Audiosoft it has been asked by many people in the community that the situation with the word "The" in front of an artists name be fixed. (Pirk has also requested a few French equivilents) Can you please respond to this concern as it has been around a long time and never addressed by you. Thanks!

I updated the code just last week (for the next upgrade) so that the Artist List ignores leading THE's when sorting the Artist List. That way Artists with THE will appear under the correct letter instead of T.

Can't seem to find Pirk's French equivilents post. Anyone got a link to it?

Pirk Posted:

"Is there any way you can make it read the word "The" in front of the artist/band's name? That would be awsome!"

I totally agree with you rllercstr7,

I think the best would be if we could keep all artists named normally: The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones... and if eJukebox could simply ignore the word "The" in the artistlist (but not in the vocal announce!), so the alphabetical order would be perfectly respected!
Additionally I also would like eJukebox ignore the French words "Le", "La" and "Les".

My last request: (but it's certainly impossible, well not yet!)
If the voice could speak French when it announces a French song... because the English voice makes French titles incomprehensibles! And vice versa, if I use a French voice it makes English so bad...
In fact I would like a POLYGLOT voice !!

Thanks.

There is really no way I can make eJukebox know when to insert a THE before the artist name when there is not one. Same goes for no accurate way to detect if an artist should be spoken in french or english.

As long as I can go back to naming a band "The Eagles" instead of "Eagles, The" it should now read and sort everything correctly. Thanks Audiosoft!

Thats right... you can always rename the artist to The XXXXX and the artist list will sort it correctly now. However the album list will still put it under T until I get around to re-coding the way it is created so you may not want to do that yet. For the next version I have just updated the voice announce so that it speaks artists formated like "Eagles, The" as "The Eagles".

Sounds good. Wonder what's gonna happen with the band "The The"?

Regarding French Articles: What about german, spanish, etc articles? Of course I would like to see them treated as well.

BUT: what if an article in one language happens to be a regular word in another language? Example: in german, the definite articles are called "Der, Die, Das" as in "Die Toten Hosen" which should be sorted under "T" and which I have in my collection as "Toten Hosen, Die". But "to die" is of course a regular english word and the Band "Die Pretty" should be listed under D, not P.

One idea could be to remove a ", The" at the end instead of "The" from the front, but even this is not a foolproof solution.

The only solution that really works 100% is one that I have used for all my music databases in the past ever since I started cataloging music: The Artist Field must be split in two, and sorting is done on the second field. Like this:

Field 1_____Field 2 (Sort)
Elvis______Presley
The_______Beatles
The Alan___Parsons Project
__________Pink Floyd
Manfred___Mann's Earth Band
__________Martha And The Muffins
Die_______Toten Hosen
__________Die Pretty


etc. So Field 1 is a prefix field that holds articles and/or the first name of an artist.

The Problem is that only the human user can do this splitting and there is no support for this neither in ID3 Tags, nor CDDB, nor iTunes, Amazon etc. etc, so this would be a totally non-standard approach and quite a bit of extra work for the user - but it would worl perfectly!

The nice thing is that this extra "non-sort" field is always in front of the sort field and could therefore be totally optional. If you don't use the first field, you have the same standard solution as today, but if you do use it, all eJukebox would have to do is display this field in front of the normal artist field! So if Audiosoft would add this new field, then no user would notice any difference until they started actually using it....

With this system, you can even do nice things as keep albums by a band together when they slightly change their name over time:

And You Will Know Us By The___Trail Of Dead
_____________________________Trail Of Dead

would both be under "T" instead of once under "A.

"A Clan Of Xymox" and "Xymox" could both be together under X, etc...

Bravo Demnos!

I like your universal solution, because that will work in ALL cases, even for first names! And no matter the language...

I would just add this:
Maybe Audiosoft could create another "asn" ID3 Tag to store this specific article field ?

Thanks.

Sorry guys...the 2 column solution is just to impractical, confusing for the user and complicated to implement. The only way is with universal rules such as "ignore leading THE's when sorting the artist list".

If you give me some static rules which always work and do not conflict with other artists and I will do my best to implement them.

