INTERACT FORUM

Download iTunes and check out it's "smartlist" interface. Then you'll understand.

i dont use itunes, but i dont see what the point of "individual lines whose order determines which are dealt with first" is. Given that the terms are essentially 'AND' terms (by default) the order doesnt matter

Yes, perhaps I didn't really state my problems with the Smartlist system properly.  It's not the order I'm concerned with.  It's the individual lines allowing for easier editing.

MC 11 has improved smartlist formatting.

Is there somewhere that people can upload their smartlist forumlas?  I'd be interested in possibly using some of the more general ones people have created.

I don't see any reason why not. I think the biggest thing that iTunes does over MC, is that MC has seperate "wizards" for each kind of smartlist rule. iTunes puts all of that into one consistent interface.

Basically each rule consists of 3 parts. Field, operator, value. That's it. For instance:

Genre = Metal, Artist = Megadeth, Rating >= 3

So what iTunes does is just give you a dropdown box of available fields. Once you pick that it updates a second dropdown box with operators that make sense. Then the third box is for the values. Now here is where MC has iTunes beat. In iTunes, you need to type in your desired values. I think a solution where you have a text box that allows you to type in your values could be nice, but then stick a "..." button next to it that brings up the checkboxed interface we're used to seeing so that you can pick your values out of a list.

Then at that point, there's a button for Add Rule. You click that and another line of dropdown boxes appears for you to fill out.

Each row of dropdown boxes also has a limits row, where you can choose to limit to a certain number of songs, or songs by an artist, etc. It's all in plain english so it's really easy to understand what's going on. That's the beauty of it. Although I think that iTunes only allows one limit per rule, so there'd need to be some way to figure that out.

Let me stress that it's not merely the creation of a smartlist, but the ability to view the entire set of rules in a playlist and easy modification of any of those rules while inside of that view.  I don't suffer until I want to go back and see what rules I put into a smartlist and maybe change them.