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[seantrow]

I'm trying to use Pane view types to implement a custom filtering system for browsing my album library. I am frustrated by what seems like a bug (or at least inconsistent behavior) in the Panes view I'm working with (vs. the Categories views I have used before.)  Plus, I can't figure out how to work around it to get the behavior I need out of the (otherwise useful) Panel view.

Background: a complication in my library is that I have multiple versions of many albums.  Therefore I have a custom field "Album Edition" which is unique per release, as opposed to "Album" which is the same across all the copies.  Generally in my views I want a thumbnail per Album Edition.

I have experimentally set up a new Panes view with a set of custom categories useful for filtering.  (These are mostly defined as expressions)  The view is sorted primarily by "Album Edition" by default.

If I put the view in ListMode = Thumbnail I get the view in the first screenshot below.  The surprising thing here is that it shows one (identical) thumbnail per song, under a group heading for each Album Edition.  This view is "correct", but when I have a similar view in a Categories view with ListMode = Thumbnail, it displays a much simpler view of one thumbnail per album edition. (The latter is what I am going for.)

So, if I change to ListMode = Album Thumbnail, I get the second screenshot. Here it indeed grouped the songs back into albums.  The problem is that it has implicitly "merged" all the Album Edition's for each Album; this has destroyed the sort order as well as putting all copies of the album into the same thumbnail.  (The latter is not useful for playback.)

I know the Panes view is kind of a complicated beast but I cannot see a reason for this behavior difference.  The difference seems to be only related to panel views (even if I make an empty Panes view, it still has this different List=Thumbnail behavior from an empty Category view.)

Is it a bug?  Is there another way to get my Album Editions to look like albums in the Panes view?

Thanks,
Sean

[seantrow]

Bumping this since no replies (as recommended by FAQ)

TL;DR: 
I would like to get the "Thumbnails/Album Thumbnails" list styles to work the same in "Panes" style as they do in "Categories" style => particularly with respect to flattening grouping thumbnails of songs from same album, without reordering/merging my groups.

Are we just at the "it is what it is" stage with pane view behavior?

Thanks,
Sean

[Scobie]

I think "Album Thumbnail" mode inherently groups by [Album] and doesn't allow breaking of that grouping, so whenever you use it it is going to group everything by that attribute which is what you are seeing. Whether this is by design or not I don't know.

I did achieve something similar to what I think you are after by using an expression field to force MC to separate albums based on a field, then sorting by it.

Add a Library Field and set the Calculated Data to [Album] - [Album Edition]

Then in your Panes view, List by Details and Group by your new Library Field.

This allowed me to have a Panes view where the [Album] tag is the same, but albums are separated by the [Album Edition] field.

By default it has more information than you need but you can customise the number of columns.

[seantrow]

Thanks for the suggestion, I tried it out.  Unfortunately however I normally want a "2D grid of album covers" view which this is not.

BTW, I think you can get this behavior (or close to) without the custom field if you use the "expression" option when setting up the categories on the pane.

Popping up a level, the high level thing I want is add "filters" available in a view, the same way I can have sorting.  (So, for example, just show me 5.1 albums, or just Jazz)

"Panes" kind of gives that but it is turning out more like "Pains"  [ha].  There is just too much baggage with the different style of view I guess - the album grouping being the main one I am fighting now.

Right now I sort of have filters by setting up multiple views as a hierarchy sort of like this:
Stereo Music
Quad Music
  Albums
     3+
     Jazz
     Concerts
  Artists
     ...

This works OK and I have been using it for a long time.  But it's awkward to maintain (views have to be copied to every branch of the tree) and is not very flexible, and the UI for picking a filtering seems too clunky.

Anybody else have a good solution for this problem?