Bugzilla – Bug 112
sort albums by year
Last modified: 2013-03-15 22:33:53 UTC
Albums should be (optionally?) sorted by year if years are available in the id3 tag; alphabetically if no years are present.
I do agree!
I want to vote for this bug. how come voting isn't enabled in bugzilla? anyway, this would be very cool.
I'm interested in this as well. Ideally, sorting of albums would be by year only when constrained to a particular artist, and only when all albums being sorted have year information. Otherwise they should sort alphabetically (or as specified by any TSOA tags that have been set).
This would be awesome (for me) because I am just now going back through my entire collection and adding correct year tags to my entire collection. Because slimserver 6 so nicely shows the year when browsing by Artist it would be great to see it [optionally] sort by year. I do have some albums where I don't have a year set, so I would not want this to just be disabled if all years aren't set. Maybe default un-yeared tracks to the start or end of the list if sorting by year is enabled.
Moving bugs that won't be immediately fixed in 6.1 release. Please review and update if this is an error or if this bug has already been fixed. Thanks.
I have added my vote for this bug. I have a few additional suggestions regarding implementation: 1) I would only want this to affect the sorting of albums when browsing by artist. When I browse by album or genre I would prefer to keep alphabetical sorting by title. I guess this means that for me I would like to see seperate preference settings for browse-by-<artist/album/genre> so that I can set browse-by-artist to be sorted by year but leave the others as being sorted by title. 2) When albums are sorted by year I would really encourage whoever implements this to do the sort as a textual sort and not a numeric sort. I say this because there are a few artists who are sufficiently prolific so as to have released more than one album in the same year and I would like to make sure I have the ability to force the sort order to be correct on those albums by tagging them "1998a" and "1998b" or "1998-01" and "1998-12" (for instance). Just doing an ASCII sort would enable both schemes to work and regular 4 digit years would still sort correctly of course. A numeric sort would presumeably fail with my proposed tags because the string to integer convertion would break when it hits one of my non-numeric characters. I really hope this RFE gets implemented soon.
Julian, yes, that's how I envisioned it working too. This seems to be scheduled for 6.5, don't know how far out that is, but there's some chance I'll get motivated and just hack it up myself at some point. If any Slim folk out there want to point me at the right way to do this w.r.t. the new database stuff (which I haven't really looked at yet), feel free..
I currently use the ARTISTSORT tag (my collection has been ripped to FLAC) and populate this with "Artist|Year|Album" (e.g. "Gilmour, David|1984|About Face"). Seems to work fine for me, using version 6.1.1 - 3744. This has the added benefit of sorting all my albums in the "correct" (IMHO) order when browsing by Album - and also sorts titles within each artist by year. When I discovered the tag is recognised within SlimServer it only took me a matter of 20-30 minutes to go through my entire collection (15000+ tracks) and populate this tag appropriately. I used mp3tag (www.mp3tag.de), which I found to be perfect for batch jobs such as this. As the ARTISTSORT field is text, it could be used to sort multiple albums released in the same year by using a full release date (in YYYYMMDD format) instead of just the year. I do agree that all these sorting options should, ideally, be configurable from within SlimServer. Perhaps when the SQL backend is sorted out, we'll be given the ability to define our own user-defined views (i.e. SQL queries) that we can select from!!!
This is pretty easy to fix (see below for 6.1; 6.2 and 6.5 similar) but I need some guidance on how to make this configurable. I suspect that one may not want this sort order for all current uses of 'album' sorting (maybe just within an artist?) and Alex in comment #8 wants to sort albums in general by artist then year then title - should the configuration allow that? Should the code use 'artistalbum' when an artist has been selected? Then allow configuration of sort order for both 'album' and 'artistalbum'? There are a few lingering issues to address Julian's second request in comment #6, but should be no biggie. --- server/Slim/DataStores/DBI/DataModel.pm (revision 5373) +++ server/Slim/DataStores/DBI/DataModel.pm (working copy) @@ -348,7 +348,7 @@ our %sortFieldMap = ( 'title' => ['tracks.titlesort'], 'genre' => ['genres.namesort'], - 'album' => ['albums.titlesort','albums.disc'], + 'album' => ['albums.year','albums.titlesort','albums.disc'], 'contributor' => ['contributors.namesort'], 'artist' => ['contributors.namesort'],
*** Bug 3307 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
sorry about the dup, I thought I searched for it but its a big list. I tried the above method and appears to work on some, but I really not sure since I didn't check those before I made the change. I would think if the years are dup'd, it would then sort alphabetically unless like comment #6 was implemented. Current Listing: Browse Artists / Glassjaw The Best Comp In The World (2000) Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Silence (1999) Ry Ry's Song (2001) Worship And Tribute (2002) Desired Listing: Browse Artists / Glassjaw Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Silence (1999) The Best Comp In The World (2000) Ry Ry's Song (2001) Worship And Tribute (2002)
Created attachment 1393 [details] Patch to add 'sort albums-by-year in artists lists' I've implemented an album-sort-by-year option without reference to this bug/RFE. From reading the comments that have been left here I believe that the main issues requested by the commenters have been addressed. For particular points... * Where no year is set on an album, the album will be sorted at the end of the list (albums with years appear at the top of the list). Albums with multiple years present are treated as having no year (this is outside the scope of this patch - the column just seems to have no details present). 'No album' is sorted to the end of the list. * The change in order is configurable from the Web interface. By default it is off - the alphabetical order is default. * The sorting order is applied on whatever type of sorting is applicable to the 'year' column on the 'album' table. Since I use ID3v1 tags exclusively at present, this is fine because the year can only be 4 characters. It may need checking for other users as the release date ID3v2 field is more flexible. * The album order is only changed for descent into albums from a contributor menu. That is, if you go to the albums top level menu it will be sorted alphabetically. If you got artists->artist->albums menu you'll get the albums in year order. * The change is 6.5 only. Contact me privately for a 6.2.1 solution which is far from ideal and not as nicely configurable. [Greg's solution is only partially successful because of SQLite's dealings with sorting by columns that aren't in the result set, IIRC.]
