Multiple tag values

General Discussion
1

I would like to propose a few additional features. My experience shows that they are quite easy to implement, but should improve the ease of maintaining a huge audio collection.

Entering mulitple tag values
Easy way of entering the multiple values of one tag with use of a user specific separator. The desired separator could be specified in the Options screen.

This should be consistent within whole application - in the Tag Panel. The Extended tags screen should not incorporate this schema (or maybe add an option in the Options dialog - Use this separator also when entering values in Extended Tags dialog), as it allows to precisely specify the tags values.

When application reads the tag value and should display it, and if the specified separator is encountered in the tag value (for instance user uses ; to separate values, but there is the ; character in the title, C-like schema should be used (the separator is doubled).

I realize that this does not solve all cases (how to analyse Artist1;;;Artist2 - is it Artist1; + Artist2 or Artist1 + ;Artist2) - but should be fine in 99.99999% cases.

Support for mulitple tag values in the grid
The grid should be able to display the multiple values using the specified separator. When user enters a field to edit its value, the separator specified above is used instead to show the point of split.

This way more clear way of showing the values can be used in the Grid.

Support for mulitple tag values in old ID3v1 tags
In the Options window, in the Tags pane, there should be an option allowing how the multiple tag values are handled inside the ID3v1 tags. Following entries could be possible

  • use only first tag value
  • concatenate using separator (with editbox allowing to specify the separator)
  • other - I don't have more ideas here
This would be useful for using files in the players that don't support advanced tags (APE, ID3v2.x etc) and read info only from ID3v1.

Getting value of multiple tags
In case there are many values of a particular tag, there should be a possibility to retrieve those values. This is used especially when renaming. I would suggest:

  • add an option how the default tag value representation (for instance %artist%) should be rendered
    • use only first tag value
    • concatenate using separator (with editbox allowing to specify the separator)
    • other - I don't have more ideas here
  • introduce additional schema of accessing second, third etc. tag value.
    • _1%artist% could always adress only the first tag value, while _2%artist%, _3%artist% following.
    I didn't spend much time thinking about the _n%tagname% feature, and it also seems most complex to implement.
2

There's a recent thread on this very subject. It looks like you may not be aware of the double backslash that Mp3tag currently uses as the multiple field separator. \\

How important is the user specified separator vs. the one used now? I can't see an overwhelming need for it, but I agree that it may be easy enough to implement.

Right now it doesn't work in the grid, but otherwise it is consistent in the whole application.

I'm not sure this needs to be an option. The way it works now is to split the field into multiple fields, essentially the same as in the Tag Panel. That works.

That goes against how it now works in the Tag Panel and Extended Tags Dialog. If the separator exists in a single field, then when it's saved the field will be split into multiple fields. Given the unlikely nature of the current multi-character separator, I don't see this causing too many issues (and it may even be an argument against permitting a user-defined separator).

I'd be surprised if the current approach isn't already fine in 99.99999% of cases.

I have a feeling this change is coming. Maybe there's a technical reason it hasn't been done yet.