Idea for another truly useful grid column

[fharald8344]

Would be good to category radio-records.

[Mizery_Made]

I know that this is a subject that has been discussed here and there over the years, but I don't think it's something that can hurt to bring up again. We're already supplied with custom fields, which is nice as it allows people a place to stick misc information to suit their own needs. However, I think it would also be useful to have available a small group (maybe 3, or 5 to coincide with the number of custom fields?) of check boxes which too can be given a custom name.

The reason being, while not everyone does, I know there are some that will fill up a custom field with a "two-state" type marker. For instance, I've been using Custom 1 for quite some time to denote whether I have rated that album or not. For years, I would simply leave the majority of my tracks unrated while simply giving those that I really liked a 5-star rating. Over time, this system seemed pretty flawed and I got to where I would go through an album when I got it and rate each track, occassionally going through older albums to give them the same treatment. So, I've used my "Rated" custom field to separate the "legitament ratings" from the "lazy ratings" if you will. I supposed I could just clear out all the "lazy ratings" which would negate the need for a "rated" field (as then anything with a rating would have been "rated" but that's beside the point.

Fact remains that some people desire something like this, and others may find it useful down the road. I know that most frequently there has been a request for one check box to work similarly to that of iTunes where only checked tracks would be played/synced. One could be given for this, or you could supply an option to choose one of the Custom check boxes to function like this. *Shrugs*

Having some check boxes though would clear up three of my Custom Fields, as they each currently have two-state information in them to denoted "Rated", "Sync" and "Duplicate/Snippet".

I seems pretty easy to implement though. Being a two-state field wouldn't inflate the database much, as you would just need one value saved for each "0/1" for instance to indicate "off/on" respectively. You could also use a similar logic to that of the present Custom fields when it comes to saving them to the tags of files. Plus again, only a 1 value field would be necessary to represent the two states.

[Falcon]

I use one of the custom fields to mark wether the tracks come from an HDCD or not, so yes, a checkbox field would be nice, as I currently fill in the field with "Yes" or leave it empty for "No".

[windcrest77]

I think it would be great to have some extra file info like a checkbox for tracks which are, for example,

live
remix
covers

Thank you very much and keep up the good work

I asked for something similar to this a while ago, but I think it should be implemented generically so you can "add a checkbox column" to the grid and title it yourself. I realize you could use a custom field as text but that is much harder to maintain in the grid with a single click or (hit of the spacebar while the checkbox has focus). HTere should be a way where a user can dedicate one of their "custom tags" to hold an XML document that can be any number of checkboxes that they can use as columns. Mostly for the advaltage of single click status changing. For me I would like to have an "auditioned" flag, so I can quicly mark songs that I have already auditioned (for dance purposes in my case), so I know what songs I can ignore tomorrow when I continue auditioning more songs.

Here was my original, it might be similar:

http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... =4&t=53647

[windcrest77]

I think it would be great to have some extra file info like a checkbox for tracks which are, for example,

live
remix
covers

Thank you very much and keep up the good work

I asked for something similar to this a while ago, but I think it should be implemented generically so you can "add a checkbox column" to the grid and title it yourself. I realize you could use a custom field as text but that is much harder to maintain in the grid with a single click or (hit of the spacebar while the checkbox has focus). HTere should be a way where a user can dedicate one of their "custom tags" to hold an XML document that can be any number of checkboxes that they can use as columns. Mostly for the advaltage of single click status changing. For me I would like to have an "auditioned" flag, so I can quicly mark songs that I have already auditioned (for dance purposes in my case), so I know what songs I can ignore tomorrow when I continue auditioning more songs.

Here was my original, it might be similar:

http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... =4&t=53647

Additionally I here people talking about "custom tag usage" when you think of it with the advent of XML you can stuff thousands of values into a single ID3 custom tag if you know the schema of the document you stuffed there, and have an application to manage that schema. You really only need one custome tag and a function in MM to let people maintain and stuff many values into it and deine what "kind" of UI control they want on the screen mapped to that piece of data, checkbox, slider, drop down list, text box, hyperlink, calendar date picker, etc. Dedicating the few available ID3 standard "custom fields" to specific purposes (like mood) is silly and wasteful. Those fields should be holding a schema based XML string that the user customized to represent any number of "virtual columns" that they can then place into the grid. They can decide if they want "Custom 1" for example to contain just plain text or an XML schema. If they select XML then MM would pop up a small editor that lets them create any number of virtual columns, title them, give them a data types, and map them to the desired UI control type that would apper in the grid or in the song properties editor. The ID3 Cutom tags are too valuable to waste on single purpose needs that only solve problems for a few. Right now thay are always just plain text, I'm saying they could contain multiple columns by using XML.

My big reason for a checkbox is I want something I can do with one click (and only one click) from the grid, which would be even easier than setting the Rating from the grid (which still requires two clicks) (one to give the row focus and another to set the rating). What I was hoping for was that one click would just update the checkbox and database, and not necessarily even give the row focus, but it would be ok if it did that too. That would be a behavior you could customize when you select checkbox as your UI control if they ever go with the ability to put XML in a custome field and give you an editor to create virtual columns (you could specify change row focus or not when this checkbox is updated in that editor).