Deleting playlists from 'Unattached Items' doesn't

Hi,

When you delete a playlist which contains tunes in the 'Unattached Items' folder, it doesn't delete the tunes.

Obvious behaviour would be that the tunes should also be deleted - but they re-appear (post-sync) in the unattached items, sans Playlist, which makes sense when you understand the delete functionality (see other posts in General), but doesn't make much real sense.

Anyway,

Cheers,

Paul.

Paul Haigh, Reg. 4120
(mk1) 6GB, Blue, 00254
(mk2) 12GB, Red, 00357

Well, this might or might not make sense to some (I did not make my mind yet), but, AFAIK, deleting any playlist leaves its tunes (those not appearing in any other list) in 'Unattached Items'. Why should behaviour of lists themselves in limbo be different?

Perhaps we need a 'Delete this playlists recursively, together with any other links its members might have' emplode feature....

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Ah yes, but 'Unattached Items' *IS* a special playlist.

It's where all of the orphans go (aaah) - so deletions from here are permanent, right?

Anyway, I like the feature idea.

Cheers,

Paul.

Paul Haigh, Reg. 4120
(mk1) 6GB, Blue, 00254
(mk2) 12GB, Red, 00357

If you delete a playlist, it should unreference any tunes or playlists contained therein. If the reference count of those items drops to zero, they should unreference their children, and so on. If, when syncing, anything has a ref count of zero, it should be removed from your player.

The behaviour that you're seeing is definitely a bug. It's fixed (I hope) in v1.1. We obviously need to take a closer look at what's going on in the v1.0x branch.



Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

If you delete a playlist, it should unreference any tunes or playlists contained therein. If the reference count of those items drops to zero, they should unreference their children, and so on. If, when syncing, anything has a ref count of zero, it should be removed from your player.

So, if one deletes a playlist which appears nowhere else, tunes contained within should also be deleted, if they themselves don't appear in any other list. Under which circumstances do the things then end up in 'unattached items'? (Or does the algorithm you describe only apply to playlists, so that orphaned tunes get moved to U.I. in stead of being deleted, but no list should ever appear there?)

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Read my lips: It's a bug. The tunes should be deleted as you describe.

Nothing should ever appear in Unattached Items, unless a sync fails.



Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

I just read this thread to date. Now I'm even more confused.

It seemes to me that when deleting playlists, any item on the playlist that is not referenced any where else should drop into the unattached items list. I would hate to have an album worth of songs drop out of existance just because I deleted the last playlist they were referenced on. Having them drop to a safe area where they can be deliberatly deleted if desired is the way to go.

PS. How dose empeg/emplode deal with circular references. I can think of a situation where two play lists wind up referencing each other and nothing else. Or even one playlist referencing itself.

--Glenn

I would hate to have an album worth of songs drop out of existance just because I deleted the last playlist they were referenced on.

As he said, that's precisely the intended behavior (even though I used to think it behaved the way you're asking it to). Hey, you were the one who pressed that Delete key, don't go crying to Roger. Personally, I'd like to see a warning dialog when you're deleting the last reference. It'd have to handle multiples gracefully ("Yes to all").

How dose empeg/emplode deal with circular references. I can think of a situation where two play lists wind up referencing each other and nothing else. Or even one playlist referencing itself.

Interesting question. I'd hope they'd design the Emplode user interface so that this situation can't happen without hand-mangling the database files. Haven't tried to make it happen. Anyone?

___________
Tony Fabris

Hey, you were the one who pressed that Delete key

I did consider adding a "Deleted Items" folder to emplode, which would be emptied when you pressed the sync button, but until then, you could get your tunes back out of it.

It'll probably not make it into v1.1, even though it's probably quite easy.

How does empeg/emplode deal with circular references.

I can't speak for the player, but emplode removes any loops it finds after downloading the player.

It also removes them before uploading to the player, just in case we accidentally introduced any with emplode. The UI shouldn't let you create loops, so this is probably just paranoia checking.



Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

How does empeg/emplode deal with circular references?

I can't speak for the player, but emplode removes any loops it finds after downloading the player.

Circular references will completely confuse the player. The design decision was that it's the transfer software's job to eliminate loops.

Peter