[m a d r a]

i know this is an old bugbear of mine - i've posted before about how f**king irritating i find the ongoing apple adoption of the "hold your hand whether you want it or not" principle of writing software, whereby the computer thinks it knows better than you how to write and how to organise your files. but i've just spent most of the weekend writing the info for hundreds of tracks i got from a friend [who isn't as anally retentive about organising his ID3 tags] into itunes and i need to vent my anger before i take said app out the back and beat it to death with a housebrick!

writing all these ID3 tags in would be a thankless enough task at the best of times, but is made infinitely teethgrindingly more annoying by itunes retarded and ****witted insistence on constantly rewriting what i'm typing:

if i write in the name of a band - "a really great band" i tunes will do that fecking annoying "Let's Make Every Word Start With A Capital Letter" thing and change it to "A Really Great Band" - i have to painstakingly go back selecting all the initial capital letters and retyping them in lower case.

if i realise that i've put the band name in wrong and i really meant "a really great group" and try to change it, as soon as i delete the word "band" and start typing "group" instead, itunes re-****ing-capitalises All The Words I Just De-Capitalised.

the same thing happens if you've got some tracks listed as [eg] being by "AC/DC" and some as being by "ac/dc". if you try to consolidate them by changing the names of one set or the other, itunes invariably tries to "help" by rewriting what you're typing and coming up with all kinds of moronic interpretations, such as "aC/DC" or "Ac/dc"

and the most annoying thing? - there's no way to turn this behaviour off!



jeez! - just let me type what i want to type for beelzebubb's sake! if i wanted a retarded computer which tries to tell me how to work, i'd get a copy of windoze and office and form a meaningful relationship with that bastard talking paperclip!

cue more bricks:

[m a d r a]

whoops! - this is supposed to go in the "applications" forum.

[chris v]

Such anger. The autofill gets me all the time.

[OogaBooga]

Hmmm.... I thought there was a way around this.





Oh yeah -- Try tying your shoes together whilst masticating your weenis.

[all2ofme]

Too right. Would love to be able to turn this off.

[viruscool]

Capitals are fine with me, bad grammar not to use capitals.

[Weyland-Yutani]

I sometimes get the feeling Apple isn't too concerned about finshing apps it begins with. How many apps are just written and then put into "maintainance mode" - where nothing is added except for compatibility to the latest processors or versions of OS X?? Well sometimes it feels like a lot to me. The Finder (obviously), The Terminal, iCal, iTunes perhaps very much. It hasn't received a meaningful update since version 1 to version 2. iTunes 3 and 4 are feature identical as a music player. iTunes 4 is basically iTunes 3 with iTMS and Podcasting abilities built in.

The only way to clear a song's play count is by right-clicking the song's name in the library and choose it from the contextual menu. Pretty good work there Apple You don't supply your machines with 2 button mice do you? No? I thought not

While an incredibly miniscule point it does go to show how attention to detail is thrown out the window at Apple these days. And then there is this auto-complete capitalization nonsense in iTunes. I'm gonna stop now. I could go on attacking Apple's UI choices and seeming blindness towards QA.

cheers

W-Y

[m a d r a]

Originally Posted by viruscool

Capitals are fine with me, bad grammar not to use capitals.

bad grammar to use a comma when you needed a full-stop, too!

[lavar78]

Doesn't it only auto-complete using things that are in your library? My iTunes library is huge (and I capitalize things that should be capitalized), so I'm not sure.

[m a d r a]

i think if you've ever had an item in your library, it will remember it and try to autocomplete. as regards auto-capitalising, it seems to do that by itself, whether you want it to or not. and if you've got two versions of a title/name/whatever in your library, it'll always favour the capitalised version over the non-capitalised version.

i've also noticed that, not content with messing with how i capitalise [or not] my MP3s, itunes will also idiotically treat something like "the beatles", "The Beatles" and "THE BEATLES" as being three different bands, when displaying them in the browse pane. it will also treat "beatles" as being another different group, although strangely, it is intelligent enough to disregard the word "the" when listing artists alphabetically.

