Quote Originally Posted by andrei_c View Post
So, basically, you want automatic (or semi-automatic) population of track data, based on information already in database?
I think that's accurate. What I'm asking for is the ability to copy the data that one would normally enter using the Track Properties dialog from one track to another. My proposal would go something like this:

  1. Open Track Properties for track you want to fill (the 'copy to' track).
  2. Click a button on one of the pages, or use some other means.
  3. OrangeCD finds Tracks by the same artist and puts them in a dialog box similar to the 'Import from OrangeCD' dialog box that comes up when you want to import albums, except of course it would contain tracks and not albums.
  4. User clicks on or otherwise selects a track (the 'copy from' track) and clicks OK.
  5. Orange fills the 'copy to' track's record(s) with the data from the 'copy from' track's record(s).
  6. Optionally, if this would overwrite data in the 'copy to' track, Orange could display a warning and offer a chance to abort.

Quote Originally Posted by andrei_c View Post
This is interesting and probably not so hard to implement, but my concern that it's hard to verify accuracy of auto-populated data. If there's any error, you probably won't discover it until much later. Also not clear what to do if there's conflicting data in database - e.g. different credits on different albums (typos on covers, etc.) Still, I like the idea.
For whatever they're worth, here's my answers:

  1. It's on the user of this feature to verify the accuracy of the source track, or to use its data as a starting point, making any necessary changes in the destination track (for example, if the destination track had an extra verse of lyrics, the user would have to edit that in using the regular methods). I can't see how OrangeCD could reasonably be expected to account for variations; that's got to be a user's job.
  2. If OrangeCD cannot find a source track because there's a typo somewhere and the destination track's Artist or Title fields don't match, again, I see that as a user problem. About the only way around it would be some kind of SOUNDEX-type matching, and you generally see that capability only on server based databases (okay, and SQLite). To the best of my understanding, Orange uses proprietary and home grown database technology which may not offer this kind of support.

Hope that helps, and thanks for considering this idea.