Composer list in library browser

[raindog]

I was comfortable when the discussion seemed focused on which MPD-supported tags to use to extract a view of the MPD database. Now we seem to be proposing a specific tagging scheme for a classical music collection in order to fit into the MPD model and I'm not so comfortable. The list of MPD-supported tags is just as much a straight jacket for us classical music lovers as the original ID3 list was.

As fundamental as the concept "composition" is in classical music, we can't just use the MPD tag "name" as a "composition" unless either 1) we re-tag our collection to make it so or 2) we modify the MPD source code to map occurrences of the "composition" tag in sources to "name" internally. Devil's advocate: If we bother to customize MPD, why not just modify the source code to support a "composition" and other useful tags directly? 

Even at a basic level, though, I have a problem. What constitutes a Classical library? It would seem this discussion has assumed it's a collection of all tracks containing the genre-tag value "classical" (or its numeric equivalent). Even the old, deprecated genre list in ID3 recognized there is more than one kind of classical music; iTunes enumerates 17 subgenres under music/classical (not that I agree with their choices). In the MPD scheme of things, a subgenre has to be used directly, e.g., "opera", "symphony", or "medieval" instead of "classical", if one wishes to select on it.

Acknowledging that MPD is a core component of moOde, I have a vague notion of a user-configurable Library panel, one in which I get to select which MPD-supported tags are primary, e.g., whose values appear in the columnar view. I won't make a proposal, however, unless and until I've convinced myself it would work for me and my collection.

Regards,
Kent

Kent, I couldn't agree more. The best way would be to modify MPD to use a wider share of classical tag and also make it possible in Moode to customize the view of the classical library. But I'm not sure if it is possible and if yes, what effort is needed. I'm not a programmer and I don't know policy of MPD developement.

My proposition was - I hope - the easiest way to incorporate the classical music to Moode. The "name" tag is practically not used; retagging the collection takes just a few clicks and several dozen minutes of waiting. That's workaurond, I agree. But it's much better than dealing with "artist", "album" and "title".

Going to the basic level   . My designation of classical library is simple: a "classical" genre tag. The trick is, that I'm using this tag multiple times in one file, ie one file has few genre tags, of which one is "classical". The rest is more specific: "opera", "medieval" and so on. Most of the software I know recognise this [1].

[1] From my personal experience: foobar2000, MusicBee, JRiver, BubbleUPnP, Minim Server, BubbleUPnP Server, Mp3tag editor.