INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: Listener on April 20, 2006, 03:43:19 pm
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I'm making some final decisions about the information I put in tags for classical music. For example,
Composer = Beethpoven or Beethoven, Ludwig
Album = Symphony No. 6 or Symphony no 6 in F major, Op. 68 "Pastoral"
Those decisions depend in part on the width of the columns in the browser pane part of the MC 11 UI. My view schemes for classical music mostly use 4 or 5 columns so column width is a concern.
1. I'd like to be able to adjust the sizes of individual columns in the panes area. I know that in the main file list, I can drag the vertical line that marks the boundary between columns with my mouse. The columns in the Panes area don't seem to react to my attempts to drag a boundary left or right. Is there a way for me to adjust widths of columns in the Panes area.
2. How does MC 11 decide on widths for columns in the Panes area? (In most of my View Schemes, colums are of different width.) Is there any way for me to affect that decision?
Bill
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Nobody replied to my earlier post. I still don't understand it but today I saw a rather extreme example of MC 11 altering panels column widths.
Today, MC 11.161 kept changing the widths of the browser pane columns until the rightmost column (of four columns) was so narrow that only 1 or 2 characters could be displayed in that column.
I dom't see a way to display an attachment so i can't show how the panels area looked.
Changing from displaying Panes to Genres and back to Panes produced a normal, usable width for the rightmost column.
Bill
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Currently panes autosize based on content. This is not user configurable.
Expressions may allow you to use fewer panes while accomplishing the same thing.
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> Currently panes autosize based on content. This is not user configurable.
Thanks. I'm happy to know for sure.
> Expressions may allow you to use fewer panes while accomplishing the
> same thing.
A very pertinent observation! I followed some threads about this and got some details from someone else. I tried making view chemes based on genre. That seems useful. So my basic browsing could be done with 3 columns: composer, album and Artist. I still have real uses for 4 panel columns. Two examples:
1. When I am tagging files, I use the panel columns to look for misspellings and unassigned field values. So I usually need to see Genre, Composer, Album and Artist in a panel column.
The list of values in a column is like an SQL Select ... Distinct. Quite powerful and something not provided in the file list portion of the MC 11 window.
2. I have quite a few recordings that look like duplicates on the basis of Genre, Composer, Album and Artist. These differ on the basis of a mon/stereo differrence, a re-mastering or just a coupling difference on the CD. For now, I'm just ripping everything. So I need an additional field to distinguish these apparent duplicates. That brings the column count back to four.
I've identified other uses but these two give the flavor of my uses.
I'm offering these examples to argue for making the panel columns thoroughly useful even with four columns. An algorithm that ensured that no column got squeezed to a useless width would be worthwhile. Letting me adjust panel column widths would work too. I'm not suggesting that this is a top of the list thing but I hope you note that for me at least, having 4 usable columns is quite valuable.
Being able to define panel columns (and use 3 or 4) was the feature that made MC 11 look significantly different and better than other music players i've examined. Full support for tags such as Composer, Conductor and Performer was the other big win for me.
Bill
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Next build:
Changed: Revised the shrink mode used by the panes during auto-sizing when there isn't enough space.
It'll work better in extreme cases where you have very long panes. However, there's only so much screen space so less data or a bigger monitor may be needed in some cases.
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Thank you, Matt.
Your quick response and the action is appreciated. More than I had a right to expect.
Bill