support for user-definable labels

[Mark Jaroski]

Dan Meltzer wrote:
> I must say I have no idea what you are asking or proposing.
> 
> If it is adding support for user defined labels, it already exists.

I know.  At least they're there in SVN, and thus 1.4.5.

I was trying to continue a conversation on that very subject
from last month, though having just subscribed to the list
today I didn't have the In-Reply-To header from last month.

> If not, please elaborate

Basically there was some discussion last month about what
should happen when editing user-defined labels over multiple
tracks.  The consensus that seemed to develop was that when
editing labels for multiple tracks the lables which are
common to all the tracks should be shown, and any new labels
added should be added for all the tracks.

I think that sounds pretty good in general and works pretty
well where I've seen it used (check out KPhotoAlbum).
However, I don't think it quite solves the whole problem.

I'd like to see the label concept extended to include labels
for artists and for albums, not just for tracks.  

The notion here is that I would like to be able to build
smart playlists based on the labels, and would like to do so
with the least amount of effort put into the actual labeling
possible.  

For example suppose I'm building a "Random Instrumentals"
playlist, and I have a collection with some artists whoes
major output consists of instrumentals, but with a couple of
vocal tracks.  So I would label the artist with
"instrumental" (among other things), and then label just
those tracks with vocals as "vocal".  Then I could construct
a playlist with the condition something like this:

  artist labels contain "instrumental" and not track labels contain "vocal"

Admittedly something like this can be acheived with track
labels alone by selecting tracks and editing the labels, but
the ability to label artists and albums seems to provide for
richer combination possibilities.  Besides it makes it easier
to think about syncing with last.fm tags.

Anyhow please forgive me if this is already in the labels
patch, but it didn't look like it from a quick read, and no
sorry I haven't actually tried it yet. 

thanks for your time,

-mark



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