#musicbrainz

that'll make it simpler :-)

ruaok: reading your post now

ruaok: just one clarification on the prototype tagger .. on the right pane where you have the folders, and you expand them, the music files also have a folder icon. am I right in guessing they'll have a different icon?

yes.

I'm thinking albums will have a CD.

ruaok: good, that's what I thought

Tracks that are absent no icon.

Tracks that are present and tagged, a notes icon.

or an "X" or something for missing tracks ..

yeah.

mismatched tracks have ?? or something like that.

a big red X so that it stands out as needing work

well, there may be a few of those and that might be ugly.

I'm going to hack on the interface for quite a while longer.

I'll refine bits here and there as I go, but I'll do the UI completely before I hook up the guts.

is the plan for people to use the tagger to play their collection? if *not*, ie: it's only for sorting the collection, then ugly in that sense isn't really a concern, imo

I can see that.

it depends on what the aims for the tagger are

I just don't want to look at that many big Xes. :-)

fill in the gaps then :)

I think its more a cleanup tool than a listening tool.

:-)

what do you think about the browser integration bit?

just read it

should work well. getting it set up initially might be a bit fiddly. I'm not sure there's a nice easy way to automate it for all/most browsers/platforms

there is for windows and mac and those are the two operating systems where people won't muck with their setup.

it would be really nice if it were all in the one application though :-/

Linux users will be more tolerant.

(ahh, but should they *have* to be? :)

Yeah, and if someone wants to help code that dead weight redundant piece of code, I'd be glad to accept the patch. :-)

I could see another window that just does searches.

and then drag icons from search results over.

that would be hot. :-)

just thinking .. couldn't you use the mozilla engine for the browser? that way it should be mostly cross-platform, and you can integrate it..

Hmmm.

I wonder if there is a PyMozilla python module.

I prefer the name "unsorted tracks" or "unassigned tracks" for the singletons

ok

a leaf in the tree

?

or a seperate list control?

the way I'm sorting my own collection a the moment is to have an "unassigned" directory for each artist, and this is where tracks I haven't sorted go

a seperate control complicates the interface, but should allow for 'in place editing' for doing manual tagging/corrections.

so, for me personally, I'd prefer to see something like that

yup.

only the first column of the tree control can be edited though.

:-(

hmm .. so you can't sort by artist?

oh wait .. I read that wrong

So, an unsorted track would show the filename in the first line and subsequent lines would be the edit fields for artist/album/track.

You'll be able to sort by album, artist and album time.

The thre headers

ok, I think I'm losing you a little

there are three panes on the prototype, can we give them specific names to refer to so we (that is, I) don't get confused? :)

ok, my goal is to use in place editing to edit tracks without 'tagging' them against MB.

sure: [file browser, album tree, album art, more info ] CW

yup ok

so I'm talking album tree.

ok

The tree control I am using can only use in place editing in the first column.

which will be the filename, in the case of unassigned tracks?

So, how do we structure the leaf nodes under an unsorted track to allow in place editing?>

Yes.

So, like this:

track1.mp3

this is where pencil and paper really comes into it's own

:)

- Rattle and Hum | Album

- All along the watchtower | Track

wimp :-)

no, just lazy and like things quick and easy. well .. most things. ;)

Given the layout above you could edit the data fields.

ok, just to be clear : the "track1.mp3" in the example above would correspond to "Dummy" or "Rubycon" in the tagger prototype

and the U2, Rattle and Hum, etc would correspond to "Mysterons", "Sour Times" etc

is that right?

just as far as how it would look/interact

yup.

spot on

ok. let's sidetrack for a second

the "Detailed info here" box

what will be placed here?

All the gory track details. mb ids, track names, sort names

ok

you want to be able to edit there?

yes

We could edit basic info there...

do you use easytag?

haven't no.

linux or windows?

linux

debian?

yep

apt-get -t unstable install easytag :)

oops, doing without unstable right now.

it's in testing

unstable and testing for that package are the same

(it wasn't when I installed this version a long time ago, is all)

version 0.30-4

?

the way your prototype and easytag have their layouts is fairly similar

ok

scanning now

on both apps though I'd prefer the "edit" fields to be at the bottom

mostly because some of that info can get rather long

and it's generally slack space down there

now, I'm imagining for the tagger that the "file system" pane might actually be better off being junked in favour of an "artist list" pane or similar

people can import files into the tagger for sorting, then

that's a maybe, btw - just thinking out loud

I've wondered about that.

About junking the file browser.

We could use the add file, add dir paradigm the tagger uses now.

as a general rule, someone using the software doesn't need to know about the filesystem that much that it has to be there in their face all time

and, as a side benefit, it's not too far removed from the current paradigm that peope will get disorientated

+l

Hmmm. Not really sure how an artist browser would fit there...

select one artist and see all the albums by that one artist??

breaks the data space up, but makes drag and drop harder.

that's what I had in mind .. it's how I manually sort my tracks in the file system atm

and there is a special "album" which holds unassigned tracks

OTOH

that sort of system is geared towards finding tracks easily and playing them

the tagger is about sorting tracks and tagging them

I have that in my version now.

so, maybe that kind of system won't fit?

Not sure...

maybe it might be a good idea to actually clearly define what it is that the tagger is to do?

People want to load up the tagger with 1000+ files at a time.

what gap is it going to fill, and what features should it contain?

Without breaking up that dataspace, the album tree will be big...

agreed

but if you're only supposed to work on 100 tracks at a time, then it would work fine.

and adding another pane, to me, feels like too much clutter

There is something sexy about throwing your entire collection at the tagger and have it sort it and spit it back at you...

yes, clutter is one thing I am worried about.

ruaok: I've been wanting something to do this for me for years :)

Coming soon -- weeks not months, I hope. :-)_

while I think of it : iTunes has a great rep in that respect

it might be worth having a look at how it does things

This is my grant work. yep.

let me update the prototype and shoot another copy out. one sec.

I haven't used it (no linux port)

coffee : back in a couple of mins

back

no linux port?

of iTunes

oh