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[wburkett]

I found some old threads on this, but nothing that specifically answers my question:

In the Panes view with Genre, Artist and Album panes at the top, is there any way to get the Artist pane to sort on [Artist Sort] yet display [Artist] and, similarly, get the Album pane to sort on [Album Sort] and display [Album]?

Bill

[blgentry]

In theory, you can change one of your Panes to be an Expression, instead of a library field.  You can sort by one expression, and display a second expression.

However, I've tried this and it doesn't seem to work for me.  I'm using MC 21.0.31 on Mac.  I found an old thread about this, but it seemed to have been resolved.  It clearly does NOT work for me.  Perhaps it works on the Windows version?

Brian.

[Arindelle]

Nope This has not been resolved in Windows. I wish it were Brian. Can't be done in a Panes View. (but I think Pane Views are a special case.) 

This can be done in Standard Mode, in a Category view by using Thumbnail Text and the unswap(...) or swap(...) functions.


And although there is sort of a workaround for Single Artists, it doesn't work in Theater View either, nor does it split multiple artists or album artists correctly although Matt did improve the swap functions to include multiple entries based on the semi-colon separator. This also affects Remote views too.

Myself and others (Denti particularly if you want to search for them) have a bunch of posts on this basically asking that Group by and Display by work using expressions, and especially that they will split Album Artist Sort, Artist sort and Composer Sort (for classical)

[blgentry]

Well, if "display" is broken for expressions with Panes and Categories, where *does* it work?

Brian.

[Arindelle]

Well, if "display" is broken for expressions with Panes and Categories, where *does* it work?

Brian.

It works in Thumbnail Text. I think its a vestigial organ for everything else  !!

Kidding Frankly I don't use it except for trying to group and sort last name, first name to First Name Last Name. I'm sure it works for something but haven't really tested it to do anything else.  I think if the grouped by is artist and display also contains artists but adds something else it will work ... http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=95068.0

[wburkett]

Thanks, guys --- sounds like the answer to my question is basically "no".  ("not easily" to me right now is the same as "no".)

From my point view, this is another glaring UI design omission (like "shuffle album") that I can't believe wasn't considered.

Bill

[Matt]

In theory, you can change one of your Panes to be an Expression, instead of a library field.  You can sort by one expression, and display a second expression.

However, I've tried this and it doesn't seem to work for me.  I'm using MC 21.0.31 on Mac.  I found an old thread about this, but it seemed to have been resolved.  It clearly does NOT work for me.  Perhaps it works on the Windows version?

Brian.

I think that will be fixed in the next build.

[Arindelle]

I think that will be fixed in the next build.

ah Happy Camper here !!!

[wburkett]

ah Happy Camper here !!!

Perhaps I should be a happy camper, too!  (I can't try what Brian suggested at the moment -- I might play around with his suggestion later this evening.)

Bill

[Matt]

I think that will be fixed in the next build.

It's funny because I was trying to setup a view to test something for a user on Interact.

But it didn't work at all.

So then I tried it at work and it worked great!

Luckily it didn't work on John's machine so he was able to get to the bottom of it.

We're confused why it worked on some computers and not others, but in any event, it should be fixed next build.

[blgentry]

From my point view, this is another glaring UI design omission (like "shuffle album") that I can't believe wasn't considered.

This is a very strange thing to say in my opinion.  MC has a very generalized design that lets you do almost anything you want.  *Almost*.  I showed you how to do random albums.  Is there something wrong with that solution?  I don't think you're being at all fair in your criticism.

Brian.

[blgentry]

We're confused why it worked on some computers and not others, but in any event, it should be fixed next build.

Thanks.  Glad to hear this feature will be back in action.

Brian.

[wburkett]

This is a very strange thing to say in my opinion.  MC has a very generalized design that lets you do almost anything you want.  *Almost*.  I showed you how to do random albums.  Is there something wrong with that solution?  I don't think you're being at all fair in your criticism.

Brian.

