Bugzilla – Bug 3323
Problems with skins and multiple artists
Last modified: 2008-12-18 11:11:39 UTC
This is with the v6.2.2 release candidate (SlimServer Version: 6.2.2 - 7135 - Windows XP - EN - cp1252) and IE. Problems A, B & C are with "List compilation albums under each artist" set and two types of albums: 1. Albums where each track is by a more than artist, with the same artists on each track. For example, ALBUM="Intro (Single)", ARTIST="Alan Braxe", ARTIST="Fred Falke" on each of the tracks. 2. Albums where each track is by a single artist, but some tracks are by Artist1 and others by Artist2, For example, ALBUM="Cello Concertos", for tracks 1 - 10 ARTIST="Antonio Vivaldi" and tracks 11 - 17 ARTIST="Luigi Boccherini". A. With these albums, Browse Albums using Exbrowse3 shows just a single artist like "AlbumName by Artist2", e.g. "Cello Concertos by Luigi Boccherini". "Show Artist with Albums" is set, so I'd expect it to show "AlbumName by Artist1, Artist2" (unless it's a Various Artists album, of course). The other skins I've checked show "Cello Concertos (1994) by Luigi Boccherini, Antonio Vivaldi". B. A second problem with Exbrowse3, the track information shows all artists but doesn't de-delimit them. For example, it shows "Artist: Alan Braxe Fred Falke" whereas the Default skin shows "Artist: Alan Braxe, Fred Falke". Without the "," its harder see read the artists. C. When browsing by artwork, the tooltip showing the album title and year only shows a single artist. I've checked a few skins and they all show the problem (checked Default, Default2, Fishbone, Exbrowse3 & Handheld). Touch just shows number like "202" (I checked this since Nokia770 is based off Touch, I think). Problem D is with "Group compilation albums together" set and a proper various artists compilation (e.g. film sounds track with single artist per track but different artist on each track). D. When browsing artwork, the tooltip shows "AlbumName by ArtistOfLastTrack" rather than "AlbumName by Various Artists", e.g. "Shallow Grave by Andy Williams". The album is detected as a proper various artists album (appears under "VArious Artists" under Browse Artists, etc.). Again, this seems to apply to all skins (checked Default, Default2, Fishbone, Exbrowse3 & Handheld). Touch shows an number. Thanks again.
One more: E. Using Exbrowse3 with "Group compilation albums together" set. Use Browse Albums to navigate through "Various Artists". Various artists albums are listed as "AlbumName by ArtistOnLastTrack" rather than "AlbumName by Various Artists". For example, it lists "Shallow Grave by Andy Williams" where it should be "Shallow Grave by Various Artists"
some of these are already fixed for 6.5 (since much of the overhaul of skins was done there). ExBrowse3 needs a lot of work, and is currently been disabled (along with Default2) in 6.5. Touch tooltips should be fixed in change 7143
Thanks, KDF. I'm not so bothered about them being fixed in v6.2.x - more that they get fixed (so v6.5 is fine by me). I suppose I should use v6.5, then you'd have one less person to report bugs on old code. ;-) Any ideas if Nokia770 would have inherited any of these (can install v6.5 and check if you say "No idea")?
it is a very long list, so short ansewr woudl be "no idea" :). If you only want stuff for 6.5 timeline, I'd suggest checking 6.5 anyway and giving feedback on that. I dont think the multiple artists tooltips are fixed, since that will require something completely new. The touch fix was only to get rid of the album id and replace it with the title.
6.5 tooltips show "various artists" so that part is fixed. Exbrowse3 is disabled (far too much work to be done and no word from Jacob on updates so far, and several bugs already note this) I'm not sure what would be considered an open issue here with 6.5. Please do give that a test and maybe we can focus this report a little better.
Okay, thanks. I'll upgrade to v6.5 some time soonish and report back.
Another minor one: When using the search option in the toolbar, focus doesn't start in the text input box. If possible, starting there would be best since one can just type and hit return to search. I've checked IE, Opera and Firefox and they're the same. The default skin does start in the input box.
seem to be there for me.
Nigel - what's the status on this? Thanks
I don't think that anything has been checked in to v6.2/6.3 for this (which is fine) but I haven't yet upgraded to v6.5 (been waiting for it to stabilise after the split-scanner merge). The other thing I was waiting for was for Exbrowse3 to be updated (was disabled before, I think). Does Exbrowse3 work in 6.5 now? If so, I'll install it and run through those items.