[lavar78]

You could select them all and rename them "The Beatles." As an aside, I can't stand those people who input song titles in lowercase (OR ALL CAPS) on CDDB. Freaks!

You know, I just remembered you're, like, against capitalization or something. Oh well.

[mhuie]

Originally Posted by m a d r a

i know this is an old bugbear of mine - i've posted before about how f**king irritating i find the ongoing apple adoption of the "hold your hand whether you want it or not" principle of writing software, whereby the computer thinks it knows better than you how to write and how to organise your files. but i've just spent most of the weekend writing the info for hundreds of tracks i got from a friend [who isn't as anally retentive about organising his ID3 tags] into itunes and i need to vent my anger before i take said app out the back and beat it to death with a housebrick!

writing all these ID3 tags in would be a thankless enough task at the best of times, but is made infinitely teethgrindingly more annoying by itunes retarded and ****witted insistence on constantly rewriting what i'm typing:

if i write in the name of a band - "a really great band" i tunes will do that fecking annoying "Let's Make Every Word Start With A Capital Letter" thing and change it to "A Really Great Band" - i have to painstakingly go back selecting all the initial capital letters and retyping them in lower case.

if i realise that i've put the band name in wrong and i really meant "a really great group" and try to change it, as soon as i delete the word "band" and start typing "group" instead, itunes re-****ing-capitalises All The Words I Just De-Capitalised.

the same thing happens if you've got some tracks listed as [eg] being by "AC/DC" and some as being by "ac/dc". if you try to consolidate them by changing the names of one set or the other, itunes invariably tries to "help" by rewriting what you're typing and coming up with all kinds of moronic interpretations, such as "aC/DC" or "Ac/dc"

and the most annoying thing? - there's no way to turn this behaviour off!



jeez! - just let me type what i want to type for beelzebubb's sake! if i wanted a retarded computer which tries to tell me how to work, i'd get a copy of windoze and office and form a meaningful relationship with that bastard talking paperclip!

cue more bricks:

Have you ever thought, "Hey, there might be ANOTHER program that will do what I want it to!" If you don't like the tagging function of iTunes, download an app that will tag your music how you want to.

Must suck getting irritated over the most petty of details...

[m a d r a]

Originally Posted by mhuie

....Must suck getting irritated over the most petty of details...

i don't happen to think that my computer ignoring what i input and changing it to what it thinks i should have input is a 'petty detail'. what is the logical extension of this - where is it going to end? i can see a nightmare future version of OSX where...

i write an email telling some snake-oil seller to f**k off and mail chages it to "thank you for your kind offer..." coz that's better grammar?

i set a reminder in ical to tidy the house on thursday and ical moves it to monday coz it thinks the place is a mess?

iphoto starts 'auto-enhancing' my photographs, 'fixing' any images which are slightly out of focus, under or over-exposed, where the subject matter is not exactly in the middle of the shot - or [god forbid!] straightening everyone's smiles and making them flourescent american® white?

safari auto-corrects what i type into online froms on the web, so macNN is suddenly full of grammatically correct, well considered and articulate posts? [OK - now i'm being a bit too far-fetched ]

by all means offer "auto-hand-holding" for those that require it but, as a general rule, my computer should never ever change what i input, unless i give it permission to do so - and it should definitely not change what i input because it thinks it knows better than me what i meant to type!

[blasto]

Its that kind of 'intuitive' stuff that makes Windows and other MS products so frustrating. However, usually buried somewhere in the darkest recesses of their bloated and convoluted menu structures, there are options to turn that stuff off.
That said, when software auto-completes or corrects and does a good job, we think 'nice touch' or just take it for granted. It the on-off switch that's missing.
Aside from these small gripes, I think the iApps are pretty good and have really shaken things up. Beats the days when you'd just get AppleWorks (about as bad as its Microsoft namesake) and a jigsaw puzzle of a world map.