Has Justin's patch been either accepted into 6.5 or rejected for some reason yet? Is there a timeline for that, or have all non-essential patches been delayed until after 6.5 ships at this point?
There is a sort option pulldown already in 6.5 that presents a number of options for sorting albums at the top level, in list or gallery view. There is a way to make it work for alubms under an artist, but not currently without causing a crash for other sublevels. See bug 3906 for progress on that. Patches would be welcome for fixing that issue.
(In reply to comment #14) > There is a sort option pulldown already in 6.5 that presents a number of > options for sorting albums at the top level, in list or gallery view. There is > a way to make it work for alubms under an artist, but not currently without > causing a crash for other sublevels. See bug 3906 for progress on that. > Patches would be welcome for fixing that issue. > The sort option pulldown applies to the web views only as I understand it. The patch I have submitted here applies to both the web view and the player view. The web view is of lesser interest to me as I bought the squeezebox to be a separate device, not so that it could be controlled by the web. It appears that the changes that have been subsequently made for the web-based view pull downs are secondary to this patch - that is, my patch overrides any sorting order which the web interface pulldowns give. I'm sure someone who knows the code in the web interface could fix that readily, but I'm not likely to spend the time on it.
Created attachment 1513 [details] sort albums-by-year in the artists lists I've updated the patch to sort by year in the 'Browse Artists' menu, and work alongside the web UI sort ordering. It's possible that the exact same mechanism as used by the web UI might be used by the player itself. However, I've not looked at that. This patch is basically an update of the earlier one but fixed so that it can patch the current version of the server.
A vote for in addition to the web UI, the ability to view albums sorted by year under artists on the squeezebox display, i.e., Artist, Year, Album.
Yes yes yes, just voted for this bug. On the HD all my music are organised as: /Music/Artist/Year - Albumtitle/Track# - Tracktitle [Artist].mp3 Thats the only right way for me:-) My following thoughts are mostly about when browsing from the Squeezebox players display, and doing it "by artist". Thats pretty much the only way I browse my collection. Currently there's an option in SlimServer to add the releaseyear in parantheses after the albumyear. Like: "Albumtitle (Year)". Even if not sorted by year, that is better than nothing. But when albumtitles are long you have to wait for the display to scroll before you can see the releaseyear. Sorted by year or not, I would actually prefer to see the album displayed with the releaseyear first, like I've done on my HD filestructure: "Year - Albumtitle". BUT of course, *preferable* sorted by year and not just with year as prefix instead og postfix. Comment #11 suggests two options, I would like add more options. Maybe as much as 9 options: Albumtitle (sorted by albumtitle) Albumtitle (sorted by year increasing) Albumtitle (sorted by year decreasing) Albumtitle (Year) (sorted by albumtitle) Albumtitle (Year) (sorted by year increasing) Albumtitle (Year) (sorted by year decreasing) Year - Albumtitle (sorted by albumtitle) Year - Albumtitle (sorted by year increasing) Year - Albumtitle (sorted by year decreasing) But the ones I see as "natural options" are the following 6 (maybe skipping 3 and 4 if they are more difficult to implement): Albumtitle (sorted by albumtitle) Albumtitle (Year) (sorted by albumtitle) Albumtitle (Year) (sorted by year increasing) Albumtitle (Year) (sorted by year decreasing) Year - Albumtitle (sorted by year increasing) Year - Albumtitle (sorted by year decreasing)(*) (*)Definitely my personal choice. All my albums have a releaseyear, but for those who have albums without releaseyear tagged, appending them in the end of the list sounds like the right way to me.
Not intending to complicate things unnecessarily but I think it would be nice to sort albums by THREE factors: compilation, year, album title. i.e. all non-compilations would be listed first, sorted by year, then all compilations would be listed last, sorted by year. Albums with the same year would be sorted alphabetically. Anyway, I may need to file this as a separate bug, but I thought it was worth bringing up here first because it would potentially impact the UI. For fine-grained user control, you could have a UI like this: [Sort Priority 1] [Ascending/Decending] [Sort Priority 2] [Ascending/Decending] [Sort Priority 3] [Ascending/Decending] Each control in the first column is a dropdown, letting you choose the sorting priority of compilation, year, and album title. The second row of dropdowns lets you choose between ascending and descending order per each priority. Whether we want to throw even more into the user interface is another matter, but people seem to like to organize things very specific ways, and this would do it.
Created attachment 1709 [details] Patch to add 'sort albums by year for artist lists' This patch is against the current trunk (revision 10659)
Created attachment 1710 [details] Patch to add 'sort albums by year in artist lists, with configurable sort order' Seeing someone's earlier comment about wanting the years to be in the opposite order to what I was expecting (ie Descending), I decided to add such functionality to the patch. The new patch is as before but allows you to select whether the years are in ascending or descending order and whether 'unset' years come first or last. I don't have any compilations (well, not ones that are tagged by me - I don't know what happens to generate the compilation tagging) in my collection, so doing a check for compilations is something I've not bothered with. I may test out doing that in a little bit and see what happens. I'm not sure if anyone's actually caring about this patch - it only goes part way to address the requirements of this feature request, but I'm going to try to keep it reasonably up to date regardless. Mainly because I use it and doing an update and fixing up for changes now and then isn't too hard.
