Multiple Artists, ';' separator, etc. - discussion

Mizery_Made · Post by **Mizery_Made** » Thu May 15, 2008 9:45 am

chrisjj wrote:
Mizery_Made wrote:Why don't you post it all up on one post? :\
No way. This board makes thead-following hard enough already without that reduction of the ability to link to specific responses.

You can open several "Quote" windows (Open In New Tab/Window) and then copy the quotes into a fresh post window and then you've got everything you want to quote in one go and can pick them apart then. Don't mean to 'attack' you for making several consecutive posts or come off as an ass, it's just something that bothers me when reading forum topics. A "Multi-Quote" feature would be nice, but I don't even know if phpBB has it. *Shrugs*

Back to your regularly scheduled thread. Ha.

chrisjj · Post by **chrisjj** » Thu May 15, 2008 6:33 pm

Mizery_Made, I hope you don't mind having the continuation of this at http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... 626#149626.

MoDementia · Post by **MoDementia** » Thu May 15, 2008 9:38 pm

chrisjj · Post by **chrisjj** » Fri May 16, 2008 4:17 am

MoDementia wrote:Ahh much trouble working out what is and isn't a Terminal separator
, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young,
Rod Stewart, Bryan Adams & Sting,

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/terminal
1. situated at or forming the end or extremity of something: a terminal feature of a vista.

The correct version of your parse result is:

Bold = terminal separator
, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young,
Rod Stewart, Bryan Adams & Sting,

Though you found it not easy to see what is a terminal separator, MM code would find it easy and the user would not need to worry about it because the effect is to automatically give the result he expects.

Chrisjj, I do not consider you to be a MM user.
You are still a potential user that has not yet (completely) migrated.

I use MM as one of various tools to manage different libraries of audio. MM doesn't do the whole job and so I don't expect ever to completely migrate my usage. Certainly I have no intention of migrating any /library/ to MM by changing my standard-compliant use of tags to fit any non-standard interpretation by MM.

MM users do not have literal ";" in their libraries they only have pseudo "/" in theirs.

MoDe, you are mistaken. Just read the input from various users in this thread.

MM users are quite happy to wait for a future version that will bring these enhancements/changes

I too am quite happy to wait.

spacefish · Post by **spacefish** » Fri May 16, 2008 7:31 am

chrisjj wrote:
MoDementia wrote:Ahh much trouble working out what is and isn't a Terminal separator
, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young,
Rod Stewart, Bryan Adams & Sting,
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/terminal
1. situated at or forming the end or extremity of something: a terminal feature of a vista.

The correct version of your parse result is:
Bold = terminal separator
, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young,
Rod Stewart, Bryan Adams & Sting,
Though you found it not easy to see what is a terminal separator, MM code would find it easy and the user would not need to worry about it because the effect is to automatically give the result he expects.

No, because there are three artists there, not one.

1. Rod Stewart
2. Bryan Adams
3. Sting

MoDementia · Post by **MoDementia** » Fri May 16, 2008 7:45 am

chrisjj · Post by **chrisjj** » Fri May 16, 2008 12:52 pm

spacefish wrote:
chrisjj wrote:the user would not need to worry about it because the effect is to automatically give the result he expects.
No, because there are three artists there, not one.

1. Rod Stewart
2. Bryan Adams
3. Sting

Indeed there are three artists. And because they are separated, the proposed scheme will treat them as three, automatically giving the user the results he expects.

Terminal separators are a detail of Mark as Single Artist ([MASA]). They have no bearing on the parsing of the multi-artist field into single artists.

chrisjj · Post by **chrisjj** » Fri May 16, 2008 2:06 pm

MoDementia wrote:The comma after Rod Stewart and the ampersand after Bryan Adams are both terminal separators

They are not terminal because they are not at the start or end.

MoDementia wrote:I can certainly see users entering the following to ensure correct entry and or avoid deciphering the string
Code: Select all
Jam & Spoon[MASA], Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young[MASA], Rod Stewart[MASA], Bryan Adams[MASA] & Sting[MASA], Dan Turèll + Halfdan E[MASA] 

Well, they can do that extra work if they like, but it is redundant because as I said "The MASA hotkey press is needed only for excepted artists and only the first time for each".

MoDementia wrote:
MM users do not have literal ";" in their libraries they only have pseudo "/" in theirs.
MoDe, you are mistaken. Just read the input from various users in this thread.
I repeat, any MM user that uses MM to manage their library and write tags has no literal ";".

