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IDProjectCategoryView StatusLast Update
0000123MMW v4Main Panel/Toolbars/Menuspublic2005-12-06 06:10
Reporterrusty Assigned To 
PriorityimmediateSeverityfeatureReproducibilityalways
Status closedResolutionfixed 
Summary0000123: Ignore 'The' in artists name for sorting purposes
DescriptionThere are a large number of bands that are prefixed with 'The' e.g. The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Cult, The Knack, etc...

When these bands appear in the tree sub to artist, 'The' should be ignored for sorting purposes. Same holds true when titles are sorted by artist in the listview.

i.e. the sort order in the artists tree or the listview (by artist) should be:
-Alphaville
-Beatles
-The Beatles
-Cheap Trick
-Cult
-The Cult

This can be a configurable item, but the default behaviour should be as described above.
TagsNo tags attached.
Fixed in build920

Activities

jiri

2003-03-12 14:36

administrator   ~0000447

Maybe support for artist sort field would be even better (even though more complicated). In that field artist names couls be entered like "Beatles, The".

rusty

2003-03-17 01:55

administrator   ~0000513

I think that the solution proposed earlier is simpler from an end user perspective.

rusty

2003-07-02 13:38

administrator   ~0001733

Note: it might be nice to make 'The' the default entry, but to allow it to be user configurable so that in other languages, other prefixes could be ignored. (note: this is just a nice to have).

rusty

2003-07-10 21:20

administrator   ~0001870

Note also that I'm referring specifically to behaviour in the tree (it would be nice to be able to support this in the tracklist as well, but I have a feeling the performance hit would be too great).

rusty

2003-10-28 14:13

administrator   ~0002675

Last edited: 2003-10-28 15:39

A lot of good discussion about this subject appears at:
http://www.songs-db.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=694&view=previous

edited on: 10-28-03 10:39

rusty

2003-10-29 17:44

administrator   ~0002688

Last edited: 2003-11-27 15:04

An added element to this, raised in the forums:
Add a Prefix to artists (Like "The" Corrs, to sort Corrs in C, and not in T), and option to exclude it in filename when auto-renaming, but include in tag).

This makes a lot of sense, though how to do it needs further thought.

edited on: 11-27-03 10:04

rusty

2004-02-05 19:12

administrator   ~0002983

This is one of the most popular threads in our forum--so I think it's a fairly important feature. Consequently, I decided to spend a bit of time revisiting it based on all feedback to date.

User needs:
1) Ability to view tracks that have a prefix 'in the same area' as those that don't a) in the tracklist b) in the tree
2) Not to slow down tree/tracklist display
3) Retain d&d between nodes to correct mistakes (e.g. if 'The' appears when it shouldn't) --> Display artists in the tree as they've been entered and don't combine nodes
4) Allow users to easily edit Artist field --> Always display Artists in the tracklist as they've been entered so there's no confusion about any edits
5) Multiple prefixes should be configurable (for foreign languages)
6) Continue with the MM philosophy of depending as little as possible on the DB (i.e. the tags should include all important track information) --> avoid aliases & sort name entries in the db
7) Extend the ability to ignore tags for auto-rename functionality

With these requirements in mind, below is an elegantly simple solution:

------------------
In Tools/Options/Library, add the following configuration option (enabled by default):
[x] Ignore Artist prefixes when sorting: __The,Les,______

When this is enabled, the following occurs in the Tracklist:
Whenever tracks are sorted by Artist, the configured prefixes are ignored. In other words the following could appear:
All my Loving.....Beatles...
Norwegian Wood....The Beatles...
She loves you.....Beatles

When this is enabled, the following occurs in the Tree:
Whenever artist nodes appear, the configure prefixes are ignored. In other words, if the user clicks the Artist node, they'd see:

Artist
-Aimee Mann
-Beatles
-The Beatles
-The Cars
-....
-Talking Heads
-ZZ-top

Notice that 'The Beatles' does not appear a second time between 'Talking Heads' and 'ZZ-Top'.

-------------------------------------

The final piece of the puzzle is in the Auto-Rename Dialog, which should have a new option:

[x] Ignore Artist prefixes when renaming: __The,Les


This meets all of the needs described in an intuitive fashion, and hopefully is easy to implement. Raising to 'urgent' in the meagre hope that this can be fit into the 2.2 schedule.

jiri

2005-07-20 08:32

administrator   ~0005692

Fixed in build 885.
 - 'The ' prefix ignored for sorting purposes.
 - It is also properly handled in incremental search.
 - The same appproach is implemented in iPod plug-in - items are sorted the same way.

rusty

2005-09-18 16:04

administrator   ~0005850

Last edited: 2005-10-07 02:52

Tested in 895.

This works well:
-In the tree (e.g. The Beatles appears near the top of the list of Albums)
-When the user sorts by Artist in the tracklist (e.g. tracks by The Beatles appear near the top)

However:
1) when the user generates an AutoPlaylist in which tracks are sorted by Artist, tracks by The Beatles appear near the bottom of the list.

2) Also, in terms of how this works for synch plugins, I'm not sure I understand what you mean when you've indicated that the iPod plugin has been implemented in the same manner--please explain, and let me know how this differs from the other plugins.

3) MM currently applies this logic to other fields (I've seen it applied to 'Album'). I'd suggest that:

Ideally MM would allow the user to configure:
Ignore the following for sorting purposes: __The, An, A ___
 [x] Artist (including Album Artist)
 [ ] Album
 [ ] Title

If we don't get to providing this level of functionality, I would propose that the following would be more than sufficient:
Ignore the following when sorting tracks by Artist: __The___

At a minimum if there is no configuration:
MM should only ignore 'The' for Artists.

One additional issue raised by a user: The change in sort rules should apply anywhere MM sorts by the affected attributes. e.g. it should also apply when:
-The user does an advanced Search for Artist=x (artists in the checkkbox dialog should be listed according to the modified sort rule)
-The user generates an autoplaylist sorted by Artist (the auto-generated list should be sorted according to the modified sort rule)

See: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=24046

rusty

2005-11-29 14:59

administrator   ~0006428

Raising to 'immediate' since we need to decide _how_ we're going to resolve this issues this week since we want to finalize strings this week.

rusty

2005-12-04 07:16

administrator   ~0006470

I looked at this in build 919, and it's working well except:

1) The burn data cd wizard doesn't sort the Artists based on this setting
2) The configuration dialog should have the config on the same line as the text. i.e.
[x] Ignore the following prefixes when sorting by Artist:
. . __the__________________________________

-->

[x] Ignore prefixes when sorting by Artist: __the_________________________

Note: I've shortened the text slightly so that this won't be a problem.

jiri

2005-12-04 12:02

administrator   ~0006474

Fixed in build 920.
 - All should work fine now as described, including iPod. What's about iPod? Other devices show tracks _somehow_ and MM can't influence it, but iPod shows tracks ordered the way we rebuild its database and so we can achieve that artists on iPod are sorted exactly as in MM, regardless of settings of prefixes.

rusty

2005-12-06 06:10

administrator   ~0006504

Verified 921.