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[Denti]

The swap and unswap functions work now with semi-colons. That's great! But once this function is applied the semi-colon ceases to be read as a delimiter, and instead is treated like a regular semi-colon.

To explain: I have two (list-style) fields that I use to sort and display artists:

Artist: Brian Eno; John Cale

All Artists (Last Name): Eno, Brian; Cale, John

If I sort and display using *only* [Artist] then the semi-colon is "read" as a delimiter and I get the single album by these two artists sorted together with other albums by both of these artists separately:

Brian Eno
John Cale

But I--like many people--want to sort by last name. To do this I sort by [All Artists (Last Name)]. If I choose to display the same field, the sort order is right, but the names are reversed:

Cale, John
Eno, Brian

When I apply unswap() to the display name it can no longer "read" the semi-colon to send the album to the "Cale, John" grouping and to the "Eno, Brian" grouping. What I get is this grouping:

Brian Eno; John Cale

And when I have other "Eno, Brian" albums tagged, then I get

[Varies]

because the "Brian Eno; John Cale" album is grouped with other "Eno, Brian" albums.

I've figured out a workaround to this problem using the [Name] field in Standard View, where it functions as a kind of category field. But in Theater View this does not work. It seems to me the simplest solution would be to allow the semi-colon to do its work even when it is part of a function.

[Hendrik]

Add &DataType=[list] to the expression.

I just tried, and that works fine here in Standard View. I used [Artist], Swap([Artist]), and Swap([Artist])&DataType=[list] to test, and the first and the last both result in a nice list of all individual artists, while the second has the problem you described - it treats multiple artists on one title as one long name.

[Denti]

Add &DataType=[list] to the expression.

I just tried, and that works fine here in Standard View. I used [Artist], Swap([Artist]), and Swap([Artist])&DataType=[list] to test, and the first and the last both result in a nice list of all individual artists, while the second has the problem you described - it treats multiple artists on one title as one long name.

I've tried that and it doesn't work for me.

What might I be doing wrong?

Where are you using Swap([Artist])&DataType=[list] to get these results? In the Category View? What do you have for the thumbnail expression?

If you're using [Name] in the thumbnail, then this is no different from what MC20 could do, and it's of no use for Theater View.

In Theater View I get

Brian Eno; John Cale


So: can you either allow the expression display in Theater View to "read" the semi-colon, or else make something like the category field [Name] available in Theater View?

The easiest solution, it seems to me, is to allow the "Expression to Display" in Theater View (and Standard View, for that matter) to accept &DataType=[list]

[Denti]

Anyone?