Subject: Re: sort albums by year patch applies cleanly, but the latest 7x nightly doesn't work on my SuSE 10 system and I'm out of time to fix it. First, it uses su on an account that it sets up with no shell, which doesn't work; you have to either switch to sudo or provide slimserver with a valid shell. Then, felix:/etc # /etc/init.d/slimserver start Starting SlimServer: [09:36:42.0685] SlimServer OSDetect init... [09:36:42.0692] SlimServer settings init... Can't call method "error" on an undefined value at /usr/local/slimserver/Slim/Utils/Log.pm line 249. Log4perl: Seems like no initialization happened. Forgot to call init()? On 11/12/06, Slim Devices Bugzilla <bugs@bugs.slimdevices.com> wrote: > https://bugs-archive.lyrion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=112 > > > > > > ------- Comment #21 from gerph@gerph.org 2006-11-12 09:11 ------- > Created an attachment (id=1710) > --> (https://bugs-archive.lyrion.org/attachment.cgi?id=1710&action=view) > Patch to add 'sort albums by year in artist lists, with configurable sort > order' > > Seeing someone's earlier comment about wanting the years to be in the opposite > order to what I was expecting (ie Descending), I decided to add such > functionality to the patch. The new patch is as before but allows you to select > whether the years are in ascending or descending order and whether 'unset' > years come first or last. > > I don't have any compilations (well, not ones that are tagged by me - I don't > know what happens to generate the compilation tagging) in my collection, so > doing a check for compilations is something I've not bothered with. I may test > out doing that in a little bit and see what happens. > > I'm not sure if anyone's actually caring about this patch - it only goes part > way to address the requirements of this feature request, but I'm going to try > to keep it reasonably up to date regardless. Mainly because I use it and doing > an update and fixing up for changes now and then isn't too hard. > > > > > ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- > You reported the bug, or are watching the reporter. > >
This is such a small patch, and so many people have voted for this bug -- why has it not been applied to CVS yet?
Well, there are a number of reasons... 1) it might not actually be all that good - I might have missed something and whatever actually goes in to the product must be tested and be sure not to break (I've had one of my patches put in and it broke a release quite badly so I quite understand any reticence there!) 2) it might not work - the original patch was for a 6.3 version (IIRC) and then updated for 6.5 and the most recent one is, I think, for 7.0. The way in which they have to work is quite different for each of the versions, because of the change from SQLite and the reorganisation of the database access. The patch might be quite stale now - I should update it for the most recent 7.0, but the last I saw on the mailing list it was recommended that people hold off using it until it had stablised. 3) it's not actually that vital - it'd be nice, but it doesn't fix anything major and doesn't address any major bullet points on the feature list. 4) it's a pain to explain the feature :-)
Created attachment 2268 [details] Patch to add 'sort albums by year, with configurable sort order' Updated the patch for revision 13783.
Created attachment 2277 [details] Patch to add 'sort albums by year, with working configurable sort order' Fix for the configurable sort order in the Formatting settings. I... um... got it wrong last time. This does things properly the correct way and should display the current settings properly now.
Andy, can you review this patch.
I've noticed also that this does not affect the order of albums on the Jive display so I think it's likely that I'm doing the sorting in the wrong place.
Michael, do you have an opinion on this patch? I think we already have sorting by year, at least the dropdown in the default skin has options for sorting an album list by 'Artist, Year, Album', etc. Is this patch only for non-Default skins?
(In reply to comment #29) > Michael, do you have an opinion on this patch? I think we already have sorting > by year, at least the dropdown in the default skin has options for sorting an > album list by 'Artist, Year, Album', etc. > > Is this patch only for non-Default skins? It's for album lists in the squeezebox itself, not the web ui.
It's for the squeezebox itself; the web interface has, as you say, got the drop down selectors. But the selectors only affect the web interface. The squeezebox shows its list in alphabetic order. My patch makes the squeezebox change its ordering from alphabetic to by years (or leaves it alphabetic, depending on the configuration) without affecting the web interface's sorting order.
Ahh OK, the wording in the pref should probably reflect that fact.
(In reply to comment #32) > Ahh OK, the wording in the pref should probably reflect that fact. I can change that if you want; I just matched the similar configuration options around there, like 'showArtist' and 'showYear'. Do you want me to make the changes and re-submit or would you prefer to do it ? I don't know the procedure here.
I'm wondering if, perhaps this pref is in the wrong place. I'm not sure that this fits a text formatting group, and certainly gets confused when placed with showArtist and showYear which are web formatting prefs. What if this were a player setting, under Display perhaps? It could them be set per-player, and not shown in cases of non-display players (winamp, itunes, etc). It would also help to make it clear that this is the player UI. alternatively, might be worth extending it to replicate the full sort order options used for web.
If it were to be merged with the drop down options from the web interface then it should also follow that the web interface be extended to allow 'unset' values to be placed last, rather than first, as is the case with this patch. It's intensely annoying to have to skip past all the albums that don't have years on them before you reach the ones that do have years on - the ones you usually care about because you've taken the time to ensure that the years are correct.
I think we should have one consistent set of sorting options, not two different, depending on where you display the list.
