I'm trying to use Panel view types to implement a custom filtering system for browsing my album library. I am frustrated by what seems like a bug (or at least inconsistent behavior) in the Panel view I'm working with (vs. the Categories views I have used before.) Plus, I can't figure out how to work around it to get the behavior I need out of the (otherwise useful) Panel view.
Background: a complication in my library is that I have multiple versions of many albums. Therefore I have a custom field "Album Edition" which is unique per release, as opposed to "Album" which is the same across all the copies. Generally in my views I want a thumbnail per Album Edition.
I have experimentally set up a new Panel view with a set of custom categories useful for filtering. (These are mostly defined as expressions) The view is sorted primarily by "Album Edition" by default.
If I put the view in ListMode = Thumbnail I get the view in the first screenshot below. The surprising thing here is that it shows one (identical) thumbnail per song, under a group heading for each Album Edition. This view is "correct", but when I have a similar view in a Categories view with ListMode = Thumbnail, it displays a much simpler view of one thumbnail per album edition. (The latter is what I am going for.)
So, if I change to ListMode = Album Thumbnail, I get the second screenshot. Here it indeed grouped the songs back into albums. The problem is that it has implicitly "merged" all the Album Edition's for each Album; this has destroyed the sort order as well as putting all copies of the album into the same thumbnail. (The latter is not useful for playback.)
I know the Panel view is kind of a complicated beast but I cannot see a reason for this behavior difference. The difference seems to be only related to panel views (even if I make an empty Panel view, it still has this different List=Thumbnail behavior from an empty Category view.)
Is it a bug? Is there another way to get my Album Editions to look like albums in the Panel view?
Thanks,
Sean
