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Seigo: Plasma.next()?Seigo: Plasma.next()?Posted Jan 30, 2013 10:38 UTC (Wed) by micka (subscriber, #38720)In reply to: Seigo: Plasma.next()? by aseigo Parent article: Seigo: Plasma.next()?
> Perhaps a good example is portable (and other) music players: good ones let one quickly go through the content by artist, album, genre, name, etc. as well as custom playlists. Where are they on disk? Doesn't matter.
Really bad example. I'm still searching for a music player that allows me to select music by filesystem location. Any ("consumer device" as you say) I can find shows you your music by artist or album or genre, and it doesn't pose me a problem (I won't use it though) as long as I can select files and whole directories from a filesystem.
Because I know where the music is on the filesystem even where I don't know the tags (because i'm the one who put the files where they are).
Even when I find one program that allow (a limited and degraded) filesystem based selection, it never allows to choose a directory and "play recursively".
Every music program will show me a pile of all the music files it can find on my device with some tags whose content is foreign to me (because I didn't tag them myself).
Actually, it's the same for ebook readers. they insist on either having each their own book directory (separate from the other app, so you won't share resources) or show you a "drawer" with all the books it can find. I'm happy to bypass this bookshelf view each time I can.
By the way, the very first program I _must_ install each time is a two panel file manager.
And tag systems relies on the existence of a complete and maintained tag database and tagged object database.
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Seigo: Plasma.next()? Posted Jan 30, 2013 13:07 UTC (Wed) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]
No, really good example. Because for the other 99% of people, navigating their music by any of the multiple tag fields rather than a single directory hierarchy *is* an improvement.
Seigo: Plasma.next()? Posted Jan 30, 2013 13:51 UTC (Wed) by micka (subscriber, #38720) [Link]
I'm sorry being a minority (in reality, I'm not 1 % by myself).
By the way, you didn't source your "99 %" frequency.
Seigo: Plasma.next()? Posted Jan 30, 2013 15:48 UTC (Wed) by dan_a (subscriber, #5325) [Link]
>> Perhaps a good example is portable (and other) music players: good ones let one quickly go through the content by artist, album, genre, name, etc. as well as custom playlists. Where are they on disk? Doesn't matter.
>Really bad example. I'm still searching for a music player that allows me to select music by filesystem location. Any ("consumer device" as you say) I can find shows you your music by artist or album or genre, and it doesn't pose me a problem (I won't use it though) as long as I can select files and whole directories from a filesystem.
Any player which supports Rockbox (www.rockbox.org) will fulfill the filesystem location requirement.
Personally I prefer tags, but it'd be a strange world if everyone was alike.
Seigo: Plasma.next()? Posted Jan 30, 2013 20:33 UTC (Wed) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link]
I have to agree.
I organize my music in folders: artist, then album. Easy to navigate. Each time I try to use some tagging mode (doesn't matter whether rockbox or amarok or something else), it screws up. The tags e.g. for the artist usually use different ways to spell the name, or what to do with spaces, or umlauts, so I end up with multiple folders for the same artist, just written in a slightly different way. Then having to figure out in which of these folders the album I'm looking for is located is too much. Maybe it wouldn't be a problem if editing the metadata would be straight forward, but it isn't. Editing directory names is straight forward.
Alex
Seigo: Plasma.next()? Posted Jan 30, 2013 21:09 UTC (Wed) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
> Maybe it wouldn't be a problem if editing the metadata would be straight forward, but it isn't.
Is that a fundamental problem with the technological idea or a UI problem with the implementation because it seems that Plasma is about fixing the UI problems to make this straight forward.
Seigo: Plasma.next()? Posted Jan 30, 2013 21:32 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Yeah, that scheme works great. Until you run into classical works, in which the composer and performer are different people. And then there are works with multiple performers or composers...
... it does break down in the end. And when it does, you have to reclassify *everything*.
Seigo: Plasma.next()? Posted Jan 31, 2013 15:48 UTC (Thu) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
It's frustrating. Even with tagging it breaks down, because tagging systems tend to be naive in that they assume either a limited number of keys or a limited number of values for each key (often only one).
The related problem is syncing metadata from tagging systems with files when the move between systems. Embedding tag data in files works well but is format specific and usually quite limited (example: you're reading ID3v2 data from an MP3. Quick, what is the encoding of the textual data?)
The lowest common denominator is directories and file names, because every system has those and no agreement on key names is required.
There's probably a need for a portable file API for tagging. Something that raises the lowest denominator a bit but doesn't mandate an on disk format, indexes, complex protocols, etc..
Seigo: Plasma.next()? Posted Jan 30, 2013 22:16 UTC (Wed) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] I edit the metadata of files I rip locally from CD at the time of ripping, via the check-and-edit stage of my ripping package. I trust files provided through Proper Channels by the artist or their authorized representatives to be correctly tagged, or at least to be incorrectly tagged in an adequately consistent manner.
Seigo: Plasma.next()? Posted Jan 31, 2013 3:08 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
> Really bad example. I'm still searching for a music player that allows me to select music by filesystem location. Any ("consumer device" as you say) I can find shows you your music by artist or album or genre, and it doesn't pose me a problem (I won't use it though) as long as I can select files and whole directories from a filesystem.
Check out Vanilla Player[1]. (It's in the F-Droid repo as well).
> Because I know where the music is on the filesystem even where I don't know the tags (because i'm the one who put the files where they are).
That's fine for you and me (I use %albumartist%/%releasedate% - %album%/%disc%[ - %disctitle]/%track%[ - %artist%] - %title%.%format%), but my mom and sister just drag'n'drop music and let the device sort things out, so filesystem browsing is approximately useless.
Seigo: Plasma.next()? Posted Jan 31, 2013 9:49 UTC (Thu) by micka (subscriber, #38720) [Link]
That's one I never saw or tested. So I will have to check this, thanks (it could take some time, though, as I just "lost" my phone...)
By the way, it fits one requirement I didn't express, it's foss (MIT, but you have to open the source to know it, bad ; being on fdroid was a good lead, though).
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