BUG? small caps issue
 

this is a very small issue, maybe not even a bug, but i thougt it should be documented regardless.

if you have a file, and scan it into the ML, and then change the case but not the spelling, the ML in the filepath column does NOT reflect the change.

so a file like:

Axel f.mp3

changed to:

Axel F.mp3

will still show in the ML filepath column as:

Axel f.mp3

...even after a rescan. bug or not, its certainly not accurate. it may not impact function, (that i can tell yet anyway), but it certainly could cause confusion, and like i said, it is inaccurate.

There used to be similar bugs in XP's own file system. Due to the way files are generally treated as "case insensitive", but displayed with mixed case, it used to be impossible to rename "Axel f.mp3" to "Axel F.mp3" without going a middle step of "Axel FF.mp3"

Have also seen similar oddities when sorting Winamp Media Library "By Artist" when some of the artists are typed as "axel f" and others as "Axel F", winamp tends to then list the artist in the Artists window using the FIRST combination of capitals it finds. So even if you only have one track with "axel f" as the artist name, if it is spotted first, then this is how it will be displayed in the "Artists" list.


This is all going to be a side effect of the String Comparison routines. Talking "Old C" there is a function stricmp() that compares two strings, but ignores the case of the letters.


Personally, when I see this happen, I just correct it manually by using the "two step" process I mentioned above. For the Winamp Devs to change this behaviour it is going to be a fair bit of hassle for something that is just cosmetic. It should not have any knock-on effect to the operation of the product.

i agree it is low priority, exactly b/c i have not seen it yet impact function. i should have mentioned i see the above on my win7 ult 32bit system.

but i do think it should be documented and entered into the bug tracker. i guess what confuses me is why the winamp ml can't distinguish case? to a laymen like me, that seems like something thats independent of the OS. i would think on a rescan, changes in case would be recorded... but obviously 'not the case,' (bad bad pun).

anyway, the bug you ar describing... can you explain it a bit more? are you talking about tags doing that, or filenames?

lets say i have 10 AXEL F files and and 1 axel f file, where its written like that in the tag and filename. are you saying the ML, if it reads the smaller case one last, will then display all 11 files in smaller case in the ML?

what is the impact of tags over filename?

Winamp does not bother to distinguish, because the File System does not. It is impossible to have two files in the same folder called "Axel F.mp3" and "axel f.mp3" as the OS File System will treat them as the same file. (Windows, Apple, *nix, etc are the same here)

There will never be a problem from Winamp when loading up a file called "Axel F.mp3" "AxEl f.Mp3" or any combination. So not really a bug that will ever cause problems, but more problems are likely to be introduced if there was an attempt to fix this.

Look at it this way - the COMPUTER and its file system stores your files in a case insensitive way. So really everything could be stored as "AXEL F.MP3". This looks a mess for us humans, so the computer allows us to mix cases around as we like, but the computer then goes ahead and ignores us. (An "a" is identical to an "A" to that dumb PC and its file system.)


The way Winamp then stores this in the database still works 100%. Even it Winamp stored file paths as always UPPERCASE or always LOWERCASE or a mix, it would not ever matter to the operation of the program itself.

This HAS to be the way it is coded, otherwise Winamp would think that "Axel F.mp3" and "axel f.mp3" are different files, when they are not. Filenames are always compared in a case insensitive way.

-+-+-+

The tags thing is cosmetic, and I remember cleaning up a few in the past. Been a few years though so can't say if this is still there. And from what I remember, it worked opposite to your example.

Have ten tracks on your hard disk by "Axel F". (Did he ever DO ten tracks? ARF!!)

If the FIRST track you have was tagged as "axel f" and the next nine were tagged as "Axel F", then you will find in the "List by Artists" pane the artist is listed as "axel f".

This has ZERO connection with the file name issue. So there is no "impact".

To me, this is a PERFECT feature as I want all those typos of mixed cases dragged together under the same "Axel F" entry in the "List by Artists" pane. And there is no way Winamp will be able to tell which is the correct one, so it has to pick the first example it sees.

This only really happens when the MP3 tags have been entered by hand by someone lazy. Gracenote tends to not have these errors.

thanks for this information.