Charts button and linkages therefrom

[wwwombat]

Hi... I'm messing around with the latest registered version of the software (I believe it's 5.0.33 even though the splash screen says 5.0.32). I'm relatively new to this particular software although I've messed around with many others in my past. But I have a touchscreen now  

I'd like not to start with a voluminous post but... well... shit happens...

The issues I'll be describing in this post are solely do with the chart options and how it doesn't seem to pick up certain tracks. I have laboriously been travelling through all of the ARIA month charts to ensure that I have all of the tracks on my drive and tagged correctly (whether I correct the tag or the internal *.txt info to match my own particular naming pattern.)

I'll say it now that to the best of my knowledge (I've looked extensively at the tracks in 'error') that all of the MP3 tags are correct and directly match the information in the relevant chart *.txt files. I have also regenerated the database (many, many times) when necessary.

Please note that I use both Album Artist (not used by this software although I'm hopeful it will be in the future and I'll duly enter my plea in another future post) and Album to reflect the Album Artist name (i.e. Gorillaz, T.I. or Spears, Britney (and yes, it's been a pain to reverse all single-person names so that Idol, Billy and Joel, Billy don't end up next to each other in the "B's although that's a discussion for a future non-chart post) whereas the track is used to contain the true artist name for the track (i.e. I put T.I. featuring Justin  Timberlake in the track artist field and NOT put the "feat." bit (I personally believe erroneously) into the track title field (but, again, that's an issue for another post). In other words, I've compiled a "Greatest Hits" list for each artist so that each artist only has one "album".

1) It appears that certain songs that appear in the #1 slot for each month have something screwy going on. i.e. in the ARIA May 2008 chart there exists the "Madonna featuring Justin Timberlake & Timbaland","4 Minutes" track in the #1 position that it will not let me select (it's greyed out). However it also appears, with the same wording in the June 2008 chart (in the #2 position) and it will let me select and play it correctly.

Similarly "Steps","5, 6, 7, 8" is okay for May 1998 (#4 position) and July 1998 (#10 position) but not for June 1998 (#1 position) as well as "Spears, Britney","...Baby One More Time" is okay for February 1999 (#7), May 1999 (#4) but not February 1999 (#1) and March 1999 (#1).

I suspect this is also the case for "Adams, Bryan","(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" for August, September and October 1991 (#1 in all months) but it never appears in these charts lower than that.

Needless to say all of the tracks are selectable and play fine when done through the normal artist/album method.

2) A couple of tracks don't appear to be selectable in the chart list even though I've quadruple-checked the tagging. They are "Bob The Builder","Can We Fix It" (#3 Oct 2001, #6 Nov 2001) and "Bob The Builder","Mambo No. 5" (#3 Nov 2001, #4 Dec 2001) and "Cranberries, The","Zombie" (Dec 1994 thru March 1995 although 2 of these months are the #1 slot)

Again all are selectable/playable from the artist/album links so I haven't formulated a possible reason for this (I toyed with the thought of the "The" in Bob The Builder somehow being messed up but I've tried it with certain options turned on and off and all of my files are named and tagged where necessary as artist, The and Bob The Builder and The The left as is. I can't explain at all why Zombie isn't being picked up.

3) Some tracks don't link where I think they should. I think I understand one of them... there's an awful song called "Especially For You" by both Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue.... I have it in the January 1989 01.txt file as "Minogue, Kylie & Jason Donovan","Especially For You" but when I click on the link it brings up "Donovan, Jason duet with Kylie Minogue","Especially For You" as I have the physical file in both artist directories. I'm guessing whatever matching algorithm is in place (although I thought it would've been strict matching) hits the D's before the M's. So, just for my interest, how is the match achieved?

The other ones I've found so far are:

"Madonna","American Pie" (Apr 2000) which insists on taking me to "Madonna","American Life"

"John, Elton","Candle In The Wind 1997" (Oct 1997 thru Jan 1998) goes to "John, Elton","Candle In The Wind" (I have both versions)

"Metallica","The Unforgiven II" (Apr 1998) goes to "Metallica","The Unforgiven"

"Madonna","Music" (Sep 2000 #1) goes to "Spears, Britney featuring Madonna","Me Against The Music"

September 1996 is even stranger as you have at #1 "Los Del Rio","Macarena" and #5 "Los Del Mar","Macarena".. both clickthroughs take you to the "Los Del Mar" version though.

As always normal artist/album selection gives me the right track.

4) What is/was the plan of attack for EPs or "double-sided" singles? Is an "EP" link supposed to direct you to an EP "album" by the artist? I see in some cases that it seems a backslash has been used in the *.txt file i.e. "Hill, Lauryn","Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You/Doop Wop (That Thing)"... however if the matching algorithm does "work" (not always) it appears to only service the first song (which I can live with if I knew it discard anything after the / delimiter)

5) I get an error on the D:Ream hits which is presumably because of the colon. I'm fairly fastidious when it comes to tagging my artists as long as it can be entered on a standard English keyboard (i.e. I drop all accents and umlauts etc.). So I have D:Ream, B*Witched and AC/DC. I assume I'm getting an error on the FanArt lookup as B Witched and ACDC seems to process okay and in D:Ream's case, once I get past the error, the previous fan art is retained on the screen.

I know I can retag (and probably will in this minor case) but would obviously prefer not to since I'm an anal-retentive perfectionist ;o) Anyhoo, the error shown in the on-screen dialog box is:-

Error Occurred, 52
Description: Bad file name or number
Module: Form1
Function: Show-play-options

Although the fanart is wrong the rest of the screen is okay and I can select and play the song as normal.

This happens also on the main artist/album selection although the error message changes on the last last i.e.

Function: track_list2

6) Slightly related to the above, the on-screen keyboard that is displayed for searches doesn't have a few keys I think would be handy i.e. ' (how do you type words like can't and don't without it), . (useful for artists like R.E.M. or punctuation within a song title... it appears by empirical use that you search on the entire contiguous inputted string (with an * on each end?) so that "One Of The Boy" will find Katy Perry's "One Of The Boys" track but "One Boy" will not. I'd prefer each WORD to be wildcarded to work like other search engines but if not then maybe other punctuation marks (the comma especially) may be needed.

BTW and for the record, I try to punctuate the artist and track names as they appear on the album cover, so I use R.E.M. instead of REM but Tunstall, KT instaed of Tunstall, K.T. and flip-flip between D.J. or DJ as necessary. Please don't sidetrack the issue and debate this approach.

7) Not an error per se but a functionality check of how I'd like something to work. An inadvertant click (after many times of manually rotating back the year/month to the start of the charts) made me aware I could click on the year (or month) to bring up a list of the valid entries. However I've already progressed past the ARIA selection screen (which only has charts going back to 1989) but the year screen shows me 1953 (which both the US and UK charts have) up to 2019 (whereas currently my charts top out in 2009). I assume this is hard-coded therefore but perhaps the software could be smarter and only show years for which there exists a directory for that particular chart?

8 ) Can the charts extend beyond 10 entries? Perhaps this is planned for a future release as I also have end-of-year ARIA charts which usually have 100 songs in them (more if you count the double-A side releases)

Enough for now... looking forward to increasing my understanding of the software. Please let me know what extra info I can provide for the above problems and how to turn suitable debugging options on if required.

[Barcrest]

Somehow i had totally missed this post. I will look into some of these issues for you, maybe i can make a debug version... I need to look back through the code for you as i have not worked on the charts for a long while.