Re: Format considerations (Pieces)

robin nospam at acm.org
Tue, 9 Mar 1999 18:07:43 GMT

On Tue, 9 Mar 1999 09:35:52 -0800 "Manuel A. McLure" <mmt nospam at Unify.Com> wrote:
> On classical CDs, you often have two or three pieces, each with three or
> four movements taking up a track apiece. When entering track information,
> you must either repeat the piece information for each movement, or lose the
> piece information on movements after the first. I suggest adding a "Piece"
> keyword that will give a two-level track naming scheme.
I was just composing a message to suggest something similar myself.
But I was going one step further in allowing Pieces to span multiple CDs,
which also happens a lot in classical music. But unfortunately I think
this is a bit abstract to present in a simple user interface. Your
idea of Pieces might be the best compromise.

The way I was thinking of doing it was to have Pieces as first-order
objects, which reference a sequence of tracks (which in turn belong
to CDs).

Your example:
> Artist: Ludwig Van Beethoven / London Symphony Orchestra
reminds me of something else that needs fixing---the grouping of
useful information as unpareseable text. We should have:
Disk123456789ABCDEF/Composer: Ludwig Van Beethoven
Disk123456789ABCDEF/Orchestra: London Symphony Orchestra
and generalise it so where appropriate we can have:
Disk123456789ABCDEF/Track11/Soloist: Rousset
(and similarly for Pieces, whichever way they work).

Ideally, there should be a way of listing all database entries for each
field, so clever clients could offer their users a menu rather than
requiring free text entry every time.

Robin.

-- 
R.M.O'Leary <robin nospam at acm.org> +44 7010 7070 44, PO Box 20, Swansea SA2 8YB, UK