Perhaps that came off stronger than intended, Brian.  I like MC a lot and I agree that it is very feature-rich - I'm quite happy with what I've been able to do with it so far.  Annnnd there are also a few things like these that I myself think would have been no-brainer requirements to include as native UI capabilities.  It may be my years of iTunes use (which does these things easily and obviously right-off-the-bat) that leads me to that position, but I think I'd want them anyway in any kind of music player/manager.  They don't seem to be unusual or strange requirements to me, so the fact that they're not there "up-front" strikes me as an oversight.

Bill

[wburkett]

So: the fix in 21.0.37 works - thanks, Matt.

Here is the Expression for "Expression to group by:" 

Code: [Select]

if(isequal([Comp], Various Artists,1), _Various Artist Compilations, ifelse(!isempty([Album Artist Sort]), [Album Artist Sort], !isempty([Artist Sort]), [Artist Sort], !isempty([Album Artist]), [Album Artist], 1, [Artist]))
I couldn't find other tags or library fields that indicated compilations, so I created my own user field [Comp]="No;Single Artist;Various Artists"  If you don't have a Compilation indicator field, just eliminate the outer If statement. 

For "Expression to display:"

Code: [Select]

if(isequal([Comp], Various Artists,1), _Various Artist Compilations, if(isempty[Album Artist, 1], [Artist, 1], [Album Artist, 1]))
Again: if you don't have a Compilation field, eliminate the outer If statement.

(The underscore in "_Various Artist Compilations" is so that it sorts to the front of the Artist list.)

Also: I have no idea why MC keeps putting the "1" in the [Album Artist, 1], [Artist, 1] field names - I didn't put them in and I'm not sure what they do.

Bill

[glynor]

Also: I have no idea why MC keeps putting the "1" in the [Album Artist, 1], [Artist, 1] field names - I didn't put them in and I'm not sure what they do.

This is, admittedly, not covered very well in its own section on the Wiki (perhaps I will rectify that if I get to it), but it is covered in a few places. Most specifically here in the introduction to the Comparison Operators section of the Search Language page:

Note: For numeric types, the value of 0 is stored as a 0 internally, but Media Center uses a formatted display version of the field and shows it as an empty value. For example, if the field [My Integer Field] is set with the value of 0, it will show in a pane column or cell as empty. To see the actual value stored, use an expression column with the raw format field specifier ,0 in the field name just before the closing bracket: [My Integer Field,0]. Media Center typically uses the formatted version of the field, which is expressed as [My Integer Field,1], where the ,1 is the optional default.

But, admittedly it is a bit clumsy, and doesn't explain all of the uses. So, here's the deal:

You can provide an optional parameter to any field you reference using standard square bracket field notation. This parameter controls whether the output is the "regular" formatted value (the default) or the raw value actually stored in the database:

[Some Field,0] : Outputs raw value from the database.
[Some Field,1] : Outputs formatted value. This is the default so is equivalent to [Some Field].

It corresponds to the bFormatted parameter of the Get() function in the COM API, and the parameter available for the field() function in the Expression Language.

A simple example is numeric fields, such as [Track #]. When these fields are set to 0, then they display blank when viewed. If you want [Track #] to actually output these zeroes (to do math on them in an Expression, perhaps) you need to use [Track #,0] instead. Another example is Date values, which are stored internally as floating point numbers, and to see the "real" value you need to set the bFormatted parameter to zero.

[glynor]

There. I cleaned it up a bit:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Library_Fields

[Arindelle]

ok this has been fixed for panes view as the OP requested -- however there is still the issue of the semi-colons not being split...

just putting this out for posterity to illustrate this for others ...

[gappie]

ok this has been fixed for panes view as the OP requested -- however there is still the issue of the semi-colons not being split...

just putting this out for posterity to illustrate this for others ...

does it work when you use

Code: [Select]

&datatype=[list]behind the expression used. it seems to work for me. but maybe i dont understand the point..

 
gab

[Arindelle]

does it work when you use

Code: [Select]

&datatype=[list]behind the expression used. it seems to work for me. but maybe i dont understand the point..

 
gab

hmm maybe Im' the one that doesn't understand Gab? Do you mean tack it on like this?