That different claim is also untrue. MM 2.X users may have as many literal ';' characters as they like. The only MM user of which your claim is true is one that either had no literal ';' to start with, or who upgraded to MM3 which then destroyed them.

It is impossible, they are converted to "/" multi field delimiters.

Untrue for WMA and FLAC.

There are a whole 4-5 posters in this thread? So it shouldn't be too hard to verify it tomorrow. As I recall only 1 is particularly concerned about preserving literal ";"

The rest are interested in additional choices such as "&", "feat.", "vs.", ",", "and", "|" etc

"Choice" indeed! If those come with the same non-choice as the current ';', then we will have a real mess on our hands.

Anyway the current ';' messup is simple to address. So how about we leave that out of this thread and concentrate on the trickier MA issue itself.

PS

MoDementia wrote:
I too am quite happy to wait.
or not
1170 Objection to proposal to release

That's an objection to /not/ waiting!.

MoDementia · Post by **MoDementia** » Fri May 16, 2008 4:49 pm

what a wanker

Teknojnky · Post by **Teknojnky** » Fri May 16, 2008 5:03 pm

Eh.

I think the concept of a user having to use [MASA] or any other type of special hotkey or whatever is a misguided idea. No sane user wants to be typing out those extra crap.

The problem is always, you can not have global delimiters intelligently determine that

Emerson, Lake & Palmer is a single group

While Rod Stewart, Bryan Adams & Sting is a 3 individual artists.

This whole thread keeps going in circles.

Chris, what exactly is your 'standards compliant' application that you use to manage your standard-compliant tags?

edit:

btw, I also think its very mis-guided to desire to use normal punctuation as some type of multi-artist delimiter, but I know some of you want exactly that.

The whole thread is getting beyond ridiculous, our music does not care if it was made by a set of multi-artists or a single (or multiple) group(s), and it is more than a little bit anal-retentive to take multiple artists to the extreme that is being represented in this thread.

Multiple artists is a slippery slope with no consensus or consistency, combined with the fact that individual users will want to apply multiple artists where there is none, and likewise apply non-multiple artists where there are some.

chrisjj · Post by **chrisjj** » Fri May 16, 2008 5:13 pm

Teknojnky wrote:I think the concept of a user having to use [MASA] or any other type of special hotkey or whatever is a misguided idea.

You have a better idea, TJ? ;)

The problem is always, you can not have global delimiters intelligently determine that

Emerson, Lake & Palmer is a single group

While Rod Stewart, Bryan Adams & Sting is a 3 individual artists.

I don't see that as much of a problem. You say once that ELP is a single artist, and from then on yes, MM does intelligently determine what's what.

Teknojnky wrote:Chris, what exactly is your 'standards compliant' application that you use to manage your standard-compliant tags?

MM works fine for MP3s. But Mp3tag is the one I trust for formats I use.

Teknojnky · Post by **Teknojnky** » Fri May 16, 2008 5:23 pm

Using a non punctuation delimiter, of which there is really only 1: The Pipe symbol

|

Emerson, Lake & Palmer stays the same

Rod Stewart | Bryan Adams | Sting would be the 3 multi-artists (with or without the space padding either side of the pipe.

But again the real root of the problem is the lack of consistency between both user preference and even the tag formats... because no matter what is implemented at the UI level, it still has to be translated to (and from) the applicable file type tag system and it's limitations.

Teknojnky · Post by **Teknojnky** » Fri May 16, 2008 5:43 pm

BTW, just to throw another example out there;

is 10,000 Maniacs one artist or 2?

(rhetorical question!)

chrisjj · Post by **chrisjj** » Fri May 16, 2008 5:44 pm

Teknojnky wrote:Rod Stewart | Bryan Adams | Sting would be the 3 multi-artists (with or without the space padding either side of the pipe.

OK... but why fix the separator at '|', rather than make it user-configurable?

Teknojnky wrote:But again the real root of the problem is the lack of consistency between both user preference and even the tag formats... because no matter what is implemented at the UI level, it still has to be translated to (and from) the applicable file type tag system and it's limitations.

I see no problem there. Add/Rescan translates one way, tag write translates the other.

chrisjj · Post by **chrisjj** » Fri May 16, 2008 5:50 pm

Teknojnky wrote:is 10,000 Maniacs one artist or 2?

Indeed ;)Hence my earlier suggestion that ', ' is a separator but ',' not.