I may be missing a tag subtlety, but I don’t quite see the distinction that Jaikoz sometimes makes between a missing tag frame (colored green by default) and a blank frame (white by default).
Quite often, Jaikoz 1.8 displays a mix of white and green frames, but if I examine the actual tag contents, eg using something like Helium Music Manager or dbPowerAmp, I see no difference between the “white” and “green” files … the frame doesn’t appear in either tag.
[quote=GiacomoGo]I may be missing a tag subtlety, but I don’t quite see the distinction that Jaikoz sometimes makes between a missing tag frame (colored green by default) and a blank frame (white by default).
Quite often, Jaikoz 1.8 displays a mix of white and green frames, but if I examine the actual tag contents, eg using something like Helium Music Manager or dbPowerAmp, I see no difference between the “white” and “green” files … the frame doesn’t appear in either tag.[/quote]
There is a difference, with green fields the Frame does not exist, with a white field the frame does exist but has an empty value. If you looked at the file with a hex editor you would see that actually the frames only exist in one of the two files. Jaikoz makes this distinction in order to make it more transparent what is actually stored in the tag which can help with identifying problems with reading tags, it also makes it clearer to identify modifications that have been made, but on reflection it is probably not that important for the majority of users.
Thanks for this explanation, Paul.
I guess my follow-up question is whether Jaikoz with write “white” frames to tags with missing values, or simply leave these blanks out of the tag. I guess my preference is to leave the blank values out of the tag. I have found the “delete” function, which does actually delete the frame, rather than just clearing the value. So that works for me.
[color=blue]I’d be curious what others think. Perhaps there’s a consideration that I’m overlooking, like compatibility with tag readers embedded in players, etc., which makes blank values better than missing frames.[/color]
[quote=GiacomoGo][quote=paultaylor]
I guess my follow-up question is whether Jaikoz with write “white” frames to tags with missing values, or simply leave these blanks out of the tag. I guess my preference is to leave the blank values out of the tag. I have found the “delete” function, which does actually delete the frame, rather than just clearing the value. So that works for me.
[color=blue]I’d be curious what others think. Perhaps there’s a consideration that I’m overlooking, like compatibility with tag readers embedded in players, etc., which makes blank values better than missing frames.[/color][/quote]
The general principal of Jaikoz was always to let the user decide what they want to and provide the tools to let them do it, personally I dont like tools that automatically make changes without telling you about it. This is even more of a problem with mp3s because of the numerous different/undocumented ways they are used. However I have moved away from this position slightly, for example by default unsynchronization are removed from tags because it causes problems for iTunes. Unlike unsynchronization which has no UI mechanism I dont think there is a need to provide an an option to remove empty frames silently, but I could add a option ‘Delete All Empty Frames’ which would let users delete them if they wish.
I think part of my confusion comes from the fact that when I delete (CTL+D) a field, eg “Length”, and then Save Changes, Jaikoz updates the files, but then leaves the Length field white (meaning blank, rather than missing).
This still happens with 1.9.
[quote=GiacomoGo][
I think part of my confusion comes from the fact that when I delete (CTL+D) a field, eg “Length”, and then Save Changes, Jaikoz updates the files, but then leaves the Length field white (meaning blank, rather than missing).
[/quote]
Ok, this is a bug thanks for bringing it to my attention
This bug is now fixed in Jaikoz 1.9.3 released today.