(In reply to comment #36) > I think we should have one consistent set of sorting options, not two > different, depending on where you display the list. No; there are really /3/ different sorting options at the moment - 1. Web interface (which is isolated pretty much to the web interface as best I can tell, because it just does a simple change to the sort order when requesting the page). 2. Squeeze box (alphabetic in the default builds, configurable in the 'Interfaces' section in my latest patch [to be uploaded in the moment]) 3. Jive (ordered by the server, I think, and by default alphabetic - and I can't work out how to change this at the present time; I just can't work out how to find where the requests go to and therefore how to change them). Ideally I'd prefer to use my configuration everywhere. I can understand, however, that some users might prefer the configurability of the web interface (ie an immediate change there without having to go to the configuration interface). Maybe this should be configurable in the web interface to default to the settings that I've added, but to allow the user to override for this session in the webpage ? Note also that the Jive responses don't honour the 'show album with artist' or the 'show album with year' options from the server settings, either - it appears to always show with album and never show with year.
Created attachment 2317 [details] Sort albums by year with web configuration in the interfaces section For svn 14144. This patch deals with the move of the 'show artist with album' and 'show year with album' from 'formatting' to 'interface'.
(In reply to comment #37) > (In reply to comment #36) > > I think we should have one consistent set of sorting options, not two > > different, depending on where you display the list. > > No; there are really /3/ different sorting options at the moment - Of course, I mean 'yes we should be consistent, but no there are more than 2 options'. I didn't mean to imply that we should be inconsistent at all :-)
I agree that (if this needs to be an option) it would be best to make it a player pref. I'm not sure how that aligns with the goals or implementation of the Jive interface, but you don't want web interface options affecting the remote interface of all connected players.
I can probably move it to the player options, but I'm not at this second certain how to do that. I know for a fact I can't do it the way that it's done right now if I move it to the player options because the player id/prefs aren't available at the level I'm doing it at - I think I need to supply a FixUp function for the ordering which I don't yet know how to do - or where to do it from. I'm also bothered that the Jive doesn't use the current options that I provide so its interface has to be different as well - maybe there's a common point I can insert the sorting at but I've not found it. Yet.
It seems to me that making this optional at all is open to question, but if it's optional, it should be global; really, it should just be on. Alphabetical order is about as unnatural for playing music as reading books by their weight would be. As a general rule of thumb, there are too many per-player options already, which leads to a lot of effort replication (I have four players and must go around resetting things all the time).
That's simply not true Jack. If you are searching for a specific album you don't necessarily know the year. If you have a very prolific artist there could be 30-40 albums or more and then being alphabetical is very handy. Obviously the only solution is to make it configurable by artist. :-) Just kidding, mostly.
Justin--Any way to make compilation status a factor in sorting? At least in my "that's how we did it in my music store" anal retentive system, within each artist, we sorted first by compilation status (compilations always last), THEN year, THEN album name. If my SB3 could do the same thing I'd be in heaven.
(In reply to comment #44) > Justin--Any way to make compilation status a factor in sorting? At least in my > "that's how we did it in my music store" anal retentive system, within each > artist, we sorted first by compilation status (compilations always last), THEN > year, THEN album name. If my SB3 could do the same thing I'd be in heaven. Compilations (aka "Various Artists" albums) in SlimServer don't include single artist "compilations" (such as "best of" albums). An album recognized as a compilation (of different artists) will appear under (or be sorted in line with) the pseudo-artist "Various Artists". A best-of album for a single artist wouldn't be considered a compilation.
(In reply to comment #42) > As a general rule of thumb, there are too many per-player options already, > which leads to a lot of effort replication (I have four players and must go > around resetting things all the time). That's a different issue that is addressed by at least one other bug (see bug 726). Initializing settings for new players is a lot more work than it should be, but that's because there's no good player management in SlimServer.
Jim--I understand the compilation behavior. Currently (in 6.5.4), when you browse by artist, the list of albums for that artist include "various artists" albums for which the artist only has one track. It's those compilations I'd like sorted last. If this was implemented, I figured I would be able to sort my "greatest hits" albums last by explicitly marking those albums as compilations, i.e. COMPILATION=1. But actually this bit is a secondary priority.
(In reply to comment #36) > I think we should have one consistent set of sorting options, not two > different, depending on where you display the list. Sorting options in the web interface are user (currently via cookie) specific, while the remote interface options must be either player specific or system-wide. There's no relation between the two. Can this just be implemented already? No option. Done. Finished. Four years in the making.
(In reply to comment #48) > (In reply to comment #36) > > I think we should have one consistent set of sorting options, not two > > different, depending on where you display the list. > > Sorting options in the web interface are user (currently via cookie) specific, > while the remote interface options must be either player specific or > system-wide. There's no relation between the two. > > Can this just be implemented already? No option. Done. Finished. Four years > in the making. > This seems to be the most pointless comment I've seen in a long time. What you appear to be saying in response to this enhancement request is "there shouldn't be any option to change the sorting order". If that's the case, thank you for your input.
(In reply to comment #49) > What you appear to be saying in response to this enhancement request > is "there shouldn't be any option to change the sorting order". Not "shouldn't be", but that it "needn't be" an option. The original enhancement request didn't request an option to change the sort order. It asked that the order by changed. It's only when it gets into debates about options and prefs and who/what/where it should happen that dead simple enhancements like this get bogged down for four years while dozens of identical requests are voiced in the forums.
