1170 Objection to proposal to release

[chrisjj]

I hereby lodge an objection to the proposal (http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... 277#148277) to release 1170 as the production version, on the grounds of its loss of compatibility and functionality relative to the current production version (V3.0.2.1134) due to new behaviour with respect to ';' in tags causing failures on standards-compliant file libraries.

These failures affect MP3, WMA and possibly other files having the ';' character in Artist, Album Artist, Genre, or Composer tag. They include:

1 Failure of field value to be displayed accurately in tracklist and Properties.
2 Failure of general edits to preserve unedited fields on disc.
3 On WMA, truncation of standard Artist field upon write to disc.
4 Failure of field value to remain intact as a tree node label e.g. Artist
5 Failure of field edit to allow sequences such as ";;" , " ;" , "; ", initial ';', final ';'
[EDIT:]6 Failure of search for term containing ';'

Suggested fix: Make the new behaviour with respect to ';' an option, off by default.

Chris

PS FTR, here are some previous related issue reports:

http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... t=rewrites
http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... light=view
http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... ght=search

[jiri]

I don't see what's different from version 3.0.2, the handling of multiple artists is pretty much the same since the first 3.0 release, isn't it?

Jiri

[chrisjj]

Sorry, my mistake - the earliest of these problems were in 1017.

[jiri]

As I wrote in another thread, we are alredy planning improvements, but that doesn't mean that the current solution doesn't work. By the same logic, Microsoft should stop distributing WMP 11...

Jiri

[chrisjj]

> we are alredy planning improvements, but that doesn't mean that the
> current solution doesn't work

Agreed, but there's plenty else that means the current solution doesn't work - it messes up people who are using ';' in their Artist fields. I had a load of WMAs with Artist of the form bandname;singername1,singername2... . MM's unannounced hijacking of ';' messed them up good. I edited many albums not spotting at the time that MM was cutting off Artist tag at the ';', either moving the rest into Author fields from which I have yet to find a way to recover them, or just throwing it away completely e.g. Carlos Gardel;Carlos Gardel -> Carlos Gardel. The last on MP3 too.

My use of ';' was entirely within the standard. MM's decision to reserve ';' for its own purpose breaks my use.

I guess the reason MM didn't make this effect optional was that the Devs didn't realise at the time the damage it would do. Fine. But now the Devs do know of the damage, I really think there's no excuse for not making it optional. All it takes is a checkbox in Options.

> By the same logic, Microsoft should stop distributing WMP 11...

WMP is crap. That's why I moved to MM. I still have faith the MM Devs have more respect for compatibilty, standards compliance and most of all user data integrity than does MS.

[Guest]

I agree with Chris. This whole area seems to be getting pretty messy.

This is what annoys me most:

If I have a track tagged with the album artist as follows:

Vladimir Ashkenazy; Bernard Haitink; Royal Concertgebouw Orch

when I click on "find more from same album artist" it will only return files that are tagged with album artist as Vladimir Ashkenazy. I won't get any Bernard Haitink or Royal Concertgebouw Orch tracks.

Ideally, there would be a way to select which of those three artists you wanted to find more from. In reality, I would just settle for all results that match each of the three artists.

[chrisjj]

In reality, I would just settle for all results that match each of the three artists.

You can fix up your library to get that, by replacing all artist ';' by e.g. ','. For MP3s you can do that globally using a tagging program such as Mp3tag.

For WMAs I don't know a method because when MM stores Artist in the files, it removes the ';' and splits Artist into multiple Author attributes. If anyone knows a tagging program that can undo this effect, I'd like to hear. Thanks.

[rusty]

chrisjj,

The changes needed affect a number of areas of functionality, affect strings (and hence localization) and will therefore take a fair bit of time to implement and test. At the same time, 3.0.3.1170 already has over 200+ improvements over and above 3.0.2 and will give users--in it's current state--a much better experience than 3.0.2.

We really do see the need for change in this area, and we are planning on making it, but don't see the benefit in delaying the 3.0.3 release in order to do so.

-Rusty

[Teknojnky]

I don't either, but then again I am not a big multi-artist user, and I am certainly not a WMA/WMP user.

[chrisjj]

Rusty,

The changes needed affect a number of areas of functionality, affect strings (and hence localization) and will therefore take a fair bit of time to implement and test.

Are you referring to my suggested fix? That being "Make the new behaviour with respect to ';' an option, off by default."

Please?

[chrisjj]

The changes needed affect a number of areas of functionality, affect strings (and hence localization) and will therefore take a fair bit of time to implement and test.

We really do see the need for change in this area, and we are planning on making it

Any idea roughly when?

[dtsig]

I am trying to understand this one. I was told in the regular forum that i needed to change all my comma (,) to semi-colon (;) in my tags (genre, artists etc) in order for MM to correctly see them and multiple values.

This post seems to say that this is changing in 4.1. Am i reading this correctly or misreading this thread?

Thanks

[Ludek]

I am trying to understand this one. I was told in the regular forum that i needed to change all my comma (,) to semi-colon (;) in my tags (genre, artists etc) in order for MM to correctly see them and multiple values.

This post seems to say that this is changing in 4.1. Am i reading this correctly or misreading this thread?

Thanks

No, it wasn't changed in 4.1. MM still uses ; as separator in file tags. You can just select how the separator should appear in MM interface (Options|Appearance|Split multi+value fields with:), but physically in file tags it is still ; (semicolon)

[Mizery_Made]

That's not entirely true. It's "/" for MP3 tags.

[Ludek]

That's not entirely true. It's "/" for MP3 tags.

Yes, you are true.

Nevertheless there hasn't been changed anyting in this area so you don't need to afraid about a backward compatibility issue.