"Split multiple-value fields with" - Problem? [#7995]

[MM3 monkey]

(I'm not certain this is a MM4 issue; perhaps I am misunderstanding how this feature works? Sorry, if that's the case.)

For example I have an album with the Album Artist tagged as "Bob Marley & The Wailers" and the Artist tagged as "Bob Marley|The Wailers".

Of course in Options > Library > Appearance, "Split multiple-value fields with" is set to use the pipe symbol (the second one in the drop-down list, i.e. with no spaces).

But in my Artist node in the tree (and the Artist & Album Artist node), I have an entry for "Bob Marley|The Wailers".

Surely I should only have an entry for Bob Marley and another for The Wailers (and, of course, in the Artist & Album Artist node, one for "Bob Marley & The Wailers")?

[rusty]

Hi MM3 monkey, it should work the way that you expect it to work. I tested this out and it's working correctly for me.

Is it always failing for you? Any other steps you're taking?

Thanks.

-Rusty

[MM3 monkey]

Hi MM3 monkey, it should work the way that you expect it to work. I tested this out and it's working correctly for me.

Is it always failing for you? Any other steps you're taking?

Thanks.

-Rusty

Thanks, Rusty.

All my nodes that have "multiple artists" are showing up incorrectly in the tree. I don't think I've been taking any other steps. By the way, this latest testing below was done with version 1394.

I've just tried to play around a little bit, changing the Options to use the ";" instead of "|" as the separator. I had some success.

I'm not going to explain this very well because it's all been a bit confusing - sorry, Rusty....

One thing that happened is that after changing "Bob Seger|The Silver Bullet Band" to "Bob Seger;The Silver Bullet Band" and changing the Options to use the ";" as the separator and then restarting MM was that "Bob Seger;The Silver Bullet Band" had automatically become "Bob Seger;;The Silver Bullet Band" upon restart (i.e. with an extra ";" inserted). [Odd, but I felt like progress was being made.]

I then changed "Bob Seger;;The Silver Bullet Band" to "Bob Seger|The Silver Bullet Band" and changed the options to use the "|" as the separator and then restarted MM.

Lo and behold, success: The entry in the tree for "Bob Seger|The Silver Bullet Band" has gone and now I correctly have separate entries for "Bob Seger" and for "The Silver Bullet Band".

However, all my other multiple Artists are still listed incorrectly in the tree - for example the "Bob Marley|The Wailers" one I mentioned before.

Clearly my suspicion is that this has something to do with the transfer from MM3 to MM4 but I will wait for further advice or comment from you.

Many thanks for your time. I know you're working all hours to get to an MM4 release candidate, so I'm happy to wait whilst you address more important things.

(I won't sleep comfortably, though )

All the best.

[MM3 monkey]

Update:

Firstly, when I said, "However, all my other multiple Artists are still listed incorrectly in the tree," that was not true; it's not all of them, just some (a lot though). So it is still my suspicion that there was some fault with the transfer from MM3 to MM4.

However, I'm happy now because I have been able to fix them manually...

First I noticed that not all multiple-artists were affected; I had "Bob Dylan|Johnny Cash" and "Bob Dylan|Paul Simon" but only "Bob Dylan|Paul Simon" was showing up as that (i.e. incorrectly) in the Artist tree node.

So I decided to edit the "Bob Dylan|Paul Simon" artist field manually and see what happened, this time without bothering to change the multi-item separator in Options > Library > Appearance.

Just by deleting the "n" of Paul Simon and then selecting the suggested "Paul Simon", MM immediately corrected the behavior and "Bob Dylan|Paul Simon" disappeared from the Artist node.

I'm half way through fixing all the rest, just by looking through the Artist node for any pipe symbols. Every time I change the artist (to what it was before anyway!) and click OK, the multi-artist entry disappears from the Artist node. This happens, by the way, even when there is no suggestion for the artist; I just have to delete the last letter of the last artist (even when there are 3 or more multi-artists) and then re-type that letter and click OK and bingo, it's job done.

Luckily I don't thiink I have multi-genres or any other fields but others may be affected.

So there you go; that's my experience so far.

[rusty]

Thanks--I'm able to replicate. The problem seems to be that the change in separator is only displayed on change or on restart of MM. Tracked at: http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=7995

-Rusty

[MM3 monkey]

Thanks--I'm able to replicate. The problem seems to be that the change in separator is only displayed on change or on restart of MM. Tracked at: http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=7995

-Rusty

I don't know really. I'm happy now anyway as I said, because I have corrected the anomalous ones by hand.

But that's the point: some multiple-artists were displaying correctly, some weren't.

Jiri said at http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=7995 "This has always been this way, even in 3.x, restart is required for the change to take effect. Maybe user should be better informed?"

I'm not surprised he said that, I would have said the same; I agree really. I don't think the way you (Rusty) described the issue really did describe the issue I had.

I'm well aware (it is clearly stated in the Options sheet) that changing the "Split multiple-value fields with" separator "REQUIRES RESTART".

I don't think I changed the separator when I first installed MM4. I think it imported my previous setting from MM3.

Even if it didn't - and I did indeed change the separator when I installed MM4 - I certainly restarted MM several times before I noticed the incorrectly displayed multi-artists.

I don't want to go on about this 1) because no-one else is reporting a problem and 2) because I've fixed all my issues manually as described above - but this is just to say that I don't think http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=7995 does describe the issue I had.

Thanks for everything though and all the best.