those fields).

There is a script in the Addons forum called "eCustom," which may help you to some degree, depending on the number of values you use for the Grouping field. The script allows you to set up a pre-set list of values usable for certain fields (such as Custom X and Grouping) and have those values available to you through a right click menu (on the track, not in the properties). However if you use a great number of values, this wouldn't really be a useful solution.

It has been requested to expand the auto-complete and multi-value support to other fields such as the Custom fields and the Grouping, but there doesn't appear to be any current plans for the Devs to implement that.

[willyvds]

Thanks, very clear.
Regards, Willy