This is a very subtle bug, but it can wreck the whole concept of multiple artists in mAirList, and leave you with a LOT of manual ‘repair work’ in your mAirListDB, and in any MMD files or file tags you have saved from within mAirListDB.
If an item in mAirListDB specifies multiple artists, it is shown in the Library tab and Playlist tab as it would be shown in a Playlist, with a / character separating each artist. So, for example, you might see Blue/Elton John in the Artist column.
The problem is that if you open the item’s Properties dialog in mAirListDB, this shows the multiple artists the same way in the Artist box on the General tab of the dialog. Again, you might see Blue/Elton John here, on a single line: this is incorrect and potentially dangerous! If you did the same thing in mAirList or mAirListTag, you would instead see the artists on two lines in the Artist box of the General tab, as they should be.
Why do I say this bug is dangerous? Because, if you now save the Item, it no longer has two artists in mAirListDB, it now has only one ‘artist’. In my example, the single artist stored in mAirListDB would be Blue/Elton John. So the item no longer appears under either Blue or (more importantly) under Elton John in the Artist node of the tree in the Library tab (or in the lower left pane of the Playlist tab).
Even worse, if you save this ‘single-multiple-artist’ in mAirListDB using the Metadata button, the MMD file also saves the ‘single’ artist incorrectly, as one Artist node in the XML. I guess the same would be true of the mAirList XML written as a file tag; but I don’t use file tags myself. ;D If I did use file tags, and had not already spotted this bug, I would now have a ‘bad’ file tag requiring manual repair work. I am therefore VERY pleased that I do NOT save my mAirList data in file tags! :o
So, it’s a very easy way to unintentionally break data in mAirListDB, in MMD files, and (worst of all) in File Tags (‘worst’ because you cannot easily see or check the data in a mAirList custom file tag).
The obvious fix is to ensure that when an Item Properties dialog is opened in mAirListDB, its Artist box is populated exactly the same way it is populated in all other mAirList programs, and does NOT show multiple artists on a single line. I’m guessing that the Item Properties dialog in mAirListDB currently just copies the Artist column string from the list to fill the box in the dialog (am I right? ;)).
BFN
CAD