[Apfhex]

madra, I'm with you 100% on the iTunes issue (though I've never seen this crop up anywhere else, and I hope to jeebus that it never does).

I LIKE the auto-completion but HATE the Forced Capitalization, or rather, it forcing you to keep whatever caps it thinks you want based on info previously available in the Library. The ONLY WAY AROUND IT is to type the name, then go back and change the characters ONE BY ONE, otherwise iTunes will change the whole damn thing back to what it wants. Or, use an external tag editor (which really shouldn't be necessary!).

[wataru]

You're complaining about capitalization when apparently you're incapable of writing a post with proper capitalization?

[m a d r a]

Originally Posted by wataru

You're complaining about capitalization when apparently you're incapable of writing a post with proper capitalization?

if that remark is addressed to me, i choose not to use capitals [except for acronyms] as they are unnecessary and [IMHO] aesthetically ugly, in the way that they cause a line of text to zig-zag up and down in height.

but that's beside the point. what i'm complaining about is the principal of a piece of software force-correcting what i write, without asking me whether i want this "help", or allowing me to turn it off.

is that so difficult to understand?

[James L]

Originally Posted by m a d r a

if that remark is addressed to me, i choose not to use capitals [except for acronyms] as they are unnecessary and [IMHO] aesthetically ugly, in the way that they cause a line of text to zig-zag up and down in height.

is that so difficult to understand?

Now THAT is the best excuse for crappy grammar, and/or lazy typing skills, that I have ever seen!

Kudos to you sir.

[analogika]

I don't see crappy grammar in madra's posts, and either way, he has a pretty good point.

It's annoyed me countless times when renaming tracks, and I USE capitals.

[Busemann]

I just use the excellent Proper English Title Capitalization script on files with lowercases to avoid the autofill problem

[wataru]

Originally Posted by m a d r a

if that remark is addressed to me, i choose not to use capitals [except for acronyms] as they are unnecessary and [IMHO] aesthetically ugly, in the way that they cause a line of text to zig-zag up and down in height.

Then shouldn't you also not use the letters b, d, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, p, q, t, and y?

Seriously, if you're not going to follow the basic rules of the language, go get another damn language

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by m a d r a

if that remark is addressed to me, i choose not to use capitals [except for acronyms] as they are unnecessary and [IMHO] aesthetically ugly, in the way that they cause a line of text to zig-zag up and down in height.

post of the day.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by analogika

It's annoyed me countless times when renaming tracks, and I USE capitals.

Huh? iTunes doesn't seem to auto-capitalize track names on my machine. I'm able to name a track something like, for instance, "Allegro molto e vivace" and have not had any problems doing that to date...

[mitchell_pgh]

Perfect non standard option... please submit to apple.

[philm]

Originally Posted by m a d r a

i choose not to use capitals [except for acronyms] as they are unnecessary and [IMHO] aesthetically ugly, in the way that they cause a line of text to zig-zag up and down in height.

Whilst I love your posts generally, this line was right out of Pseuds' Corner. One for the Private Eye fans out there.

[m a d r a]

Originally Posted by wataru

...Seriously, if you're not going to follow the basic rules of the language, go get another damn language

coming from an american, that's priceless!

["color","center","aluminum","theater"....etc. etc]

Originally Posted by philm

Whilst I love your posts generally, this line was right out of Pseuds' Corner. One for the Private Eye fans out there.

it's a fair cop, guv!

[bastard! ]

[gheff]

Originally Posted by m a d r a

coming from an american, that's priceless!

["color","center","aluminum","theater"....etc. etc]

I'll give you "colour," "theatre," and "centre," but according to the book Nature's Building Blocks by John Emsley, "aluminum" was the original spelling given by Humphry Davy. (God, I'm enjoying using all these aesthetic-destroying capitals. )

For the record, Emsley is Science Writer in Residence at the University of Cambridge and throughout his discussion of aluminum, he insists on spelling it incorrectly.