This is using v6.5b1 (r8785 - Windows XP - EN - cp1252). I've changed the version of the bug to 6.5b1 (hope that's okay). Previous bugs: A. This problem still exists. With an album of type 1, the The Now Playing display shows "AlbumName by Artist2", rather than "AlbumName by Artist1 & Artist2". This affects Exbrowse3. For Nokia770 the Title string is correct, but the Artist string is wrong. B. This problem still exists. With an album of type 1, there�s no delimiter between the artists in the track information. This affects Exbrowse3 and Nokia770. C. Exbrowse3/Handheld don't have artwork buttons on the albums page at the moment, so I can't test these. Default/Fishbone are both okay. D. Fixed. E. I don't understand what I meant by this one (!) since Exbrowse3 doesn't show artists next to albums anyway. Let's call it fixed but I'll add F below. New bugs: F. Exbrowse3 and Nokia770 ignore/don't implement the "SHOW ARTIST WITH ALBUMS" preference. So, when browsing albums you have �AlbumName� rather than �AlbumName by ArtistName�. G. Exbrowse3 ignores/doesn't implement the "SHOW YEAR WITH ALBUMS" preference. So, when browsing albums you have �AlbumName� rather than �AlbumName (Year)�. Thanks again.
More info: F & G apply to browsing albums via New Music too
H. With the Default/Fishbone skins, when browsing albums using the new Javascript-invoked artwork view, VA albums are sorted by the name of the artist on the last track on the album. This is with "BROWSE BY ARTWORK ORDER" set to "Artist, Year, Album". I'd expect that VA albums would sort as th artist being "Various Artists" (or presumably by the value of "When compilation albums are grouped together, they appear under "Various Artists" by default. You can change that name below." if this is set.
Added Ben and Jacob to the cc: list for skin issues.
ping
I've split the problems by skin, since even I'm finding the bug information confusing. I've left Exbrowse3 out for the moment it's not working much at the moment. A. Default skin. When browsing albums, VA albums are sorted by the name of the artist on the last track on the album. This is with "BROWSE BY ARTWORK ORDER" set to "Artist, Year, Album". I'd expect that VA albums would sort as the artist being "Various Artists" (or by the value of "When compilation albums are grouped together, they appear under "Various Artists" by default. You can change that name below." if this is set. For example, the Shallow Grave soundtrack is sorted next to Andy Williams albums as it's last track is by Andy Williams. B. Nokia770 skin. The status / now playing page shows only a single artist, even if a track has more than one artist. For example, it shows "Artist: Artist2", rather than "Artist: Artist1 & Artist2" or "Artist: Artist1, Artist2". I don't know Perl, but... For Default, line 23 in EN/status.html calls EN/artistsAsHTML.html where there is a FOR loop for all artists and it concatenates them with "," as the delimiter. For Nokia770/status.html, line 183 invokes some JavaScript and the real magic is at line 288 of Nokia770/status.js. I think. Would Nokia770/status.js need a similar for loop to process more than one artist? C. Nokia770 skin. Nokia770 ignores/doesn't implement the "SHOW ARTIST WITH ALBUMS" preference. So, when browsing albums one sees "AlbumName" rather than "AlbumName by ArtistName". I got completely lost trying to work out where in Default this is done. Would the adding the artwork/list view to Nokia770 fix this anyway?
The Nokia770 skin issues definitely will need some code work to support the issues laid out in B and C. I acknowledge that they are problems and need fixing. Will try to get to them soon.
(In reply to comment #13) > H. With the Default/Fishbone skins, when browsing albums using the new > Javascript-invoked artwork view, VA albums are sorted by the name of the artist > on the last track on the album. This is with "BROWSE BY ARTWORK ORDER" set to > "Artist, Year, Album". I'd expect that VA albums would sort as th artist being > "Various Artists" (or presumably by the value of "When compilation albums are > grouped together, they appear under "Various Artists" by default. You can > change that name below." if this is set. I believe this is the same issue reported in the reopened bug 3350.
part C. from comment#16 is fixed in Nokia770. Will show up in Sep 7 daily build. Please verify if possible, thanks.
I'm confused on part B from comment#16... does ID3 tagging support multiple fields for artist? I don't have a single track in my collection that has separable artist fields. That is, if a track is tagged "Metallica & Air Supply", the artist tag goes into the database as a single string, "Metallica & Air Supply", not two artists. Could you please clarify how a single track gets multiple artists? If I'm going to be the guy to fix this, somebody needs to send me a track with multiple artists in the tag, because I don't have one.
See the server setting under Behavior > MULTIPLE ITEMS IN TAGS. Pretty self-explanatory.