Wow Audiosoft thats awsome that you coded eJukebox to read "Eagles, The" as "The Eagles." Thats the solution I preferred in the first place since I have all my artists named that way currently. Perhaps you could make several check box options in the sounds tab or a new language tab such as:

-Ignore English articles

-Ignore German articles

-Ignore French articles

-etc.

This way English artists that have the first word die wouldn't be affected, because you wouldn't have the "Ignore German articles" box checked.

The problem comes when you have both English and German/French artists in the same database. Therefore I propose the easiest solution to the problem is to have everyone keep the current formatting of their tags such as "Eagles, The." ONLY songs that have the exact formatted aticles at the end (ex. ", The" or ", Die") will have the word read first for the purpose of song announce. If the comma is not present the word is NOT moved from the end of the artists name for song announce purposes. This is a for sure way because of the comma and will let eJukebox know if the word needs to be read first. This way if some band name ends in the word the it is not read first because of the absence of the comma.

I hope everyone was able to understand that if not feel free to ask for clarification. Thanks for paying so much attention to this Audiosoft!

I think it's a shame Audiosoft... I've already dreamed a cool way to select the right artist name part:

The user could use the eJukebox editor to underline, directly in the "Artist" field, the artist name part he wants to use.

Of course the default sorting would use the entire Artist field for all "basic" users... But responsible users could easily underline the suitable artist part (clicking on the right artist name part) for each artist, if need be.

i.e:
The Rolling Stones
Bruce Springsteen
Les Casse Pieds
...

I think that's well worth it!

Thanks.

Concerning the static rules solution: I'm not against, but that will be very difficult to deal with all non-english languages: german, french, norvegian, dutch... And a static solution will be totally unable to deal with the FIRST names of Artists!!

Pirk I have to agree with Audiosoft on Demnos' solution, it is just too complicated and confusing especially for new users. I would also be willing to bet that almost no-one has their tags in this separated form.

rllercstr7, new users can still ignore this advanced sorting method.. My solution (using the editor to underline the sorting letter) don't use separated tags form. So it's not confusing for the user!

I think it is great that audiosoft has chosen to implement ignorance of "the" in the artistlist and albumlist.

I think it is important to understand that there are so many different languages with different articles and weird artistnames out there, that covering all eventualities would be an impossibility all together.

I think an good idea is to use simple *universial* rules for artistnames. We already know the problems with artists with for instance "soundtrack" in their names (i.e. Soundtrack of our lives) which is erroneous placed under compilations.

There are so many artisnames out there, so being too restrictive with those keywords does not seem like a good idea.

I agree with you Fishy, multiple keywords would be too complicated because of various languages.. and above all that would surely end up generating many errors.

On the other hand, the Demnos method is infallible!!
And if Audiosoft implements it using the editor to underline the right words in artist names, that will be unanswerable!

Quote:

Origineel gepost door Pirk i.e: The Rolling Stones Bruce Springsteen Les Casse Pieds ... I think that's well worth it! Thanks.

Quote:

Message original : Willum That doesn't work for me Pirk, I don't have Les Casse Pieds

I met a bird today. It whispered in my ears that all good members of Les Casse Pieds write good reviews of ejukebox at download.com

Quote:

Origineel gepost door Fishy I met a bird today. It whispered in my ears that all good members of Les Casse Pieds write good reviews of ejukebox at download.com

Why let not create an option that allows the user to enter the prefixes to ignore?

So in the options area, there would be a text box where users could enter which words eJukebox should ignore. This would be a slightly more international solution that just ignoring "the".

I think the user defined blank is a pretty good idea as long as you can define the exact formatting (ex space as Pirk suggested is a must). Perhapse the menu could be something like this:

Prefix Handling
Database organizing:
Ignore the prefixes -------User defined input box (ex. the), multiple words separated by ;------- when sorting the eJukebox artist and album lists.

Song annouce:
Read ending prefixes first IF a song ends in -------User defined input box (ex. , the), multiple words separated by ;------- .

I think that is the best idea yet bosh, since it keeps almost everone happy no matter how their tags are customized.