Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] User feedback

[Gisli Ottarsson <gisli ottarsson mscsoftware com>]

Jakub et et.

Although the problem with 'Rock' vs. 'rock' is definitely an 
upstream problem and ought to be corrected in the id3 map of
individual ogg/mp3/... files, there may be some logistical 
obstacles which should be taken into account.  A) The file 
collection may be so large that correcting the files may be 
impractical and B) the files may not be under the editorial
control of the Rhythmbox user.  The latter is true for me.
I point Rhythmbox to file collections owned by other users
on my intranet.

That aside, there does not seem to be much value in *not*
folding 'rock' in with 'Rock' and 'ROCK'.  Is there an id3
standard?  What does it say about case in genre?

This has reminded me of a separate annoyance, namely the
issue illustrated by "Frank Zappa" vs. "Zappa, Frank".  Again,
I am unable to edit the .ogg and .mp3 files owned by others
and it would be great if these could somehow be combined into
one file list.  One solution would be to allow me to click
"Frank Zappa" and then shift-click "Zappa, Frank".  This is
currently not possible.  Another solution might be to 
introduce a simple set of rules, e.g.

   "Surname, Firstname" == "Firstname Surname"

(which incidentally would cover "The Band" vs. "Band, The"). 
These rules could be enabled/disabled by the user.  The third
option would be to allow creation of artist groups e.g. 

  Miles Davis = {"Miles Davis", "Davis, Miles", "Miles Davis Quintet",
"Miles Davis Sextet", "Miles Davis Nonet", ...}

but that sounds a little bit nuts.  I won't touch the issue
of case sensitivity in author names, mostly because I have not
yet run into any files by "frank zappa".

Anyway, thanks and keep up the good work.

  Gisli

Jakub Steiner <jimmac@ximian.com wrote:

On Sat, 2003-08-23 at 07:50, Colin Walters wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-08-22 at 21:56, Gisli Ottarsson wrote:
> > Here are a couple of gripes from an otherwise satisfied customer.
> > 
> > 1) Genre handling ought to be case-insensitive.  I now have
> >    both 'Rock' and 'rock' occupying my genre list.
> 
> Yeah.  I'll probably do this with the library rewrite.

I would also suggest this could be solved by having proper metadata
editing (id3/ogg...). You could bring up the item properties of the
whole genre tree (selecting all items for the genre, or just selecting
the genre item), and only editing the genre field (as it is in iTunes).
Rhythmbox would keep all other information intact.

That way you would actually fix the problem, not work around it by being
case-insensitive. Rhythmbox should aim to be a music _manager_.

cheers

-- 
Jakub Steiner <jimmac@ximian.com>