Of course, simplest solution is to say no...just sayin' :) I personally would see no sense in a list of albums by year. If I browse albums, I want albums. I can always browse by year if that's my primary concern. There is also the option of using sort tags. Users have complete control of that. The debate goes on because 'just do it' isn't always the solution, no matter how much anyone rants about it. 25 votes, out of (?) customers, and who goes looking for features they don't want in order to vote no (assuming of course, that there were any way to vote against)
(In reply to comment #51) > I personally would see no sense in a list of albums by year. If I browse > albums, I want albums. Same here. This would be the sort order to be used in the hierarchy below an artist, not for browse Albums. See comments #3 and 4.
I just added my vote here. I've always thought it would be nice to sort my albums by year. This is how my physical CD collection is orgnanized. For artists like Miles Davis that had a very prolific career, this helps in making a selection. Since there was enough support behind this feature to add it to the web interface, I don't see why there should be any question about adding it to the squeezebox interface. In my mind, part of the point of the squeezebox is to be able to listen to music without interacting directly with a computer. I'd really like to see this implemented in the squeezebox. Make it configurable so those that aren't interested in this can continue using it as it is today. My preference would be to be able to configure this on a player basis, but I wouldn't be heartbroken if it was system wide. Regarding the comment about "only 25 votes out of how many customers..." - imo, that cannot be used as a metric for how much use this feature would see. Most people just learn to live with the way it is and don't realize that there is an avenue (this bug database) where requests for changes can be made. I didn't realize that there was a bug report for this until I started asking about this in the forums.
exactly Rich. the point is that there is no way to measure, certainly not these reports one way or the other. Hence, no decision until something optional can be designed. People learn to live with it, true, but then changing just for the sake of change will force others to re-learn.
Ok, then can we try to come to a consensus and at least figure out _how_ it can be done? An option would be "safer". No backlash from folks who may like/want it to work in alphabetical order. Fine, make it an option. Next issue... As I mentioned before, the option couldn't have any relationshiop to selected sorting options in the web interface. Three different users in the house connecting to the web ui may have three different sorting preferences for album sorting. Nothing ties user preferences to players and the remote ui. So it must either be a system-wide pref, affecting all players, or a player pref. A player pref is more flexible, but if system-wide is easier to implement, I'm pretty sure everyone will agree that it's perfectly acceptable. System wide may even be more desirable if you're in the camp that believes this simplifies the settings. Are we in agreement that this is to affect only the sorting of albums for an artist? It should not affect browsing Albums. Likewise, browsing New Music and browsing Years should always by date, so the option has no affect there. Only beneath an aritst in the hierarchy, when browsing Artists or Genres > [Artistname]. So what options should there be, and how can the option could be worded? * by year * by album name Do we really need any others? The "by year" option should imply, as in the web interface, to sort by year then album name. Wording... As a player pref: "When listing an artist's albums, use the following sort order:" As a system-wide pref, it becomes necessary to point out that it's an option that only affects the remote interface. Suggestions? If there are other system-wide options that affect only the player ui, it would make it simplest if they're all grouped together in the settings - 'Player Other Songs in Album' for instance.
Created attachment 2834 [details] Sort albums by year with web configuration in the interfaces section, and ordering the Jive menus as well Whilst looking for how the TrackInfo is presented on the Jive remote, I found the place to add in support for sorting the album entries returned to the remote when browsing an artist according to the configuration option. This makes the Jive consistent with the regular player, sorting according to the configuration when viewed from an artist. It does not add the year text to the Jive display (ie the 'Show year with album' configuration still does not apply to Jive), but we're getting closer.
i hope everyone voting for this bug will also vote for the bug here: https://bugs-archive.lyrion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6591 i tend to agree with jim, while i understand what kdf is saying, that the UI's are separate and distinct from each other, it seems to me to make a lot of sense to make a system wide preference for all of them. in fact, while i do understand and agree with the idea that says different slim devices can operate in different ways from each other, i think the default "out of the box" way for local users, net users, SB, jive, etc... users should be system wide settings and then one can "opt out" of such an arrangement. just a tangent to show why i support jims idea. so just to be clear, i think the default system wide setting should be artist, year, album
Andy notes that player, web, and jive need to have the same sorting and you only need one preference for all of them. This will be much easier for the 7.3 timeframe.
Am I missing something or isn't this implemented in 7.2 already?
dunno, I haven't tried 7.2 yet.. still running 7.0 but I have been planning to try it one of these days soon. does 7.2 have an option to sort by year in the player interface? the web ui has had that for a while, though I think it is stored in a cookie rather than in the preferences.
> does 7.2 have an option to sort by year in the > player interface? Ah... this must be the outstanding issue then. Sorry for the noise.
(In reply to comment #58) > Andy notes that player, web, and jive need to have the same sorting and you > only need one preference for all of them. > This will be much easier for the 7.3 timeframe. I have a great idea. Why isn't it just put in (one preference for all, different preference for each, whatever) and then go from there. Either way it really isn't that big of a deal.
thats pretty much what i was saying but i tend to think its more important than you do. i realize these are separate UIs, but a new user will, imo, expect them all to behave the same way unless they opt out. its really confusing that different UIs act differently, esp at first. i think such an arrangement would lead to less support calls. and if we had a global settings feature, then regardless of where you changed it, it would be the same on each UI. seems very worthy to me.
