Managing Smart Views

[Petrž]

I would really love to be able to manage my smart views into groups that I could expand / collapse the same way as Playlists or whole Local Library with that little arrows

[dro]

Hmm, I'm not aware of there being a playlist grouping feature.

As for grouping of smartviews (which should also be present with playlists and bookmakrs when I get my bookmark plug-in for doing that finished off), the main issue I see with it is how to deal with selecting the 'group' node. As should it act like having selected all of the 'child' nodes (i.e. combines all of the results into a single view) or just show a list of those nodes and some details (a bit like the playlists root node and it's summary view) which can then be selected from to get to the desired node. As I get the main way of accessing things would probably be from clicking the node directly but have to think about such things otherwise empty node views looks wrong and so on.

The other issue is that it somewhat requires a fair bit of coding to either override the local library plug-in (which based on the much simpler bookmarks plug-in was not trivial) or to just start on a replacement local library plug-in and build in such support from the start (which would be better but just needs more time due to having to do everything else needed with such a plug-in - more work compared to some of the other library plug-ins I've already re-implemented in WACUP).

-dro

[zackbuffo]

I want to bring up this feature-request again.

Before reading this, my feature vision was rather a folder-like approach to organize smart views. This would additionally provide a defined expectation on behavior (e.g. for empty folders). To me these folders should simply just hold the views. Nothing about cumulating the included smart views or something else.
It would be a huge improvement, if you work with lots of smart views. Among a few others I have a smart view for each year and each decade starting at around 1960. Currently it's not that handy to jump around between playlists and views.

[dro]

I've not done anything towards such things yet though with the current state of what's used with the betas as of this post, I'm only using my plug-in implementations for the library core & the majority of the library plug-ins so attempting to do things with the library navigation list is going to be simpler.

If I understand things correctly from this & other comments about it, what's being wanted is sub-nodes or something akin to an explorer hierarchical tree so from the example it can be something like the following (where each - represents a new sub-level):

local library
|- 1980s
|-- 1989
|--- pop
|--- rock
|-- 1988
|- 1960s
\- others

Is that correct or am I not getting the intention?

Another idea which I've just had is that instead of filling the navigation tree with a load of nodes, I do something more like the playlists root view (which itself has a request for sub-nodes) & then it's done all within there with it's own list/tree of nodes & then the selected view is shown along with it. The only issue is how weird it might look but it's another possible option for me to consider & might for some be more useful anyway seeing as there's only the means to view one local library view at a time (which I'm still toying over maybe allowing multiple views to be seen).

-dro

[Aminifu]

Whatever is done, I prefer that the main navigation tree not be filled with a load of nodes. I currently limit the number of main custom smart views I create just for that reason. If I reach my limit, I plan to delete the least used view before creating another.

I create overall main views that contain sub-views (in order to group related views). For example, I have a Genre view that contains sub-views for each genre the files in my collection use. I also have a Decades view that contains sub-views for each decade the files in my collection were released in.

I've also learned to use search strings to provide seldom needed views instead of creating smart views to have seldom used views always available. I assume this is what most users do.

[zackbuffo]

@dro Ffrom your sketch I wasn't able to distnguish between "folder nodes" and actual views. To make it a bit more explicit what's in my mind:
+ 1980 [Folder node]
   - 1980s [View]
   - 1980 [View]
   - 1981 [View]
   - 1982 [View]
   - [...]
+ 1990 [Folder node]
   - 1990s [View]
   - 1990 [View]
   - 1991 [View]
   - 1992 [View]
   - [...]
To my expectation these folder nodes would be colapsable to actually save some space there.

@Aminifu I think setting a node limit is not necessary (at least concerning my concept of this feature request), because you would only create the amount of nodes that suits your needs. And if it's too much you would reorganize the thing (as you mentioned yourself). But another thing made me curious, what are these sub-views you're talking about? I've never heard of that. Maybe that's what I need for organizing my views and it's already there. How can I create a sub-view?

[Aminifu]

... But another thing made me curious, what are these sub-views you're talking about? I've never heard of that. Maybe that's what I need for organizing my views and it's already there. How can I create a sub-view?

I agree with your comments about controlling the number of folder nodes.

Sorry, the use of "sub-views" is a bad and inaccurate word choice. I made my smart views some time ago with Winamp. When I first started using WACUP (in 2017), I copied my media library configuration files from Winamp to WACUP. I now see that the smart view editor in WACUP has a few changes.

Anyway what I see in my smart views is just the result of the filter strings I'm using (using advanced mode suggestions). I don't see a way to switch to advanced mode in the current WACUP editor. This may be due to the change of library plug-in from ml_local.dll to ml_ll.dll. The gen_ll.dll plug-in is also no longer used, which may also have something to do with this. Since my old smart views still work, the underlying code must still be present. I just don't see a way to create these views in the way I did before.

[dro]

@zackbuffo: We're basically on the same lines, just my depiction wasn't as clear as it could have been.

One aspect that I'm still uncertain about what makes sense to do is what the selected collapsible node(s) should be showing. My gut feeling is that they probably should act like management views for the sub-views (like the playlists root) instead of trying to amalgamate the sub-views under them (that'd get slow & messy quickly due to having to run a number of queries).

Whatever the case I just need to get around to at least getting the new local library plug-in to be able to deal with such things along with the media library core allowing for more than just a single sub-level for the nodes (something hopefully for 2022...).

-dro