Code: [Select]

Unswap([Artist Sort, 1]) &datatype=[list]

if so no it doesn't

what I mean is that the expected behavior is that in the example choosing coltrane in the artists column now will bring up all albums (including the ones where Ellington, Adderly, and Monk are also artists -- the separator works. One selection all artists that include Coltrane show up

When you use a field like I created Sorting-Artist (a field set-up as "&datatype=list" this also works when choosing Coltrane, John. But when you use the expression Unswap(...) on a "&datatype=list"-configured field it will correctly swap them but you then would have to select each one individual to see all of Coltrane's albums.  Why I showed both the expression with a list field (Sorting-Artists) and a normal field (Artist Sort)  - the latter I'm not expecting it to work, the former should (but I've been told actually can't work at present)

Basic idea is just to sort on Last Name, First Name and display by First Name Last Name (artists plurial by the way is also a list delimited field "&datatype=list"))

If you have a work around, lots of people would be interested. So if I'm still unclear, let me know K, ? Thanks

[gappie]

its starts to get clear.. one thing i just noticed is that

Code: [Select]

Unswap([Artist Sort, 1]) &datatype=[list]behaves different then

Code: [Select]

Unswap([Artist Sort, 1])&datatype=[list]notice there is no space between the ) and the &.
the last one gives me one coltrane with all his records undependend of the collaboration.

the other thing.. i like to experiment a bit on..

 
gab

[Arindelle]

tried both and regardless they are not separating them .. in the list you see still see the 4 examples I showed, although I see they behave differently. Having four choices defeats the purpose still

Why with a field already configured to be a delimited list field, would you have to add that again in the expression? ANyways who cares, if ti works,
waiting for your experiment Gab

PS - for info these are not just performers, (I keep these under soloists), these are really tracks with multiple principle artists ... I have tons of albums with Coltrane playing on them

[gappie]

Basic idea is just to sort on Last Name, First Name and display by First Name Last Name

i think this is impossible in mc. the values in list type of field can not be connected in a one on one way. like
miles davis;john coltrane in the artist field
davis, miles;coltrane, john in the sort field
there is no way to connect miles davis to davis, miles.
so there is no way to set up a sort that would put those 2 together. remember mc is not a relational database (before starting a discussion about relational or not its better to read the threads in the past about that, and then decide to just life with it... btw i love how the db of mc works )

 
gab

[gappie]

maybe this makes it clearer.. see attachment
it has

Code: [Select]

Unswap([artiesten, 1])&datatype=[list]in the second collumn and

Code: [Select]

Unswap([artiesten, 1]) &datatype=[list](with space) in the third.

[glynor]

You have to append the datatype to the expression with an & symbol for it to be effective, I suspect. The Expression language ignores whitespace before parameters inside parenthesis. Like this:

Code: [Select]

SomeFunction([Some Field],2)is equivalent to

Code: [Select]

SomeFunction([Some Field], 2)
But it doesn't ignore whitespace outside parenthesis like this:

Code: [Select]

SomeFunction ([Some Field],2)(That one would be broken.)

Using Data Types in expressions is covered here:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Expression_Language#Data_Types

[Arindelle]

i think this is impossible in mc. the values in list type of field can not be connected in a one on one way. like
miles davis;john coltrane in the artist field
davis, miles;coltrane, john in the sort field
there is no way to connect miles davis to davis, miles.
so there is no way to set up a sort that would put those 2 together. remember mc is not a relational database (before starting a discussion about relational or not its better to read the threads in the past about that, and then decide to just life with it... btw i love how the db of mc works )

 
gab

yes this is what I have been told ... on multiple occasions.

I still think there could/should be a way to do this at least for a fixed number of specific fields. (Artist Sort, Album Artist, Composer Sort most importantly as they are standard, universal fields that can be obtained automatically during a rip; and eventually soloist (or performer depending). IMO I see really no advantage in a pane view anyway really, more of an exercise ... in a Category view, however,  I'd think most people would benefit. They are used to seeing it that way, and is more than window dressing. But thats more of a theater view topic than this thread of course

I have read the arguments about relational databases and I'm not going to go there, no worries ... although I do think a unique db record ID linked to [Album] could solve a bunch of issues which would not necessitate anything so radical. If  the separator couldn't parse (or split might be the right term?) multiple entries per tag field via views, that would be a different story  --- actually that is what made me jump from Media Monkey to JRiver back in the day -- the ability to have delimited list type fields.