I agree, it would be great to be able to have optional grouping in a view, without forcing a one-element grouping on every item. I have also often wondered how to organize my movies, and i have some i would love to get grouped, like all the Star Trek Movies, or all James Bond movies, and long movie series like that - without adding an extra layer for all other movies.
This is a 'correct' statement of the problem, in that it at least acknowledges something not currently part of the current design is needed to achieve the desired result. There is nothing 'wrong' with the current design, other than it cannot do what it was not designed to do. It uses a specified hierarchy of
Categories to determine what is included in a final file list. The file list shows a small info panel for the currently selected item, and an additional screen will display a large info panel with additional information. That may not work as one may wish it to work (e.g., for a movie view that includes single movies and movie series), but it certainly works perfectly in general—as it was designed.
It's easy enough to produce any sort of
Category that may be needed (e.g., [Series] if one exists, otherwise [Name]), but the category list will not include any information about an individual movie without selecting it, and then will display it as a file list of one. It seems what's sought is a file list that will include a mix of individual files and, where files are members of a group (e.g., [Series]), a group item. To avoid confusion—and to acknowledge this is something not included in the current architecture of Theatre View—let's call that, say...
Grouping.
A
Grouping would somehow be defined and included in
Rules for file display. The file list would then include an item for each value of that group. Such a group node might be a link to a further file list, or would simply expand to show it's contents within the existing list. The node itself might include a small panel that's an appropriate aggregation of values for it's contents (i.e., [Year] range, [Rating] average, [Genre] and [Director] value or 'Various'). Such a mechanism would work equally well for movie series and anything else users may prefer to be displayed as a
Group in a file list rather than as a
Category.
It might be more fruitful to campaign for something like
Grouping to be included in the next major update to Theatre View, rather than to seek workarounds that don't exist or options that aren't feasible or practical.
Another long-awaited feature are links that work in Theatre View. Imagine including a [Series] link in the small panel that displays a file list of the series. (Perhaps links could be cycled with a <Right> and executed with <Enter>.) As well as being very useful in general, some may prefer to use links than grouping to display movie series (or any other files related to the selected item).
