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[tiberiuspv]

MC offers a very nice grouping into album in panes. But, as far as I can tell, there is no way to control the order in which the albums are presented.

All my files have an ALBUMSORTORDER field, which gives the sorting order for albums (typically derived from the opus number or catalog number for classical works). I define this field in my library, relational per album. If I set the grouping by ALBUMSORTORDER, the heading of each album in the list becomes the ALBUMSORTORDER (which is gobbledygook from a user point of view). Is there a way to force the displayed grouping value (the larger font text associated with the group) independently of the grouping criterion? Looking at the .jvi files hints that this is possible, but the jvi syntax is obscure enough that I am reluctant to go and hack at it...

The alternative is to allow field sort values to be separate from field values (SQL style), but I do not think there is any such thing in MC, so it's probably the wrong way to look at the problem.

Thanks for any suggestions.

[MrC]

Sorting can be controlled by the Sort By setting for a Standard View, and on a per-category basis set by the Sort value for a category.

File sorting is controlled under Set rules for file display...

[tiberiuspv]

The file sorting under "Set rules for file display" controls the sorting inside a group (what I think you call a category, right?), so it does not affect the order in which the categories are listed (the default in MC seems to be to sort by Disc#,Trk# which works perfectly for me).
Sorting by ALBUMSORTORDER,Disc#,Trk# in a standard view works fine. But that does not provide the album grouping feature.
When I turn on grouping (by album), the sorting option only allows me to sort within each group. If I override it by clicking on the ALBUMSORTORDER, it removes the album grouping.
I am probably missing the obvious here...

[MrC]

The Group By feature not only defines the grouping and header text, it also defines the sorting for the file list, which is essentially ASCII sorting.  So if you want to sort the groups, you need to sort by a custom user field that includes the correct output to allow ASCII sorting to work in your favor.  An example would be [Year] - [Album].

The stock "Album" Group By setting is special - it includes a right justified Year on the right portion of the header, which is used for sorting, but displays Album on the left.  And "Album (by date)" does not show the Year, but does sort by the album's date.

The Set rules for file display sorting sorts, for example, the values present in a pane's column.  Or the order of the presented categories in a Categories view.  Note that Standard View includes four sub-types: Panes, Categories, 3D and File List views.

[tiberiuspv]

Yes, I could create a custom field containing [ALBUMSORTORDER]-[Album] and use that for grouping, but that still leaves me with a user-unfriendly string at the beginning of the group name. What I would really like is something like the stock Album grouping, but using ALBUMSORTORDER instead of date, and doing it in the reverse order.
I think I am pretty close to understanding the jri syntax and be able to create a test one that might do that. As far as I can tell, jri has all the features necessary, but most of it is not exposed in the user interface for simplification. It's the usual trade-off: make the engine as generic as you can, but make the user interface as restricted as you can to make it understandable by end-users. MC is already very, very generous in its user programmability. But there is always the user from hell who just wants one little bit more