We can indeed argue wether it should be an option or not. I (and many others) find it more natural to have albums sorted by year, but it is also true that when you search for specific albums it's easier in alphabetical order. So the easy way to please everyone would be to "make it an opshun", but the more options you add, the more confusing it gets for new users. Besides, ideally there should also be an option to display the oldest album first, or newest first. As for the global/per client setting (if there is a setting), I'm convinced it should be per client (although once again it can be more confusing) because several users can use the same server, and they don't necessarily want to sort the albums in the same way on their client. Anyway, for now I'm happy with my ALBUMSORT tags set to "artist year album", it works just fine =)
Is any work happening in this area ? Should I try updating my patches to match the most recent versions of SlimServer ? One reason that I've not been tracking the changes in SlimServer (other than having other things to do) is that there was a large amount of server code churn last year that made things very difficult to keep up with. If people are interested in the way that I've done the album sorting then I might update the patches to the latest version. If there's still little interest in this, then I shaln't worry...
I would just be happy if I could get albums sorted by year when browsing by artist on my Transporter or Boom. I want the same grouping functionality on the boxes as we already have in the SC interface. I have used the Albumsort tags for this, but this actually overrides the "pure" album sort (alphabetically) in the SC interface, so that it is actually not possible to sort alphabetically any more. In other words using Albumsort tags "breaks" the already working sort functions. Implementing the means to set sort options on the boxes using i.e. some kind of setting in the player settings in SC would be greatly apreciated. It is obviously possible as it is already done in the SC interface.
Since this has been nagging at me for years, I finally took part of Justin's mod and hardwired the sort order into my SC. I didn't want the options so I ignored that logic. It worked nicely until I hit Play on R.E.M. and got the albums in alphabetical order rather than by year. I had to add a tweak to Commands.pm to get the (my) desired effect.
(In reply to comment #65) > Is any work happening in this area ? > > Should I try updating my patches to match the most recent versions of > SlimServer ? One reason that I've not been tracking the changes in SlimServer > (other than having other things to do) is that there was a large amount of > server code churn last year that made things very difficult to keep up with. > > If people are interested in the way that I've done the album sorting then I > might update the patches to the latest version. If there's still little > interest in this, then I shaln't worry... (In reply to comment #65) > Is any work happening in this area ? > > Should I try updating my patches to match the most recent versions of > SlimServer ? One reason that I've not been tracking the changes in SlimServer > (other than having other things to do) is that there was a large amount of > server code churn last year that made things very difficult to keep up with. > > If people are interested in the way that I've done the album sorting then I > might update the patches to the latest version. If there's still little > interest in this, then I shaln't worry... I am still very interested in this. I run perl and svn on my PC just so I can manually insert your patch (since it is for an older version). I just don't understand why they put in all of the other junk, but won't put in this very useful patch. You don't have to enable it so it hurts nobody. Thanks for your work Justin.
Moving 7.4 bugs to 8.0.
When the SBC setting SETTINGS->ADVANCED->ALBUM SORT ORDER is set to ARTIST, YEAR, ALBUM, then Aritsts' albums should be sorted by year instead of album name. This is broken in both the latest 7.4 and 7.3. It used to work correctly in earlier 7.x releases!
I really want my Duet to sort artist albums by year when I have drilled down to the album section. I also want the year to always be plainly visible on the Duet when listing to a song.
This request has languished here for six years. Please either tell us it is not going to happen or do something about it. Sheesh.
(In reply to comment #72) > This request has languished here for six years. Please either tell us it is not > going to happen or do something about it. Sheesh. No kidding. This is just getting ridiculous. I hesitate to buy any new products because that requires new software and requires me to apply the patch and use perl and srvany on the PC which is a bit of a pain. Who is standing in the way of this being implemented?
Oh please dear god: hook us up with album sort by year! What have we done to not deserve it?
This is comedy ? why not default to sort by year inside an artist folder ? Like if I look at "Miles Davis" all his albums will be sorted by year if such a tag is present. 6 years and 51 votes would say something to me if had some responsibilities for this product ;)
As Mikael mentioned, 6 years and 52 votes - why is there a possibility to vote and nobody has a serious look on it? And I'm sure it is no big point to do... And if nobody at Logitech is interessted in user votes be honest and disable this function!
Created attachment 6940 [details] Custom Browse XML file This hasn't been explicitly mentioned in this bug, but it is possible to get the sort of behavior people have been requesting by using the Custom Browse plugin (more info: http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Custom_Browse). By default, this plugin creates its own Browse menu, but it can be configured to replace the default menus. The out-of-the-box sorting options in this plugin are not very good, but you can get custom behavior by editing the XML. I've attached an XML file that sorts artists as follows: Albums listed under individual artists are sorted by year (ascending), with compilations always sorted last. Albums listed under Various Artists are sorted as before, by album name. This addresses both bug#112 and bug#4341.
Well, looks like this (easy) option will never be implemented, so here's another fix that the user can do with Tags. I found that if I set ALBUMSORT (for FLAC, TSOA for ID3v2.4) to the year of the Album I get the desired result with my Touch and SB Radio (I'm told that this will not work on previous Squeezeboxes). it was an easy tag to add with metafllac as all I had to do was write a simple script that read the files DATE (or YEAR) tag then write it back to the ALBUMSORT tag. Once the tags are set, for the Touch and Radio, set: Settings->Advanced->Album Sort Method" to Artist, Year, Album. (In Web UI it's in the pop-up menu in the lower left hand corner) If anyone wants to discuss further, post on: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=81910
Anyone home ,this 7 year mission to where no man has been before ;) must end soon, why not fix this bug ? Just out of curiosity why is exactly this bug given this treatment ? I know you do have to make priority's. As it still on the list to be fixed, someone at logitech must thinks that this actually matters ? But enabling exotic filter options in transporter or fiddling with UI icons ? over this ? and other minor issues before this is fixed . I don't have any insight in how these choices are made , but sometimes they are weird to outsiders without the whole picture. Unless your secretively doing bug 8303 even if that one is dead and buried ;)
I would give my VOTE to fix this bug. I bought the Touch a couple of weeks ago and after ripping part of my CD collection it's very natural to sort your music collection by Artist and the by year. I have currently 32 Pink Floyd albums ripped and it would be easier to handle them under artist if they where sorted by year. That's how I have sorted the CDs physically. I have built my ripped library on my PC in the following manner. Example from Explorer: Coldplay Coldplay - 2000 - Parachutes Coldplay - 2002 - A Rush Of Blood To The Head Coldplay - 2003 - Live 2003 (Expanded Japanese Edition) In the Map folder on Squeezebox Server it's sorted ok! Coldplay - 2000 - Parachutes Coldplay - 2002 - A Rush Of Blood To The Head Coldplay - 2003 - Live 2003 (Expanded Japanese Edition) But on the Squeezebox Touch when I open Artist the sorting is done by the alphabet. This is not natural. At least not for me. Looking into the _Album_ section it's sorted by year. So hopefully this bug should be possible to get higher on the priority list abd get solved. Thanks!!
