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Maybe not a bug. Maybe just an oversight. You can elect to ignore initial articles in movie titles in the library, and it works for "the", but "a" and "an" are also articles, and it doesn't deal with them.

(2015-02-10, 04:53)crambo Wrote: [ -> ]Maybe not a bug. Maybe just an oversight. You can elect to ignore initial articles in movie titles in the library, and it works for "the", but "a" and "an" are also articles, and it doesn't deal with them.

You can add additional sort articles in Advancedsettings.xml#sorttokens (wiki).

This should give you what you need:

Thanks. Still, it should be that way by default.

Only from your point of view.

What do you mean? "A" and "an" are articles. It is standard to ignore initial articles in alphabetization. Google it, and it helps to use "site:edu" for things like this to filter out the crap. It has nothing to do with points of view, mine or anybody's. Please explain your comment.

(2015-02-10, 14:55)crambo Wrote: [ -> ]What do you mean? "A" and "an" are articles. It is standard to ignore initial articles in alphabetization. Google it, and it helps to use "site:edu" for things like this to filter out the crap. It has nothing to do with points of view, mine or anybody's. Please explain your comment.

I guess the point is that while this is the case for English speakers the same may not be the case elsewhere in the world. Should we also, by default, ignore the articles found in every other language?

<EDIT>

I found this list which seems to be pretty comprehensive. Is there any chance that this could be integrated within the work currently underway with language/region addons so that the list of articles automatically adjusts to fit the configured region?

The point is while just about everyone can agree on ignoring "The" due to the vast amount of movies/tv/music containing "The" in the title, when it comes to the other articles then opinion is more likely to be more divided, hence it's left up to the user to add additional words to ignore using the sort token advanced setting.

I'm not talking about anything but English. I don't see how you can filter for "the" without using English. And, again, opinion does not enter into it. It is simply a mistake to ignore "the" and not "a" and "an". I don't expect you to take my word for it, though you could---I'm the most literate person I know and I have worked as a copyeditor---but I only hope that someone on the Kodi team will take the trouble to do the small amount of research. There is no exception for "a" and "an" in standard practice. I won't insult your intelligence with links, but here's an example: Dickens's Tale of Two Cities.

P.S. - Hmmm. I guess I do see that there would be a problem with French, for instance, with a leading "A". But isn't there a place to set default language in the options?

The only other occurrence of the that I can think of is the French thé, so I guess the a/à confusion is potentially already there - especially if you're using capitals, where the accents are dropped.

I think we'd need a view from speakers of other languages to know if it's a problem ... unless changing the interface language changes the default article list (which I doubt very much). It might ultimately be easier to have a text-box, comma-delimited entry of "Treat the following words as articles and ignore when sorting" and then just write those to advancedsettings.xml, but I'm sure that's far harder than it sounds. It also seems to go against the rest of the interface, as there are few text-entry fields anywhere else.

PS

For the record, I'd never actually noticed that definite articles were ignored while indefinite ones weren't. Now I'm annoyed, and it will irritate me forever that I have a long list of A...<something-or-other> movies clogging up my listings. Thanks for pointing that out. :-)

(2015-02-10, 20:28)Prof Yaffle Wrote: [ -> ]The only other occurrence of the that I can think of is the French thé, so I guess the a/à confusion is potentially already there - especially if you're using capitals, where the accents are dropped.

I think we'd need a view from speakers of other languages to know if it's a problem ... unless changing the interface language changes the default article list (which I doubt very much). It might ultimately be easier to have a text-box, comma-delimited entry of "Treat the following words as articles and ignore when sorting" and then just write those to advancedsettings.xml, but I'm sure that's far harder than it sounds. It also seems to go against the rest of the interface, as there are few text-entry fields anywhere else.

PS

For the record, I'd never actually noticed that definite articles were ignored while indefinite ones weren't. Now I'm annoyed, and it will irritate me forever that I have a long list of A...<something-or-other> movies clogging up my listings. Thanks for pointing that out. :-)

Misery loves company, professor. Yes, it would be great if changing the default language changed the ignore-initial-word list to suit. You wouldn't need to poll other languages to make it so for English to start with.

P.S. - You'd still have a problem if an English-speaker had a French-titled movie. I'm beginning to regret bringing it up. I guess you'd need to have an option to toggle ignoring "a" and "an".

You'd have to have some title-specific language sensitivity - otherwise Die Another Day and Die Fledermaus could cause all sorts of problems...

Damn, you've hit my literate-pedant nerve now. Where's my marker pen, I'm off to correct random misuses of the subjunctive while declaring all-out war on rogue apostrophes...

If the A article was omitted, would 'The A-Team' get scraped up as 'Team'?

(2015-02-10, 23:34)DJ_Izumi Wrote: [ -> ]If the A article was omitted, would 'The A-Team' get scraped up as 'Team'?

Good one. What if they make a movie out of A is for Alibi? OK, forget I said anything. I'll use the bodge. Thanks.

"If your happy, were happy"

(2015-02-11, 00:11)Prof Yaffle Wrote: [ -> ]"If your happy, were happy"

Aaaaaaaaaa!