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[vvduke]

I am trying to make a Smartlist with songs that have a "Date" not in the past year, which is easy, but I want to limit it to 10 songs least recently played.  I have added a Sort By modifier on "Last Played (a-z)" but unplayed songs show up as GREATER THAN songs that have been played, rather then LESS THAN songs that have played.  Based on that crazy logic, unplayed songs will NEVER PLAY!  Is there a way around this?  What am I missing here and what insane programmer decided that none comes after any?

Thanks for any help you can give,

-VVDuke

[rick.ca]

Create an expression field [Last Played.Sort] using...

If(IsEqual([Last Played], never played), 0, [Last Played, 0])

...and use that in your Smartlist.

[gappie]

what rick says.. and besides that you could see if options>tree & view>sorting>sort empty string last, might help. 

[vvduke]

Thank you both!  It's very frustrating as a new user of this fine software, spending an hour looking through settings and trying different things to make something so simple work.

VVDuke

[rick.ca]

what rick says.. and besides that you could see if options>tree & view>sorting>sort empty string last, might help. 

Thanks, I missed that. It was set, of course, or I wouldn't have needed the workaround. It only took me a minute to appreciate the list behaviour it creates (which I was taking for granted). In the context of a list, the meaning of an empty field is very often "not applicable" or "irrelevant" (e.g., arguably, [Last Played] for tracks never played). Those always being put at the end of a sorted list is a valuable convenience. Those insane programmers do such clever things!

[vvduke]

Well, I do appreciate the flexibility, but believe it would be far smarter to have the default set as never played is less than ever played.

VVDuke

[rick.ca]

Well, I do appreciate the flexibility, but believe it would be far smarter to have the default set as never played is less than ever played.

From the perspective of it's impact on a smartlist, perhaps. But the purpose of the option is to improve list behaviour. If it were not on by default, it would never occur to most users such an option exists. On the other hand, users creating smartlists of the type impacted by this will just use the capability of the expression language to do whatever is required—as my workaround illustrates. So I believe the default was well considered, and the "smarter" option chosen.

This is a good illustration of why the developers are reluctant to add an option for every alternate behaviour requested. Even those well considered and appreciated for many can create confusion and draw criticism.