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goake · 2008-11-02, 21:43

Yep, no doubt about it, it is a great piece of software. Support is second to none - within a couple of hours we have a customised version that sorts our own particular needs exactly.

At work we have software that we pay £50K a year in support costs, ontop of what it cost in the first place, and it cant hold a candle to this.

jmarshall · 2008-11-02, 21:51

Honestly - it's a files view. If you want them to sort differently then just rename them - it's a simple fix that takes all of 5 seconds.

Cheers,
Jonathan

goake · (This post was last modified: 2008-11-02, 23:45 by goake.)

Jonathan,

But its so much more than a files view!

I'll explain my set up, and hopefully all will become clear as to why its such a big deal.

To me, there are only two types of movies - movies the kids can see, and movies the kids cant. To facilitate this, I use profiles with two accounts, one for the kids and one for adults. I have configured two bookmarks - 'DVDs' and 'Kids DVDs', each bookmark relates to half a dozen physical shares. The adult profile needs a password, the kids profile doesnt. Its a shared libray.

Every movie is stored within the library, and has a file name that exactly matches the movie name as in IMDB - ie 'The Ant Bully (2006).ISO'. I have the 'Hide Media Extensions' option on, so that in file view, the file name is the movie name.

Under videos I have the 'View:Icons' option and 'Sort By:Name' and I get 15 IMDB thumbnails on each page, with the IMDB movie name underneath. This is perfect, everybody can find everything - its not just a files view, its a movie listing.

Considering I have 60 movies begining with 'The' , this latest change is a big deal. Especially since for the purist who wants to see all the files beginining with 'The' sorted together can just use the 'Sort By:File' option to get their desired effect.

It just seems a bizaar change - and for me it seems like a change for the worse. But don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. Its an awesome product, the support is brilliant and like Keith says its just fantastic that we can do little changes to the code like this ouselves and fine tune it to our exact requirements - what more could an end user ask for? especially in a free product.

On a different note, I've looked through all the files relating to this, and I'm sure I could do the changes necessary to have two options for 'Ignore tokens when sorting' - one for library mode, and one for files mode. If I did all the changes, and everything works, is there any way I could get this into the main source code?

Cheers
Glen

jmarshall · 2008-11-03, 00:51

Feel free to do up a patch - others may find it useful. I doubt it'll be added to be honest, as we have other plans in mind for the current files view, but that's just my personal opinion.

Cam73 · 2008-11-03, 07:35

I thought I would lend weight to this discussion.

Personally I have been an XBMC enthusiast for years (I have 4, my brother has 2, my other brother has one, my mother has one, and I’ve converted about 6 other friends to XBMC). In the past I have bought old XBOXes and set them up for XBMC...now at home I run 3 XBOX based XBMC media centres and 1 Windows based).

I have always used the 'ignore tokens' option and i never use the library mode....same for all the people I’ve set up.

This changed behaviour is much worse in my opinion.

I would dearly love to have this option back the way it was for the many years I’ve used XBMC...I don’t mind if it’s an extra option, but I really prefer the way it used to be to the way it is now.

Please don’t take this as a rant, or a criticism of the great work being done by the team... please see this as what it is...am impassioned plea from a devoted and long time user.

Thanks

Livin · 2008-11-03, 08:11

jmarshall Wrote:Feel free to do up a patch - others may find it useful. I doubt it'll be added to be honest, as we have other plans in mind for the current files view, but that's just my personal opinion.

I'm interested as I'm sure others are too... what other plans?

I almost never use Library view and always use File Views.

thx!

**arnova** · (This post was last modified: 2008-11-03, 10:05 by arnova.)

Jonathan, considering the popularity of this "feature", maybe we could introduce an AdvancedSetting to enable/disable this behaviour (in <video>)? Depending on your future "plans" you were talking about, I'd be willing to code something to implement it....

goake · 2008-11-05, 23:48

I've posted a patch for this which adds an advance setting to enable this behaviour.

http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/5286

midgetspy · 2008-11-06, 00:15

It seems to me that because the file view has so many additional features, people use it as it was never intended. It is supposed to be a way to view your files, like Windows Explorer. The fact that it displays fanart and all that fancy stuff is a bonus, but it's still meant to be a file view... if you want to view your media in some kind of media view it's expected that you'd use library view.

So IMO this should be explored: what is file mode doing that library mode isn't? Why do people use file mode for what library mode should be used for?

Perhaps there's some UI changes that can be implemented to make sense of all this. For example, maybe a 3rd view could be added so there's Files, Media, and Library... Library being db view, Media being a media-rich files view, and Files being a raw file explorer (like the Filemanager currently).

calvinf · 2008-11-06, 00:21

goake Wrote:I've posted a patch for this which adds an advance setting to enable this behaviour.

http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/5286

Cheers - I think I'm gonna have to learn how to compile XBMC myself now!

mcowher · 2008-11-06, 16:52

goake Wrote:I've posted a patch for this which adds an advance setting to enable this behaviour.

http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/5286

This is great goake, and thank you for doing this, but am I correct in understanding I'll need to apply this patch to the source code and compile the code myself?

And then with every release of XBMC, I'll always need to apply this patch to the source code and compile once again myself?

**arnova** · 2008-11-06, 17:52

Yep, you'll have to patch & recompile everytime unless we commit it "upstream" but this is up to the devs...

mcowher · 2008-11-06, 20:11

arnova Wrote:Yep, you'll have to patch & recompile everytime unless we commit it "upstream" but this is up to the devs...

Well it seems that enough people want this feature available for optional configuration in the AdvancedSettings.xml file.

The code has already been written by goake, so it doesn't even require much effort from the devs.

Having it there is not going to hurt the devs that think it's unnecessary, and it will make the MANY people that do want it very happy.

Bloksel · 2008-11-06, 23:01

I am beginning to think, the developers don't care that much about people who use their program.

Tonight, they are going to take over the world.

**mkortstiege** · 2008-11-06, 23:46

Yay, rule the world! Remember we're still in feature freeze so no new features will be added at this point. After the upcoming release the entire library/file views will be reworked.. so please be patient.