Ben, It can also be a track with Artist and Band tags in place. Any of the multiple roles can also end up listed. take a look at the artistsAsHTML template and you'll see what needs to be done to parse. If I get some time, I may be able to do something wtih the ajax. Or, actually...you may be able to do what I've done with the Fishbone skin. I added a skin specific ajaxRequest.txt, FBajaxrequest.txt, which provides artisthtml. That should be something you can replicate (or move to EN/ajaxRequest.txt) and use in the status scripts with something similar to: refreshElement('artisthtml', parsedData['artisthtml']);
...or (for the sake of completion), FLAC files with Vorbis comments which support multiple tags of the same name. Like, ARTIST=Ella Fitzgerald & ARTIST=Louis Armstrong.
(In reply to comment #19) > part C. from comment#16 is fixed in Nokia770. Will show up in Sep 7 daily > build. Please verify if possible, thanks. That's the ticket. Works fine. Thanks!
So are there more parts to this bug that need work?
Good question. Yes, from Comment #16 (2006-09-05), A and B are outstanding. As Jim said, bug 3323 looks similar to / same as A.
Opps. Too early in the morning: As Jim said, bug 3350 looks similar to / same as A
Created attachment 1547 [details] use artistAsHTML template for artist. This will allow the nokia770 skin to show multiple artist/roles in the same way as other skins.
Many thanks, KDF. I tested your elegant fix and checked it into trunk. Sounds like the door is being shut on 6.5 checkins. Should I check this in to 6.5 or not?
Subject: Re: Problems with skins and multiple artists If you feel that it's safe for 6.5, please check it in. Thanks
Ben, looking this over at greater length, I'm wondering if you are better off using the artistAsText.html template instead. with the HTML, I am seeing a problem when the artist is just a single artist. try in status.html: refreshElement('artist',parsedData['artisttext']) and in ajaxRequest.txt: artisttext|[% PROCESS artistsAsText.html noby=1 %] the problem with using ArtistAsHTML is that is assume that it is the entire href, where in your case, you have it wrapped in an href to google.
note: using the text, the whole thing become ONE link (rather than the multiple artist links in other skins). But, since teh artist link in nokia 770 seems to be intended to go to Google, then a single link should be ok.
aw, fooey. this is not a fix...thought I had it tested properly, but I guess not. btw-- there is no intention to send a user to google. I understand how you might get that impression, but the intention is to send the user to the artist page in the slimserver UI. I'll try to get this sorted out in the next hour or so. Right now it's more broken than it was before.
didn't see KDF's comment #31. Trying that now...
artistsAsText is not sufficient for updating the href tag. I'm backing these changes out completely and recommending a full punt to 6.5.1. I have -1 hours to work on this before 6.5 release.
ah ok...then artistAsHTML is the right solution. instead, have it replace the entire href. set up the block like so and keep the rest: <tr> <td class="normaltext" valign = 'top' height = '35' nowrap>[% "ARTIST" | string %][% "COLON" | string %]</td> <td class = 'normaltext' valign = 'top' height = '35' nowrap > <span id = 'artist'></span> [% bio = "PLUGIN_BIOGRAPHY" | getstring; IF bio != "PLUGIN_BIOGRAPHY" %] <span id = '[% bio | replace('\s+', '_') %]' class = 'supertinytext'></span> [% END %] </td> </tr> sorry for the false start. I'll test with the above, and see if I can find the final bits needed. It might require a custom artistAsHTML template. Good idea to punt to 6.5.1
that works great, save one thing-- a target='browser' attribute that's given back in artistsAsHTML which causes the link to open a new window (since Nokia770 is not frames-based). So, I'll need to make a custom artistsAsHTML for this. No more 6.5 checkins on this bug from me-- I'm sticking to trunk.
artisthtml|[% PROCESS artistsAsHTML.html noby=1 notarget=1 %]
bingo. I was on the same path, but couldn't figure out the arg to give artistsAsHTML. I was doing target = '', which didn't work. I'm going to check this into trunk only. I don't have any tracks that list multiple artist in the tags, so someone else will have to give that a whirl. Alternatively, someone can email me a track with multiple artist tags and I'll test.
so A is bug 3350 B & C would seem to be done... so this is essentially fixed?
Exbrowse3 will have to wait until it's working again, so I'd say yes.
The fix for C was checked in to trunk, and I'm on 6.5. I've emailed Ben some muliple artists files to check that C is fixed. On the assumption that it is, I've closed this bug (hope that's okay). Thanks for the fixes.