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More => Old Versions => Media Center 13 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: BenRad on January 27, 2009, 10:16:41 pm

Title: Title Case revisited.
Post by: BenRad on January 27, 2009, 10:16:41 pm
I'm very picky about the capitalization in my titles. I realize this is nitpicking, but can we make the "Title Case" feature of the tagging tools make "from" lower case in titles? This seems to be the only title case feature that's missing...as in:

"Girl from the North Country" - Bob Dylan
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: rjm on January 27, 2009, 10:36:24 pm
+1
I suggested same a couple years ago.
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: mark_h on January 28, 2009, 03:19:53 am
Why 'from'?

I tag according to Musicbrainz style guidelines and From is always uppercase.

Now that doesn't mean that you shouldn't prefer From to be lower case but I wonder why you do?

So, for me the MC tool is handling FROM correctly, though I'd like to see it handle other words as MB does as well.

Cheers,

Mark
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: BenRad on January 28, 2009, 05:48:19 am
I had always assumed that you used lowercase with prepositions of 4 or fewer letters, but after digging out my Chicago Manual of Style, I don't see that anywhere.
I guess it is just a preference. I'll make the change myself.
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: BenRad on January 28, 2009, 08:54:32 am
According to 3 copy editors at the magazine where I work, "from" should always be lowercase in titles. I'm just sayin'.
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: JimH on January 28, 2009, 10:41:55 am
According to 3 copy editors at the magazine where I work, "from" should always be lowercase in titles. I'm just sayin'.
I agree.
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: Matt on January 28, 2009, 10:48:09 am
Here's the current title-case lower case words:

the|a|an|and|or|to|of|by|with|for|on|in|but|vs.|n'|from

Suggestions welcome.
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: BenRad on January 28, 2009, 10:54:48 am
I assume that'll be in the next build? Thanks for adding it Matt.
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: MrC on January 28, 2009, 11:01:32 am
Here's the current title-case lower case words:

the|a|an|and|or|to|of|by|with|for|on|in|but|vs.|n'|from

Suggestions welcome.

Perhaps these be made configurable from a list.  There are many more from other languages ("de", etc.).
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: mark_h on January 28, 2009, 11:10:30 am
I'd love to see this configurable, either as an external xml edit or within MC.

Mark
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: Alex B on January 28, 2009, 11:12:22 am
Perhaps these be made configurable from a list.  There are many more from other languages ("de", etc.).

It should then be in the language file.

Here's the current title-case lower case words:

the|a|an|and|or|to|of|by|with|for|on|in|but|vs.|n'|from

Suggestions welcome.

Maybe the abbreviation feat. should be added. Featuring is not a short preposition, but feat. is mostly used in the Artist field exactly like with or and.

Any opinions about etc?
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: mark_h on January 28, 2009, 11:20:40 am
Here's the current title-case lower case words:

the|a|an|and|or|to|of|by|with|for|on|in|but|vs.|n'|from

Suggestions welcome.

Musicbrainz uses:

a|an|and|as|at|but|by|for|in|of|on|or|the|to   

for English, with various qualifiers, eg

do not lowercase if preceded by certain characters, eg :|)|.|/ etc

Mark
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: rjm on January 28, 2009, 11:47:25 am
"From" is the biggy that I run into all the time. There may be a few other more debatable ones like "As" but I'm happy with just changing "From".
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: Matt on January 28, 2009, 12:08:15 pm
Here's an updated list:
a|an|and|as|at|but|by|feat.|for|from|in|n'|of|on|or|the|to|vs.|with

Remember that if this is the first word, it will be uppercase.  I agree we need to improve translation support for this feature.
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: gappie on January 28, 2009, 12:20:13 pm
I agree we need to improve translation support for this feature.

may i humbly ask if this also could be done for the ignore articles. and i was thinking that maybe the language file is not the best place. i have a lot of english, dutch, german, frensh stuff. maybe some xml file somewhere?

 :)
gab
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: Alex B on January 28, 2009, 12:35:42 pm
may i humbly ask if this also could be done for the ignore articles. and i was thinking that maybe the language file is not the best place. i have a lot of english, dutch, german, frensh stuff. maybe some xml file somewhere?

You are right. Of course the UI language must be separate from the files' language.

We don't have a "metadata language" field yet. It would be needed for making possible to switch between the languages. MC could check if the file is in a certain language and use the appropriate word list.

EDIT

However, short word lists would not be possible with many languages that don't use any special capitalization in titles (e.g. French, Spanish, Italian, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, etc). The lists would need to contain all words that are not capitalized in any standard text. MC would need to browse a dictionary.

I use sentence case with these languages and fix only the proper nouns. (In German all nouns are capitalized, but a world list would still be huge, more or less incomplete and not practically usable with mass tagging).
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: T2Mac on January 28, 2009, 01:03:12 pm
Could you also include the abbreviation pres. (presents)?
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: hit_ny on January 28, 2009, 02:09:02 pm
Suggestions welcome.

List of Prepositions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_prepositions)

do not lowercase if preceded by certain characters, eg :|)|.|/ etc
Good idea  :)
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: rick.ca on January 28, 2009, 07:02:56 pm
Quote
...but after digging out my Chicago Manual of Style, I don't see that anywhere.

It says, in part, "Lowercase prepositions, regardless of length, except when they are stressed..."

It's complicated, even ignoring the fact titles can be in any language. I think the developers would be well justified in recognizing there are limits to what they can do. Maybe a user-configurable list is the best way to go.
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: dcwebman on January 29, 2009, 07:37:10 am
Getting suggestions and future suggestions will be a constant change. Configurable is the only way to go that would answer everybody's needs.
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: darichman on January 29, 2009, 10:36:27 pm
I'm in support of "from" (short prepositions are lower case as a general rule)

I would also like to see "feat." added to the list too!
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: hit_ny on February 03, 2009, 12:43:15 pm
Here's the MB guide for English (http://musicbrainz.org/doc/CapitalizationStandardEnglish). They also have ones for several (http://musicbrainz.org/doc/CapitalizationStandard) languages.

One of the rules stumped me.

Quote
(1) Always capitalize the first and last word of a title.

Is there any expression that can pick out 2 word titles in a [Field] ?
Title: Re: Title Case revisited.
Post by: MusicHawk on February 03, 2009, 03:44:56 pm
According to 3 copy editors at the magazine where I work, "from" should always be lowercase in titles. I'm just sayin'.

Lots of room for opinion, but at my magazines we also consider context in the sentence/phrase, and what is around it, and even whether the proposition is at the beginning of a line due to wrapping. We consider how it looks, and how it reads. When a coverline is wrapped to two lines, and the second line begins with a proposition (often intentionally because we try to wrap at phrases or other logical points) we will capitalize the proposition so both line begin with a capitalized word. Not doing this looks like a mistake, even if "technically" correct.

Also, I've been typing in a zillion music tracks from vinyl albums, and it's almost a 3-way split: Lowercase articles/propositions, capitalize every word, or ALL-CAPS every word. No consistency.

And there's always an exception: I don't think Hemingway's book title is ever (correctly) written "for Whom the Bell Tolls". ;D Though I have seen it as "For Whom the Bell Tolls", but usually "FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS" -- the classic way to dodge the question.