Re: [Muine] [Patch] Better album defining

[Viet Yen Nguyen <nguyen cs utwente nl>]

On Mon, 2004-05-24 at 19:03, iain wrote:

Hi,

> > When it comes down to the patch, my only objection is the removal of the
> > punctuation, as this could lead to severe mistakes. The idea of a
> > canonical form of lowercase chars is to my opinion a nice idea. 
> 
> Give me a case where the punctuation fails? I'd also advocate removing
> punctuation in comparing artist names, so that albums aren't listed as
> containing songs by both "N.E.R.D." and "nerd", but unfortunately that
> would break with "!!!" (damn them)

Well, one concrete example from my own music database is the artist Van.
She has a song called Van - Trai, and another one, Van - Trai!, which is
in performed in a totally different style. However, I am aware that the
chances are little that someone else has the same problems, but I
believe Muine should bet it safe and therefore not ignoring the
punctuation. 

> However I think there are already heuristics which have the potential to
> fail in languages other than english (German songs which start as "Die"
> vs English songs which begin with Die: will the german translation list
> "Another Day, Die"?)

Well, this is actually one of the things I believe should be limited 
and for this reason I am keeping this discussion alive: creating
solutions to problems that are created by ourselves. Therefore I believe
that punctuation should not be ignored, as it would create problems. The
lowercasing part is in my opinion an excellent thing to do, as I have
said in my previous mail.  

> > The ease of downloading, compiling, installing software is not a problem
> > that I see as one of ours. To my opinion, it is up to the distributors,
> > like Red Hat and SuSE, to distribute the software in a friendly manner. 
> 
> True, but it all comes down to the user experience, and if the user
> isn't even aware of what a tag or what retagging is, or even that they
> can change the tags, then things are going to look like Muine is silly.

As you said, it comes down to user experience. Of course the developers
of Muine are the good benefactors on this part, but it is not our
problem of how the ease of compiling should be. 

> > Furthermore, the installation of software is actually the task of a
> > systems administrator,
> 
> I'm sorry? The installation of software is the task of the owner of the
> computer. You should not have to be a sysadmin to be able to install
> software. Yes, this might be a distro issue, but passing it off as a
> "sysadmin" task is just sounding elitest.

Yes, perhaps it sounds elitest, but just like any advanced equipment,
like a house warming system, one should be calling the help of adequate
trained professionals to solve problems and maintain equipment. It is
not up to the user, of which the name already says, who is just _using_
the computer. 

However, I am aware that there are many people who disagree with me on
this part and although we could discuss this out, I believe that is a
discussion that is out of the scope of this mailinglist.

Viet Yen