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[LonWar]

Change Request  
 
When using the panes, if you click on artist then album and then click back to artist all it should find the whole album, not reset.  
 
Eg,  
 
Artist - Amanda Marshall  
Album - Much More Music.  
 
What dispays is 1 song, If I click back on Artist All, it should find all songs from that album regardless of artist  
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Matt wrote (From Build 219 thread)
It was this way for a while and a lot of people didn't like it.  Feel free to start another thread to discuss it if you'd like.
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To all,

Hmm Just curious as to why this was requested to be changed? I always thought this was just a bug, cause it just seems natural..

Comments?

[nila]

U have my vote, I find it a pain that it resets,

The original problem was started by people going back to the previous pane and clicking on stuff and it then still having a value selected in the next pane that was impossible with the newly selected first value.


eg.

Have selected:   Aaliyah - click on album - I care 4 u

go back and click on 'Bryan Adams' - I care 4 u cannot still be selected.

It was something along those lines.


I'd like it so that if the second value can stay selected then MC keeps it so selected.

I often find it resetted when I go back - not so much with artist album obviously, but more with year, genre, etc.


I'd rather have it stick unless the value is no longer appropriate!

ESPECIALLY when dealing with images and trying to refine a search - this really helps instead of having to start again each time we change a previous value.

[Doof]

It's tough because there are situations when you'd want one or the other to occur, but no really intuitive way of switching.

Maybe if just a click did what it does now, but a Shift-click didn't reset?

[sraymond]

How about the way APA uses "Matching" (AND) vs. "Closely Matching" (OR) in an intelligent manner...  if there's no AND, it switches to OR and changes the label to "Closely Matching"?

I'd love to see this type of intelligent searching implemented.

Scott-

[LonWar]

Ok,

How about a right click - Retrieve Album?

Then those people that wanted it changed in the first place will be happy and those that want it to go back will be happy...

[phelt]

If I understand this change request, I'm against it. It seems illogical. Despite the visual difference from the tree structure, the panes appear to still be a hierarchical display and navigation scheme.

In other words, selections on any given level of the hierarchy act as filters for lower levels, not the reverse. If I click on "all" within Artists, I expect to see appropriate results for all artists, not a superset of a lower branch.

[221bBS]

If I understand this change request, I'm against it. It seems illogical. Despite the visual difference from the tree structure, the panes appear to still be a hierarchical display and navigation scheme.

In other words, selections on any given level of the hierarchy act as filters for lower levels, not the reverse. If I click on "all" within Artists, I expect to see appropriate results for all artists, not a superset of a lower branch.

I have to agree with this statement

[NoCodeUK]

I'm with phelt on this one...the current way is more logical...

Adam

[LonWar]

Well the way it is, when you mark your selections say.
Artist A
Much Music Disc

And it displays 1 song, Excellent, it did what you told it.

Now, If you clicked on Artist All from there, why would you want all the panes to reset?

This way it works forward and reverse.

[sraymond]

Despite the visual difference from the tree structure, the panes appear to still be a hierarchical display and navigation scheme.

This isn't true...  while trees are hierarchical by definition, imagine the panes (columns) People/Places/Events for managing photos.  There's no hierarchical structure.

Scott-

[RemyJ]

Well the way it is, when you mark your selections say.
Artist A
Much Music Disc

And it displays 1 song, Excellent, it did what you told it.

Now, If you clicked on Artist All from there, why would you want all the panes to reset?

This way it works forward and reverse.

What happens if you select an artist that's NOT in the album selected?  By your logic, nothing would show.  And what happens if you WANT it to reset?

Sorry, I like it the way it is.  Makes much more sense.

[Doof]

I agree that the way it is now makes sense from a hierarchial perspective. But again, that's thinking too much like a tree and... I can't believe I just said that.

But you know what I mean.

Anyway, the panes are more powerful than a tree. There are cases where it becomes more logical NOT to reset. Especially in the case of images, where certain criteria are not necessarily dependent on another criteria.

