Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Classical Music or Audiobooks on Rhythmbox

[Kevin Hunter <hunteke earlham edu>]

At 5:56p -0400 on Sun, 13 Jul 2008, Sol wrote:
> I do not see any consistent behavior. It could mean one of the following:
> 
> order by:
> 
> <Genre> than <Artist> (in reverse order) than <Album>
> <Genre> than <Album> than <Artist>
> <Genre> than <Album> than <Artist> (in reverse order)

I think *something* should happen for the user if the user clicks.  I
just don't know what ...

[... head scratching ...]

Let me return to CS1: the behavior for which I'm hankering is basically
a stable sort.  That is, if, on any given key there is a duplicate
entry, then, when sorting them, preserve the original order in which
they were found.

For our example, this then means that when the user clicks

<Genre>, <Artist>, <Album>

<Album> is the final click, so the entire viewable set is organized by
<Album>, <Artist>, <Genre>.

Going from this, what would happen in the 4-click example you suggested:

<Genre>, <Artist>, <Album>, <Artist>

Now, the *first* <Artist> is effectively superfluous, but since the
result of a click is a sort, the user interface is the same: click once
on a column, sort it ascending.  Click twice in a row and sort it
descending.  Clicking three times is the same as sorting once.  When I
sort by the next column, I don't sort with the previous column
specifically in mind.  However, the sort is stable so the sub-ordering
behavior that I initially suggested is there.

I believe this would effectively side-step the user-communication issue
that you rightly brought-up since the list organization happens
per-click, and you're only showing the most significant ordering.

I still suggest that Rhythmbox use SQLite, though, so how to reconcile
this with SQL?  I don't know yet.

Kevin