My other question.. And forgive me because this is a long post for what is probably a simple question, but I am thinking out loud as I type...
I'm not sure of how to approach it / which is the best way possible..
I think I may have conflicting preferences?
On the one hand, I think Name sorted list of my series would look nice. But on the other hand, I want them to appear in proper chronological order.
But the trouble seems to be, if I want to "Group" series together and sort by date - what format would I use? Episodes have different air dates, so in a "Series" view there is no consistent date to reference?
And also, if I start tagging for and sort by Groups, anything that is non-grouped is sorted outside of that, so even if Series A, B, C, D are not grouped but E, F, G do belong to a group and that group name comes before series A, B, C, D alphabetically - then I end up with a non alphabetic sort order in the end..
I hope I explained that correctly.
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I have an idea for a solution, but I'm not sure how to begin constructing it..
I want to maintain a Series view (both in Media Center Library view, and the Theater View) but within the series, I want another "group" so that I can store all related Series under that single group, and then go down the tree further to view only those (and sorting those in chronological order)..
So I guess my idea is this..
Main View> Alphabetical Name Sort (example using various Animes)
Will list Series as normal, but when a series is grouped, it will have an entry for that group Trigun, Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop all have individual listings, But also an entry such as "Mobile Suit Gundam Series", which when selected will expand into another "Series" View, which then lists all Gundam Specific shows, in whatever sort order I want, and then I can pick a show from there, and select an episode, etc just like I was doing it from the main series display...
Basically a kind of Nested series view?? I'm not sure how I would start building that.. if it involves tags other than the Grouping tag, or if I'll need some other custom field setup..
I've been trying to play around with Expression Language, but it turns out to be a little intimidating in some respects.. Both because I make mistakes of assuming I can use an expression in a given place, or I find it hard to see what I am doing because I have to type it all on one line in certain cases(it seems)
edit:So far I got MC Library View setup so I can either expand the tree into Series OR Grouping view, but not a nested type... will keep working at it.. I may have to just build a Pane based view instead, and manage it through text panes (seems easier to split up different views) and only worry about fancy thumbnail view setups for Theater View (I think it will be easier to build it for that too)