with 80 votes, i think this bug should qualify for onebrowser
Any updates here?
(In reply to comment #82) > Any updates here? I doubt we will see any updates. This has been going on for so long, the only reason I can see that this has not been fixed is that Andy must have some kind of weird issue with sorting by year. We have had a million other obscure changes and feature adds, but something as simple as this won't get fixed. I just continue to run an older version where I have manually patched it with the fix that was posted here years ago.
Andy, could you please review this and give us some type of time frame on this? If this cannot be done could you please reassign it to someone who can work on this for us? What else do you need from the users here to fix this bug?
This is an enhancement request not a bug. This functionality has been provided in the WebUI and the SqueezePlay UI (Controller, Touch, Radio). I would say that there is very little chance of any enhancements being made to the capabilities of the ip3k Player-UI (SB3/Classic, Transporter et al.)
(In reply to comment #85) > This is an enhancement request not a bug. > > This functionality has been provided in the WebUI and the SqueezePlay UI > (Controller, Touch, Radio). > > I would say that there is very little chance of any enhancements being made to > the capabilities of the ip3k Player-UI (SB3/Classic, Transporter et al.) It actually does that , but squeezeplay UI sort setting is for both the album menu and album under artist .
(In reply to comment #85) > This is an enhancement request not a bug. Yes, it is an enhancement, but one in which the programming change is so trivial that it should be made. All that has to be done if for the ALBUMSORT tag to point to the YEAR tag if the user chooses "sort album by year" I've done this manually, so I could care less if the developer makes this trivial change (who knows? Maybe they feel that Albums must always be sorted by TITLE)
(In reply to comment #87) > (In reply to comment #85) > > This is an enhancement request not a bug. > > Yes, it is an enhancement, but one in which the programming change is so > trivial that it should be made. All that has to be done if for the ALBUMSORT > tag to point to the YEAR tag if the user chooses "sort album by year" > > I've done this manually, so I could care less if the developer makes this > trivial change (who knows? Maybe they feel that Albums must always be sorted > by TITLE) It may also need a separate setting somewhere for flexibility. It is absurd to claim that it is pointless due to that ip3k players are obsolete NOW. They where not 8 years ago when this bug was filed, so it's long overdue it should have been fixed 2004 . It still have my boom running . I to feel that the procrastination is due to that someone does not really like the idea
(In reply to comment #88) > > > > I've done this manually, so I could care less if the developer makes this > > trivial change (who knows? Maybe they feel that Albums must always be sorted > > by TITLE) > > It may also need a separate setting somewhere for flexibility. And that's why it hasn't been implemented to date. The setting for SqueezePlay based players is player-specific. The setting in the web UI is cookie based, so user-specific. The developers typically don't like to commit changes that will rock the boat. When some people says "it's OK if everyone gets the same change" and someone else says "we need a pref", then you may as well forget about it. I have a feeling that if someone were to develop a patch that did all of the following, then you _might_ convince them to commit the change: 1. Add a player pref for ip3k players that controls sorting. It would be the same pref that exists now for SqueezePlay players for 'Albums Sort Method'. 2. Make the above setting editable in the web interface. (Looks like it would go on the Basic Settings page, as there's no other logical place for it.) 3. Add support for the pref to the code. It may already mostly be there. I'm not sure how it's implemented for SqueezePlay players, but it could be that it just needs to be applied to all players. and, ideally: 4. For SqueezePlay based players, expose the same setting in the web interface's settings.
> I have a feeling that if someone were to develop a patch that did all of the > following, then you _might_ convince them to commit the change: > > 1. Add a player pref for ip3k players that controls sorting. It would be the > same pref that exists now for SqueezePlay players for 'Albums Sort Method'. > > 2. Make the above setting editable in the web interface. (Looks like it would > go on the Basic Settings page, as there's no other logical place for it.) > > 3. Add support for the pref to the code. It may already mostly be there. I'm > not sure how it's implemented for SqueezePlay players, but it could be that it > just needs to be applied to all players. > > and, ideally: > > 4. For SqueezePlay based players, expose the same setting in the web > interface's settings. That mostly sounds like the patch that was created long ago for earlier versions. I implemented that patch in my version of Squeezebox Server. It works fine but was never implemented in the releases and so it keeps me running older versions of Squeezebox Server (7.4.2)
does the patch need to be done inside ip3k firmware? is that open source?
