Now that expressions can be used more widely throughout MC, I've started looking at the possibilities for organisation & display of information. Just thought I'd list a few issues I've run into...
1. Calculated fields are now able to use expressions (this is great!). There needs to be an option to set a field as both a "Calculated Field" and a "Semicolon-delimited list" (at the moment it's either one or the other). This would allow us to combine multiple fields into one.
Example: I could create a new calculated field called [Artists] which = [Artist];[Composer];[Performer];[Arranger] etc. When used in a view scheme, this would allow us to view any artist/composer etc all at once without the need for multiple columns.
2. The if(isequal)... function doesn't recognise individual entries in a list. Eg. the function if(isequal([People],Fred,1),Yes,No) will recognise [People]=Fred but not [People]=Fred;Mary .... We either need a new function for this purpose or the isequal function should be changed somehow to recognise the semicolon as a delimiter.
Example: I use a custom field called [Category] to describe the nature of my media. A film soundtrack will have [Category]=Film;Album. Coverart will have [Category]=Album;Coverart etc. I would like to create an expression that recognises Category as Film and alter the output appropriately: if(isequal([Category],film,1),[Film],[Album])
Currently, this only recognises [Category]=Film but not [Category]=Film;Album
3. It is often useful to know how many entries are in a list field (particularly for the [People] field with photos). There needs to be an expression to output this as a number...
Example: I could use the above expression to show only photos with one person (portraits etc) or only the photos of me and a particular friend. If I want to see all the photos of "Fred" and "Mary", any filters I use currently will also show photos of "Fred", "Mary" and "George". If I could somehow filter by 2 people, I'd be able to see only the photos I'm interested in....
While these expressions offer incredible versatility, the current implementation is confusing and not really user-friendly ~ especially when you start trying to use nested expressions etc... The ability to save useful expressions, or even better a wizard to streamline the process (such as in view scheme filters etc) would make this a much more useable feature)...
Any other thoughts out there?
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Topic: Expressions (Read 1132 times)