Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Rhythmbox roadmap - smart playlists

[David Scotson <davidscotson mac com>]

On Wednesday, October 15, 2003, at 05:44  pm, mmarquee@btopenworld.com 
wrote:
> i.e. Would I really want
>
> (Year = 1976, Genre = "Funk") or (Year = 1999, Genre = "Peruvian Flute 
> Music")

That is exactly the kind of thing that sub-playlists would be ideal for 
i.e. two, or more, totally unconnected subgroupings together and also 
certainly a power-user feature.

> I might want
>
> (Year = 1990, Genre = "Alternative" or Genre = "Altern Rock")

This is a trick/hack I picked up from using iTunes but:

Year 'is' 1990 and  Genre 'contains' (or 'starts with') "Altern"

Kind of ugly I know, but in my defence I'll point out the lexical 
similarity of many related genres (e.g. soft, hard & blues rock etc.) 
and artist/bands (e.g. Diana Ross, solo or with the Supremes, or 
various duet partners).

More interestingly, could there be some kind of analysis that can be 
done so that obviously conflicting requests (two different genres, 
artists or years) are automatically OR'd rather than returning 0 songs. 
In your example there can be nothing that is both genres so if you 
specified "genre:alternative", "genre:altern rock", "year:1990" and 
asked it to match ANY criteria you would get both genres plus 
everything from 1990. If you asked it to match ALL criteria you would 
get nothing, which is obviously an absurd request. This system breaks 
down if you're trying to achieve something like your first query, but 
I'm not sure how common that will be (and would support sub-queries 
just for clarity alone).

I must say it intrigues me that even after being familiar with Boolean 
logic for over a decade "1990 & Jazz & Funk" still makes far more sense 
to me as "(Jazz + Funk) from 1990" than it does as an empty set. I only 
just came up with this idea but I can't see any major problems with it. 
However, I'm sure they will become apparent as soon as I hit send.

Let me know if you spot any,

cheers,

dave