Like People\Places\Events. I may want to find all pictures with me in them from Florida. I would click "Doof" in the People pane, then "Florida" in the Places pane. But now I decide I want to see all pictures from Florida, regardless of who's in them. So I click "All People" and bam... now I have to go find Florida again. In this case, Florida doesn't depend on Doof the same way that Load depends on Metallica in an Artist\Album view scheme.

Maybe the simplest way of doing this is to have another option in the View Scheme properties for "Make hierarchial" that is on by default, but can be disabled for view schemes where it makes more sense not to be. With it set to not be heirarchial, any time you select a person from "People" and the currently selected "Place" doesn't exist for that person, then "Place" would just reset the way it does now. With that simple option, the panes once again gain an ability that is just not possible with the tree.

[sdgrizdan]

I STRONGLY support doof's idea of an option! This is a must for MC to have an adequete photo organizing system.

[sraymond]

What happens if you select an artist that's NOT in the album selected?  By your logic, nothing would show.  And what happens if you WANT it to reset?

MC could first apply an "AND" between the two columns (i.e. no reset).  If this results in no matches, it could try an "OR" between the two columns.  So long as there was a way to tell what operator was applied, all is well.  APA uses this methodology and calls AND "Matching" and OR "Closely Matching".

If you want to reset, select the <all> "Artist" or <all> "Album".

Like People\Places\Events. I may want to find all pictures with me in them from Florida. I would click "Doof" in the People pane, then "Florida" in the Places pane. But now I decide I want to see all pictures from Florida, regardless of who's in them. So I click "All People" and bam... now I have to go find Florida again. In this case, Florida doesn't depend on Doof the same way that Load depends on Metallica in an Artist\Album view scheme.

The first attempt at "AND" would return the first set you're after.  And once you select "All People", the "AND" still returns what you're looking for.  For soemthing like Artist\Album, if there were no matches with the AND, then the OR would show all Load and All Metallica.

The AND/OR also lets you do stuff like select "Doof" and "Scott" in People and "Florida" in Places.  As you don't have any photos with me in them, the result would return any photo with you, me, or Florida.  As MC currently works, you'd get nothing.

Scott-

[phelt]

sraymond said:

This isn't true...  while trees are hierarchical by definition, imagine the panes (columns) People/Places/Events for managing photos.  There's no hierarchical structure.

So if People is your leftmost pane, making a selection within People will not define the contents of the pane to its right? I don't use those tags for images, so perhaps they work differently.
If I understand your point, it's that panes do not have to be navigated hierarchically like a tree. Noted. But the topic addresses the effects of selection between panes.

imjustagamer said:

Now, If you clicked on Artist All from there, why would you want all the panes to reset?
This way it works forward and reverse.

It would not reset all panes unless Artist were the leftmost pane. I would expect that if I pressed <all> under Artist, it would mean all artists. I will echo RemyJ's question: what happens if I want it to reset?

Doof said:

Maybe the simplest way of doing this is to have another option in the View Scheme properties for "Make hierarchial" that is on by default, but can be disabled for view schemes where it makes more sense not to be.

I thought you were against yet more options being added  
Seriously though, I don't like the idea of one button having 2 functions, without any state indication but rather depending on the sequence of selection (clicking). It feels kludgy and inelegant. IMO, where there's a causal relationship between panes it should be maintained. (Actually the current functionality appears to break this slightly...) A view scheme option would get around this, but   is that enough? Would folks want to be able to switch the behaviour quickly?

I understand the motivation for the request, I'm just not sure that we've yet come across an idea that uses the full capabilities of the panes and still adheres to 'common sense' (as opposed to logic). But I am sure of the ingenuity of the J River team and the folks on this board, so I'm sure something good will eventually be hatched  

[phelt]

sraymond: does 'APA' stand for Adobe Photo Album?

For soemthing like Artist\Album, if there were no matches with the AND, then the OR would show all Load and All Metallica.

No offense, but if this worked as I  envision it, it would annoy the h#ll out of me in about 2 minutes when I was navigating music. This seems to be one of the stumbling blocks in trying to create an all-media browser/library - so many differences not only in the processes and schemes adopted by different users, but also in the goals inherent to searching and sorting different types of media.

[nila]

Maybe the simplest way of doing this is to have another option ....

Did I hear you right?? An option!?!?!?
lol - hurray for options!!

