Matt, the last time we spoke (late last year I think) you couldn't understand why I would want some of the custom viewing features avalable in Siren (R.I.P.). Well, how about this. I've been listening to and cataloguing operatic stuff over the last few days. For my classical stuff, I rename the Custom 1 & 2 fields to Composer and Work. I also set the columns to make these 2 fields prominent.
Tonight I'm still cataloguing operatic stuff, but listening to more contemporary music. What's been annoying me all evening is that when I am searching for something to play, I am loosing valuable, prime real-estate to 2 unused fields.
Getting back to the classical, I'd also like to know the Conductor and Orchestra for each track and construct views according to them, but I must choose between them because there are only 3 custom fields and I'm already using 2.
Next I want to move on to my jazz vocals and record the songwriter for each track. I could use the renamed custom field, "Composer" but it would be nice to use "Songwriter".
These are very simple examples but they illustrate the point. You want to view the data in different ways depending on what kind of music you are looking at. That boils down to independently configurable views by Playlist/Smartlist membership.
Ideally each Playlist or Smartlist should have an unlimitted number of uniquely named custom fields. Each should have independently configurable column sequences and at least a 3 key sort sequence.
How about it for MJ9? Your new APE metadata means you can support any number of custom fields. You store them all as "custom n" so you have to translate them anyway. Why not store a custom translation for each view?
I noticed a discussion recently about the ecplorer view in Siren that does not rely on importing. I think it's a pretty cool feature too.
On the subject of custom views, I just can't work out how the sequencing works on the Playing Now view. Can someone please explain the philosophy?