2016-08-07, 19:01
In v17 the "show artists that only appear on compilations" setting has thankfully been renamed "show song and album artists". This delights me so much I am going to repeat this good news in as many posts as I can 
As you know this setting when disabled reduces the number of artists shown on the artists node to just those that are album artists, and excludes those that only appear on songs from albums by others (inc. "Various artists").
As a system wide setting this frustrated me, hence there is now also a custom node option to set "albumartistsonly" true or false locally. So you can create nodes that show either and switch between without having to wade into settings.
The difference between custom nodes and default nodes is just whether they get created when Kodi is installed or not. We have a node editor, we could even provide a resource of example nodes that users can copy and use as their interests dictate. What I am not sure about is what we make the default, or at least in what way we add to the current defaults.
How many users want 2 artists nodes by default - a) all artists (albumartistsonly = false) b) album artists (albumartistsonly = true), rather than the current way of 1 node the fallows the system level albumartistsonly flag? Would it be confusing after years of just 1 artists node? Those that want 2 can so easily create them, it leaves me thinking that it is best not to change the default, but I am open to discussion.
However I have just finished a reworking of the SQL we use for both nodes, playlists and filters. I will post more about this in a separate thread. It makes an ugly PR, constructiing SQL statements from bits of text, no one on the team is in a rush to sign off on it. It addresses an number of query issues that have been quietly happening "under the hood", that adding both artist roles and path rules for artists and albums playlist have exasperated. I mention it here because in implementing thoses fixes I have also used the albumartistsonly flag to dictate what happens when you drill into a list of artists, be that a folder type node (like the defaults) or a filter type (s many custom nodes are) or a playlist, or if it has had an additional filter (from the side menu) applied.
In short, with this PR if the list of artists was created from only album artists, maybe with other criteria such as song genre, then when you click on an artist you will only see those albums that has that artist as album artist (and matches any other criteria). The selection criteria will be carried consistently through artist to albums to songs.
Earlier in this thread I discussed making "show only albums where album artist not just songs" a separate setting, but that starts to get confusing. So I would like to try out the using albumartistsonly flag for both approach, and see how it works for you all. It is what has been mentioned in the last few posts, coincidently I had already implemented it that way. A test build is brewing, but I just found a bug I need to fix.
As you know this setting when disabled reduces the number of artists shown on the artists node to just those that are album artists, and excludes those that only appear on songs from albums by others (inc. "Various artists").
As a system wide setting this frustrated me, hence there is now also a custom node option to set "albumartistsonly" true or false locally. So you can create nodes that show either and switch between without having to wade into settings.
The difference between custom nodes and default nodes is just whether they get created when Kodi is installed or not. We have a node editor, we could even provide a resource of example nodes that users can copy and use as their interests dictate. What I am not sure about is what we make the default, or at least in what way we add to the current defaults.
How many users want 2 artists nodes by default - a) all artists (albumartistsonly = false) b) album artists (albumartistsonly = true), rather than the current way of 1 node the fallows the system level albumartistsonly flag? Would it be confusing after years of just 1 artists node? Those that want 2 can so easily create them, it leaves me thinking that it is best not to change the default, but I am open to discussion.
However I have just finished a reworking of the SQL we use for both nodes, playlists and filters. I will post more about this in a separate thread. It makes an ugly PR, constructiing SQL statements from bits of text, no one on the team is in a rush to sign off on it. It addresses an number of query issues that have been quietly happening "under the hood", that adding both artist roles and path rules for artists and albums playlist have exasperated. I mention it here because in implementing thoses fixes I have also used the albumartistsonly flag to dictate what happens when you drill into a list of artists, be that a folder type node (like the defaults) or a filter type (s many custom nodes are) or a playlist, or if it has had an additional filter (from the side menu) applied.
In short, with this PR if the list of artists was created from only album artists, maybe with other criteria such as song genre, then when you click on an artist you will only see those albums that has that artist as album artist (and matches any other criteria). The selection criteria will be carried consistently through artist to albums to songs.
Earlier in this thread I discussed making "show only albums where album artist not just songs" a separate setting, but that starts to get confusing. So I would like to try out the using albumartistsonly flag for both approach, and see how it works for you all. It is what has been mentioned in the last few posts, coincidently I had already implemented it that way. A test build is brewing, but I just found a bug I need to fix.
