Explain music view,Operator,Restriction and limit: Help needed on music Wiki

[idioteque]

I am currently writing the new wiki on my music:
http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/UsingMyMusic

I need someone who can, IN DETAIL, explain with examples ALL the different functions of music views:

Especially the following functions:

Operator, = < > =< => like and group
Restriction
Limit

I am familiar with the other functions but need ALL the info on these three to fully write a good wiki that anyone can understand.

[hwahrmann]

Well let me try to explain:

You always specify an Operator and Restriction together.

Operator: = < > =< => are fairly selfexplanatory.

Selection Operator Restriction
----------------------------------------
genre.........=.............Pop <----- lists only Genres containing Pop
genre.........like..........%Pop% <------lists Pop and Brit Pop. The "%" means any character
artist..........like..........B% <-------lists only artists starting with B

the <, >, =<, => operators make only sense on numeric restrictions.

The Group was introduced to group similar data together, for speeding up the display.

Selection Operator Restriction
----------------------------------------
artist........group........1 <-------groups all artists on the first char. so you have a list of "A", "B", "C", etc.
artist

On the next level you have artist only, which then lists all the artists with "A", when "A" was selected on screen of course.

Selection Operator Restriction
----------------------------------------
artist........group........2 <-------groups all artists on the first 2 char. so you have a list of "AA", "AB", "AC", etc.

This is only usefull on very large collections


The Limit is there, if you want to restrict the number of items returned

Selection Operator Restriction Limit
--------------------------------------------------
title............................................. ..100

Lists only the first 100 titles found in your collections.
I have no idea, wha someone would use this, but it's possible to do so.

hope this helps.

regards,

Helmut

[idioteque]

Thank you for the big help, When I have time I'll add it to the music wiki

[rsbrux]

@Helmut,
Sorry, I just had to look at the configure UI a little closer, to understand what you meant.
Is there a signinficant performance penalty for each successive line in the view specification?
Does the column "ASC" mean "Sort ascending on this field"?
What does the column "Act" mean?
Thanks for all of your (continuing) efforts to make MP such a killer app!

[idioteque]

i updated the wiki:

http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/UsingMyMusic

[rsbrux]

@idioteque,
Thx for the update. What I am still missing is:
1. Information on the column "Act". Since this seems to have been replaced by "Sort" in the SVN, maybe it's obsolete.
2. Information on how the "Music Sort" definitions in the Media Portal - Setup utility (configuration.exe) work. Are all of the tag fields listed used for sorting in the (left-to-right) order given? How does the use of the square braces "[]" affect this? What is the difference between the separate, smaller field on the right and the main field on the left for sorting purposes?
Many thanks!

[Koudijs]

hi rsbrux,

1. The Act column is still available in the svn version but you have to scroll to the right with the scrollbar beneath the table in order to see it. The Action field can be used to insert or delete a row relative to the row in which you type the action character. The possible choices are shown beneath the table (after, before or delete).


2. The music sort definitions in configuration.exe define which items are displayed in what order for the different sort methods (the sort method itself is specified in the SortBy column of the music views table).

If you use for example the songs view it is not very usefull to have the track numbers displayed in the list with all songs. If you set the sort method to title than you can set the title sort string to:

[%title% - ][%artist%] %duration%

Now the track number will not be displayed and the title will be shown before the artist. The left part of the text box will be left alligned and scrolling if necessary, the right part will the right alligned (see screenshot).


Hope this answers your questions.


Regards,
Jan

[rsbrux]

After a bit of experimentation, it seems to me that the expressions "view" and "sort" are a bit ambiguous. The "views" are controlling how things are grouped for navigation (kind of a sorting thing), and the "sorts" are controlling which fields get displayed (more of a viewing thing).
To answer my own earlier question, the multi-level views seem to perform better, presumably because there is less to sort at one time. The worst performance is the "songs" view, where all 20,000 + titles have to be sorted at once.
I still don't understand the square braces, or the function of the setting "Scan albums for Various Artists".