How can I display only albums? (without <Unknown>)

[Lisa1980]

Hello, I have just installed gmusicbrowser and really love it so far. There's only one thing that bugs me:
I would like to be able to browse through my albums without having all the single tracks as album "<Unknown>" in the list. Is this possible? Or is there a way to filter them? But how can I set a filter for an empty field?

[Quentin Sculo]

Hi, you can filter out albums with less than a given number of songs : right-click inside the list, choose "show buttons" (which is not a very good name, maybe "show toolbar" would be better), increase the number in the spin-button, then you can hide it by un-checking "show buttons". It's a bit cumbersome to show the spinbutton, but that feature is very nice.

Other than that, to filter out unknown albums, I'm not sure if I should add a specific option for that, I am thinking about an option to choose what names these non-albums are given, which could allow putting them at the end of the list, though not that easily. Or maybe I should change the default name (<Unknown> artist_name) ?
To create a filter, currently the "<Unknown>..." name is used as it's real name, so "album:<Unknown>" works, though I wonder if I should change that.
In other fields, searching for an empty field can be done by choosing "equal to" with an empty string. With the current git version, "title=" search for empty titles.

[Lisa1980]

Thank you. The method with 'at least n tracks' doesn't work for me. Because I have many folders that contain more than 10 single tracks from one artist.

I chose the method of filtering out <Unknown>. This works. However, setting the filter was very unintuitive. I always fell for pressing 'save as noname' and ended up with no filter. Until I found out I have to press this harddrive symbol to save it.

And then I had a huge problem to find out how to deactivate a filter. In fact, it's not possible. There should be a filter in the list called 'Show All'. Also, the filter list tab is named 'Saved', whereas I'd expect it to be named 'Selection' (because calling it 'Filter' might be mistaken for sound filters).

What I also find confusing, cluttered and unnecessary is that in the default layouts there are all tabs on top of each list. I know they can be added and removed. But in the default layouts it should be a bit simplified. Users can still add tabs if they wish to.

As for hiding '<Unknown>': As a quick fix, I would simply put a button or checkbox under the albums list, something like 'Show Unknown'. Internally it's nothing else than an additional filter. Only difference is that this filter doesn't show up in the 'Saved' ('Selection') list.

As a suggestion to make this more user-friendly, I would use three entries in the album list:

- 'All albums & single tracks' (Show all tracks of a selected artist, as well as the single tracks without album tag)
- 'All albums' (Shows only the albums of an artist, not the single tracks)
- 'All single tracks' (Shows only single tracks, but not the albums)

All tracks that have no album tag could be considered to be 'Single Tracks'. When in artist filter 'All artists' is selected, instead of listing <Unknown> for each artist, there should be only one additional entry in the album list called 'Single Tracks'. This entry then contains all single tracks from all artists. Clicking it will display all single tracks of all artists in the track list.

See my mock screenshot:



Accordingly, if an artist X is selected, then in the Album tab list it should show all albums of X for this artist, plus all single tracks for this artist.

Alternatively, the whole thing could be an optional setting in the gmusicbrowser's preferences, something like:
'Show tracks from <Unknown> albums as one 'Single tracks' row'.

Or use one optional 'Single tracks' entry and make it switchable from the button under the album list:

Example 1:
[X] Show 'unknown' merged in row 'Single tracks' (selected)
= all songs without album tags are displayed/merged in one fake album entry that contains all single songs from all artists. If it's not selected, single songs will be shown as 'unknown album' for each artist separately.

Also, Show 'unknown' is selected = single songs are shown in the list. If it's unselected, only albums will be shown, but no fake albums, nor a fake album row that contains all single tracks. Single songs don't appear and are filtered out completely.



Example 2:
[ ] Show 'unknown' merged in row 'Single tracks' (unselected)
= songs without album tags are displayed as 'unknown' album for each artist separately. In this case, the 'Single tracks' fake album entry is of course not there.

[staubi]

I actually like both suggestions. I'm also a bit annoied by all the <unknown> enrties...

Greetings, staubi

[Quentin Sculo]

1) adding a "show all" in the saved tab
yes, though I'm probably going to do some changes to it after I add the new side panel widget (probably share lots of code between the filterpanes and the sidepanel), so I'll wait until then.
As for the name of the tab, saved is not very good, but "selection" doesn't really reflect what it contains I think

2) adding "all single tracks" "all albums" rows
I rather like the idea, though I'm not sure about the naming :
* songs instead of tracks as I use songs everywhere
* maybe "non-album songs" instead of "singles", as single usually has a more specific meaning : that it has been released  on its own, whereas songs can have empty album tag  for a lot of reasons. Though "non-album" is not that much better, and a bit cumbersome.
* about the first "All" row,  I'm not very happy about renaming it, as it would break the symmetry with the other panels

Again, I may wait until the side-panel widget is done before implementing that, as it is likely some of the current code will be replaced. It might also make using sub-trees better supported, which would allow collapsing non-albums "albums" into a subtree, or things like that.

3) that would require a proper filter for finding empty-album songs
  * either add a new filter specially for that (not hard)
  * either stop using the <unknown> in album filters and album sorting, so "album=" would match empty-albums, I'm leaning towards this solution. I could also remove <unknown> completely, I don't know.

4) "tabs on top of each list"
I rather like it, as it is a clear way to show what the list contains, and it also shows to new user that they can change what fields are used, instead of the classic (genre)-artist-album
About the clutter of this layout (lists, library and context) I'm thinking about removing the top tab (library/context) as I never use it, context tabs can be added to the left side, which is what I always do