(In reply to comment #89) > (In reply to comment #88) > > > > > > I've done this manually, so I could care less if the developer makes this > > > trivial change (who knows? Maybe they feel that Albums must always be sorted > > > by TITLE) > > > > It may also need a separate setting somewhere for flexibility. > > And that's why it hasn't been implemented to date. The setting for SqueezePlay > based players is player-specific. The setting in the web UI is cookie based, so > user-specific. The developers typically don't like to commit changes that will > rock the boat. When some people says "it's OK if everyone gets the same change" > and someone else says "we need a pref", then you may as well forget about it. I believe that my original patch didn't have a preference (comment 16), and just did what I needed, and someone suggested that there be a preference, so I implemented that (comment 21). > I have a feeling that if someone were to develop a patch that did all of the > following, then you _might_ convince them to commit the change: > > 1. Add a player pref for ip3k players that controls sorting. It would be the > same pref that exists now for SqueezePlay players for 'Albums Sort Method'. I assume that 'ip3k' players are SB3 and earlier. I don't know what 'SqueezePlay' is, although I think I understand that it's the Jive, which was supported in my patch. I've not kept up to date with the 'modern' developments of the software since the release of the Jive primarily because the server was reworked and the album ordering patches would need to be reimplemented from scratch. Since there was no movement on the part of Logitech to add the support for this, it wasn't of as much interest to me. I have a server working and it continues to do so. So... yes, the patch I supplied had the support for the players that were available at the time. > 2. Make the above setting editable in the web interface. (Looks like it would > go on the Basic Settings page, as there's no other logical place for it.) My patch placed the configuration of the sorting order in the 'Interface' configuration page on the Web UI. > 3. Add support for the pref to the code. It may already mostly be there. I'm > not sure how it's implemented for SqueezePlay players, but it could be that it > just needs to be applied to all players. The preference I added affected both the Jive and the SB3 (and earlier) interfaces, allowed the ordering to be selected in 4 different ways (ascending or descending, with unset years first or last), or be disabled. It also provided a configuration option to add the year to the end of the album label as you scrolled. > and, ideally: > > 4. For SqueezePlay based players, expose the same setting in the web > interface's settings. My patch didn't differentiate between the player type. Whether you used the Jive or the SB3 you got the same configuration. Maybe that was a blocker for people, but it was also more logical to me. In any case, the patch I supplied did these things, and I admit it might not have been the best way to do it, but there was (IIRC) no feedback that it wasn't any good, or that it was unacceptable. It met my needs, and a few of the requirements that people posted up here. Every few months I think 'wouldn't it be nice to get a Radio or Boom to go in the kitchen' and then I remember that the reason that I can't do this is that the current server that I use wouldn't be compatible with them, so I'd need to upgrade. And that would mean that I would lose the sorting order which I feel is important. So I give up on that and don't bother. I don't have the energy these days to re-create the same functional interface for the later version of the server, especially when there's no interest in it being integrated. I know that a few people have stuck with variants of these patches because they feel it is the 'right' thing to do - to me it makes little sense to sort by title, but I accept that others feel differently. For me, the server works with my SB3 - I cannot buy other hardware because it will require upgrading the server software and thus losing the functionality that I feel is important. Since it's not required that I buy other hardware, that's fine with me and I stick with the older software. I may not be happy with it, but I'm not a version junkie and I know that when something works its good to leave it alone :-)
BOOM is also affected it has the same cpu as SB3 so it is BOOM or older players. And afaik this done in the serverside . And yes they have preferencefobia nowadays they don't like to introduce settings at all . And yes if you have a mix of new and old players you be annoyed as Radio or Touch sort ok but in my case my boom don't . And Yes the SqueezePlay case (Radio,Touch,Controller,desktop SqueezePlay) Also need a preference as sometimes I may want another sorting for the complete album list that differs from the sorting for an artist albums . So should I open a request for splitting this pref in 2 for SqueezePlay or is it doomed because it is a pref ?
For what it's worth, I've been able to implement this on the nightly 7.8 builds with a minor not-configurable-at-all hack. To implement my version of this, open Queries.pm in Slim/Control. Search for the string "XXX" to find this line: my $order_by = "albums.titlesort $collate, albums.disc"; # XXX old code prepended 0 to titlesort, but not other titlesorts ...and change it to: my $order_by = "albums.compilation, albums.year, albums.titlesort $collate, albums.disc"; # XXX old code prepended 0 to titlesort, but not other titlesorts Save changes, restart the server, and there you go. Keep in mind, I also have worked in my personal preference to sort compilations last, regardless of year. If you don't like that part, just leave that variable out of the list.
Two things to note about the above patch: I'm not sure what the behavior is for albums with no defined year (I don't explicitly handle this case), and this changes album sorting in all scenarios (not just browsing by artist--also browsing by album, searching, etc). Since I always browse by artist, this is no big deal for me, but someone else may want to figure out how to limit my change just to that one browsing scenario, because I'm not sure it makes sense anywhere else.
Replacing the old line with the following lines seems to limit it to browsing by artist: my $order_by = "albums.titlesort $collate, albums.disc"; # XXX old code prepended 0 to titlesort, but not other titlesorts if (defined $contributorID) { $order_by = "albums.compilation, albums.year, albums.titlesort $collate, albums.disc"; }
And now, to allow the "Various Artists" list to also sort by album, while normal users sort by year: my $order_by = "albums.titlesort $collate, albums.disc"; # XXX old code prepended 0 to titlesort, but not other titlesorts if (defined $contributorID && $contributorID != Slim::Schema->variousArtistsObject->id) { $order_by = "albums.compilation, albums.year, albums.titlesort $collate, albums.disc"; }