I do agree though - I'd never have thought of this solution but to me it definitely sounds like the best one.


I'd have all mine set so that it never reset unless I chose it to, In fact, I'd like it to be done one step further (Somehow doubt I'll get it) so that I can click on ANY pane and the ones to the left AND right both filter down to show what is possible now that that value is selected.
It would then turn the panes into the perfect search tool for images.
To a lesser extent, at least having them not reset would be a BIG step in the right directly.

I'd like to see the option look like this:

Panes Behavior:
- Reset selection to right on new select
- Dont reset selection on new select
- Filter both directions


- Filter one would be where it applies the filter either way and doesn't rely on thinking of the panes as trees - it gives them a LOT more power.


And making it an option per view scheme definitely makes sense to me as I have some views that I would want to reset:

(TV Series - when I change which tv series i am looking at, it would make no sense to still have selected the same series number in the next pane as it's unrelated.   for images though if I select   2002, then select my name then america for the location and then decide I want to see 2001 instead - changing to 2001 means I then have to again select my name and again select america - a pain in the butt).


Doof said it, not me, but an option per view scheme is a WOW solution

And I think it should be set to default off for audio - but for images I think you should default it on as it makes more sense.

[NoCodeUK]

Having the option would definitely be the best bet but if we can't get the option per view scheme I would say to keep it like it is for now.  I find myself in more situations where I expect it to reset than not...

Adam

[V-Man]

Eeek! Too many options! Option Overload!

As far as my own way of using MC goes, only one paradigm makes sense to me.

Clicking on an item in a pane should reset all panes to the right to "<all>". The only exception is that if a newly re-populated pane contains the same item that was previously selected, it should remain selected.

For example, if I have two panes, [Artist] and [Album], and I select [Artist] as "Christina Aguilera", then in [Album] I would see the entries:

<all>
<unassigned>
Christina Aguilera
Stripped

Now suppose I select Stripped, the main view would show all tracks in album Stripped.

From this point on:

1) If I select "Alanis Morissette" in [Artist] then the [Album] pane would reset to <all> and all tracks by her would be in the list.

2) If I Ctrl-click "Alanis Morissette", both Christina and Alanis would be selected. [Album] would now display all albums by both artists, but rather than resetting to <all>, Stripped would remain selected, and the list of tracks would not change (and any selection in that list would not be lost either).

I'm slowly coming around to the panes now. The most important thing for me is that panes must support multiple selection, otherwise they're no better than the tree (again, as far as my use is concerned).

[V-Man]

Having the option would definitely be the best bet but if we can't get the option per view scheme I would say to keep it like it is for now.  I find myself in more situations where I expect it to reset than not...

Adam

Double-click to reset, single-click to not reset?

[nila]

V-man - what you just said about only resetting or not resetting when blah......
is exactly what we're asking for

[sraymond]

sraymond: does 'APA' stand for Adobe Photo Album?

Yes.

Scott-

[sraymond]

sraymond said:
So if People is your leftmost pane, making a selection within People will not define the contents of the pane to its right? I don't use those tags for images, so perhaps they work differently.
If I understand your point, it's that panes do not have to be navigated hierarchically like a tree. Noted. But the topic addresses the effects of selection between panes.

Unfortunately, the non-hierarchichal nature of some fields is what causes the problem with panes.  While making a selection within People defines the content of the panes to the right, it is simply peforming an "AND" between the columns.  This is not the same as a hierarchical
set of fields, where the panes to the right are descendents of the People selection.

Of course, selecting <all> in the People field nullifies the effect of the AND, but the issue was one of resetting the panes automatically, because the relationships were (but aren't!) hierarchical.

I wonder if what I wrote made sense?

Scott-

[sraymond]

V-Man said:

As far as my own way of using MC goes, only one paradigm makes sense to me.

MC has to apply to a lot more than just one paradigm if it wants to be "One Interface - All Media".  I suspect V-Man is predominantly a music guy.

I'd think options (even if they're controlled intelligently based on viewscheme content) is the only way to manage all media in one interface.

I really do appreciate JRiver's motto...  but it's a tough one to fulfill!

Scott-