Sort Error in Playlist (1.1.12, Xubuntu 13.04)

[Stradivarius]

Hi,

Using GMuscBrowser 1.1.12 on Xubuntu 13.04 x64.

I create a new Playlist, drag drop a folder containing an album with around 20 tracks. The tracks are displayed randomly. I need to click on the Filename header to have the tracks sorted correctly.

Question: Is there a way to have the Playlist always sorted by (Album, Track#)?

The album is perfectly tagged. File names are named with track number prefix ("01 - Track1.mp3", "02 - Track2.mp3", ... "14 - Track14.mp3", etc.). When played using other players (desktop, android players, Blackberry tablet, dedicated MP3 player) the tracks are always sorted correctly (by track number ascending).

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Quentin Sculo]

When you drag multiple songs they are sorted according to your current play order, you can change your play order though the menu bar or the left click menu on the sort icon (the exact location depends on your layout)

[Stradivarius]

Not working at all. I create a new list to make a test. I click on that sort icon, select various sort options. I even created a custom order (Album, Title or Filename)

For each sort option, I made the following test:
- Empty the list
- Drag & drop a folder from the file system. The title tag have the track prefix (like 01-Song1, 02-Song2). In my case, filename and title are identical.

Regardless of the sort option I selected, the tracks are always display in a seemingly random order:

[Quentin Sculo]

Yes, sorry, you're right. I was thinking of what happen when you queue songs. It seems I've never bothered to sort the songs added by drag and drop, and nobody complained. I'll fix it.
Though it makes me wonder if it should maybe keep the order when dragging songs from a list (the songs are already in the order of the list), as it currently does.
Songs with no defined order (as your example) should of course be sorted, but I'm not sure by what, either the current play order, the last ordered play order (so no random or shuffle) or a hard-coded order. Or even a default order that could be set in the preferences somewhere.

[Stradivarius]

Hi,

How about re-order the entire list each time the content of the list is changed? The sort criteria would be what is currently selected. If you don't want to implement that "automatic sort on list change", is it Ok to add a button "Sort List" and let the user click on it to re-order the entire list?

When you said "Songs with no defined order (as your example)", why no defined order? I would think that their sort order is already define, by "Path,Album,Disc,Track,File" as shown in the top left of the screen shot.

BTW, how does GMusicBrowser behave when a tag is missing? For example, the Disc tag is most of the time missing in my albums.

[Quentin Sculo]

How about re-order the entire list each time the content of the list is changed? The sort criteria would be what is currently selected.

The thing is, to categorize your music, you should maybe use labels instead of putting them in lists. Mostly the only reason for these lists to exist is so that you can order them manually (and also have a song multiple times in the list, though I'm not sure anyone actually want that feature).
Though I must admit that there are currently GUI reasons to use lists instead of labels, such as being able to classify them using drag-and-drop. Suggestions on making the use of labels easier is welcome, I could of course allow opening labels in a tab that list all matching songs, and add the label to any song dropped on it, though it does feel a little strange so I'm still not sure about it.

If you don't want to implement that "automatic sort on list change", is it Ok to add a button "Sort List" and let the user click on it to re-order the entire list?

You can sort any list by right-clicking on the column headers and choose a sort order in the sort submenu.

When you said "Songs with no defined order (as your example)", why no defined order? I would think that their sort order is already define, by "Path,Album,Disc,Track,File" as shown in the top left of the screen shot.

I meant when drag-and-dropping things like albums or folders, which are transformed when needed to a list of songs. As it turns out I was wrong in my last reply and dropping an album use the current play order, only dropping folders from the FileSystem tab (which is a very different from other tabs as it can add songs that were not already in the library, use the Folders tab if it is not what you want) resulted in unsorted songs, I've just committed the fix to my git repo.

BTW, how does GMusicBrowser behave when a tag is missing? For example, the Disc tag is most of the time missing in my albums.

It general an empty string is used for string fields and 0 for number fields like the disc field.

[Stradivarius]

The thing is, to categorize your music, you should maybe use labels instead of putting them in lists. Mostly the only reason for these lists to exist is so that you can order them manually (and also have a song multiple times in the list, though I'm not sure anyone actually want that feature).
Though I must admit that there are currently GUI reasons to use lists instead of labels, such as being able to classify them using drag-and-drop. Suggestions on making the use of labels easier is welcome, I could of course allow opening labels in a tab that list all matching songs, and add the label to any song dropped on it, though it does feel a little strange so I'm still not sure about it.

What is label? Is it specific to GMusicBrowser or is it something in MP3 tags?

May be I am not using GMB correctly. The Layout "List, Library, Context" is too complicate. It has too many lists, library pane, playlist. May be I messed up somewhere. I was hoping this is the view closest to Foobar Media player (on Windows). I switched to the Exaile or Playlist view. This is now more bearable in terms of Sorting. But there is another bug. As soon as I click on a folder, GMB plays right away. I was expecting that it would expand the content of the folder to give me a chance to review the content.

Sorry I am wasting too much of your time. May be GMB is not the right player for me.

[Quentin Sculo]

Sorry for not replying sooner.

Labels are specific to gmb (though I do plan to add an option, off by default, to save them to tags if I find a suitable standard tag for them). They are often called tags in other software, but to avoid confusion with the various tags found in mp3/... I call them labels. You can create them in the song properties dialog, once created you can toggle them in the song context menu, among other places.
Of course you can still use lists instead of labels if you prefer, just don't expect an option to have them autosorted, as a big part of their reason to exist is to be manually sorted.

The reason the Exaile or Playlist view play immediately is that their list widget is on playlist mode, so any change to the list is reflected on the playlist, and vice versa.

If you describe exactly how you would like it to work, I could make you a layout that tries to replicate that, I need to add better layouts anyway.