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[Quisp]

OK, I look in the phone book for someone's name and it is sorted by last name then first. I go to a "record" store to purchace a CD and the names of people are sorted by last name and then first. I have yet to find a CD for Pink Floyd under "T" even though for their first album they were technically known as The Pink Floyd.

In other words, when money is involved, it seems like stuff is sorted by last name. Since money is highly valuable in most areas of the world it follows that last name sorting must be the most natural way to sort information that you want people to find. If it wasn't, then less items would be found and thus less would be sold.

So.....

Could we please have the ability to flip last name and first name and move "the" to the end of a band's name?  PLEASE!!! I'll worry about Elton John when the time comes. I can live without ever listening to The, The. I'm willing to make that sacrifice! But the size of my T's section and trying to remember whether a band's name begins with The or not is driving me nuts. Especially with LoFi being influenced not only by the 60's sound, but also the penchant for naming all bands with a leading The.

I would assume that such a function would be as others, you'd select what you want to change, so if you screw it up you have no one to blame but yourself.

Here is what I'm imagining as a workflow. I copy all of my artist names to a custom sort field, made extremely easy by the new version of Media Center (Thanks!). Then I could have at this field to my hearts content with the last name, first name flippy floppy thing.

I'd be willing to pay a riduculous amount for this feature, but not by having to use another product  

Please consider this, it is truly a gap in an otherwise gapless record management/organizational tool.

[Charlemagne 8]

Type "the" in the search window.
Highlight all the files and right-click anywhere on the highlighted list, scroll down to "Library Tools">"Find and replace".
Type "the " in the "Find What" window (don't forget the space at the end of the word or you'll end up with all the artists in the list beginning with a space -- plays h*** with alphabetical order). Go to the left side of the F&R window and check "Artist" and nothing else. Don't type anything in the "replace" window and make sure that "match case" is unchecked.
This is a very versatile tool that doesn't get much discussion but I find it indispensible.
If you do it right, even "The The" would end up to be "The".  If you don't do it right ("right" meaning "to your satisfaction"), use the "undo" arrow at the top-right and try again.
CVIII

[xen-uno]

> I can live without ever listening to The, The

For a while...maybe (YMWV). The The's "Soul Mining" is one hellacious album. Check it out somewhere...like Amazon.

10^-27

[Doof]

I would think that doing a search for "The" and replacing it with "" and having "The The" be reduced only to "The" is a bug. It should come out as " ".

[sangs]

Type "the" in the search window.
Highlight all the files and right-click anywhere on the highlighted list, scroll down to "Library Tools">"Find and replace".
Type "the " in the "Find What" window (don't forget the space at the end of the word or you'll end up with all the artists in the list beginning with a space -- plays h*** with alphabetical order). Go to the left side of the F&R window and check "Artist" and nothing else. Don't type anything in the "replace" window and make sure that "match case" is unchecked.
This is a very versatile tool that doesn't get much discussion but I find it indispensible.
If you do it right, even "The The" would end up to be "The".  If you don't do it right ("right" meaning "to your satisfaction"), use the "undo" arrow at the top-right and try again.
CVIII

Thanks for the tip, but I have one problem with this.

After I follow your steps I never get to view the files to see if I like the arrangement. I get a warning box telling me that the tags of 670 files are about to be changed and that it cannot be cancelled. Then it asks if I want to proceed. Well, I clicked no because I wasn't able to look at the file names first.

Am I able to undo those tag changes with the undo button? And if not, is there any way I can view the files without changing the tags in the same step?

[Quisp]

OK, I tried this and all my artists are still sorted by first name  

[Doof]

Undo will fix it if you don't like it.

[Charlemagne 8]

That's right. The warning just means that the changes will now take place and there's no "cancel" button. THEN you can undo if not satisfactory.

"The The" would come out as " " if you didn't type the space in the "Find.." window.

You could rearrange the names using the "properties" function but you would have to do it a group at a time. Same with adding "the" to the end.

So far, the changes that I've wanted to make have only been limited by my own imagination. If I can think of HOW to do it, MC can do it.

I can understand how you would want to find Elton John under "John" and then "Elton". But would you want to find Pink Floyd under "Floyd" then "Pink"? There are so many variables that you would need to do them a group at a time. There's no way to predict what you might want so there's no way to write for it.

[V-Man]

I agree that transposing first/last names is not an exact science. However, it would be useful if J River could add a new calculated field that computed a 'nice' version of the artist's name.

There would need to be new configuration dialog containing the following controls:

1. A checkbox: Move "The" to end in Artist names?

2. A checkbox: Move "The" to end in Album names?

3. A list of checkboxes containing all the Artist values in the library. You would place a tick mark next to those artists which have names you want to be transposed in the calculated field. By checking "Elton John" but NOT checking "Pink Floyd", you are saying you want the corresponding calculated fields to return "John, Elton" and "Pink Floyd".

I think that's both flexible and reasonably simple.

[_K_C_]

I can understand how you would want to find Elton John under "John" and then "Elton". But would you want to find Pink Floyd under "Floyd" then "Pink"? There are so many variables that you would need to do them a group at a time. There's no way to predict what you might want so there's no way to write for it.

No way to write for it automatically, agreed.

I think what we need is to have it display using one field, but sort on another.

eg create an "Artist, sort as" field

Artist: "The Beautiful South"
Artist sort as: "Beautiful South, The"

Artist: "Ibrahim Ferrer"
Artist sort as: "Ferrer, Ibrahim"

Then have a view scheme which displays the "Artist" field, but sorts on "Artist sort as"

Would that work?

KC

[Quisp]

KC,

This is what I had in mind. The problem with having this transposition occurring in the actual artist field is that there are a lot of plugs etc that rely on the artist field being in a certain order to work properly. Maybe it is my imagination, but I usually have better luck finding album covers for instance if I leave the artist field alone.

So, I've created a sort field, in fact it was the first custom field I created when it was possible to create custom fields. Then I waited for JR to update the MC SDK to support custom fields so that Gonkulator would be able to do its magic on the custom field I created.

Unfortunately Gonkulator became incompatible at some point and development has been dropped.

It would be fine with me if this "feature" was made more generic and therefore more useful across the board. MC has gotten a lot of criticism lately about its usability so from that stand point, the series of checkboxes mentioned above would be more straightforward and in your face for those looking for those features.

I would not want this to be an automatic feature at all since this is impossible. Elton John isn't his real name so I would want it field in the "E"'s, for instance.

It seems like some sort of GREP pattern matching before after mask would be the most powerful, however it would be pretty tedious to use, so I'd want to be able to either have this created "for free" as a demo or have the pattern matching occurring in the background so I could concentrate on what can't be automated, selecting the records I wish to change.  Jeeze long sentence...

[Charlemagne 8]

King Sparta,
They're calling for Gonkulator
Bring it out, dust it off and see if you can do what the people want. You were certainly headed in the right direction when you retired it.
CVIII