[chabig]

The whole basis for this thread is wrong. iTunes doesn't auto-capitalize titles at all. It DOES auto-complete, based on existing information in other tracks. There is a big difference.

[m a d r a]

Originally Posted by chabig

The whole basis for this thread is wrong. iTunes doesn't auto-capitalize titles at all. It DOES auto-complete, based on existing information in other tracks. There is a big difference.

it bloody does auto-capitalise! i've put tracks into itunes before from groups or albums which have never been in my itunes library and itunes has auto-capitalised them as i've been typing in the ID3 info.

[chabig]

In the past three years, I've been running iTunes on 5 machines...all versions of iTunes up to and including 4.9. It does not now, nor has it ever auto-capitalized.

I'd bet money you have a third-party system extension or utility doing this for you. Have you installed any haxies, abbreviation expanders, or the like--any special Applescripts or folder actions?

Chris

[Thain Esh Kelch]

MP3 Rage/Media Rage (For aac's) can make all your files lower case in a single click.

[m a d r a]

Originally Posted by chabig

In the past three years, I've been running iTunes on 5 machines...all versions of iTunes up to and including 4.9. It does not now, nor has it ever auto-capitalized.

I'd bet money you have a third-party system extension or utility doing this for you. Have you installed any haxies, abbreviation expanders, or the like--any special Applescripts or folder actions?

Chris

no. no third party haxxies on my machine. i weaned myself off third-party extensions and system hacks back in the old system 8 days when uptime was measured in nanoseconds

Originally Posted by Thain Esh Kelch

MP3 Rage/Media Rage (For aac's) can make all your files lower case in a single click.

it's OK. i've thrown together a [doubtless risible] applescript for itunes which does the same thing and also [optionally] clears out all those annoying "l337 h4XXor" comments you tend to get in the ID3 tags of tunes acquired from acnified teenagers. i run that over any new stuff i add to my library. still a pain in the arse tho' as [due to my incredibly advanced applescripting skills ] it's as slow as a tortoise on mogadon!

[m a d r a]

wow! - spooky. it seems that merely mentioning "l337 haXXXorZZZ" was enough to turn me into one myself

[lavar78]

Originally Posted by m a d r a

it bloody does auto-capitalise! i've put tracks into itunes before from groups or albums which have never been in my itunes library and itunes has auto-capitalised them as i've been typing in the ID3 info.

You're a little confused. Like chabig said, it's auto-completing, not auto-capitalizing. For example, if you type "the b," the B will only be capitalized if you have something like "The Beatles" or "The Band" already in your library. If you have no occurrence of "The B" at all, the B will be lowercase. IOW, this is probably only a problem to people who only capitalize sometimes. If you always or never do it, you might not even notice this.

[m a d r a]

Originally Posted by lavar78

You're a little confused. Like chabig said, it's auto-completing, not auto-capitalizing. For example, if you type "the b," the B will only be capitalized if you have something like "The Beatles" or "The Band" already in your library. If you have no occurrence of "The B" at all, the B will be lowercase. IOW, this is probably only a problem to people who only capitalize sometimes. If you always or never do it, you might not even notice this.

you're probably right, but the weird thing is that i haven't got any capitalised items in my library at all. every time i import a track i convert everything to lower case straight away. i have no capitalised items in my library at all - yet itunes still [autocapitalises | autocompletes with capitals] on occasion.

[wataru]

Suggestion: Give up your ridiculous crusade against the capital letter and embrace the cornucopia of character sizes that makes up the English alphabet.

[Kevin]

I am sure it enrages him that "Addicted to MacNN" has capitols in them.

[m a d r a]

Originally Posted by wataru

Suggestion: Give up your ridiculous crusade against the capital letter and embrace the cornucopia of character sizes that makes up the English alphabet.

i cannae quite decide if you're trolling, or just really dense. i've said several times in the thread that i'm using this auto-complete/auto-capitalise "feature" as an example [and my own particular "bugbear"] of how irritating is the principle of software changing input from the user, based on what it *thinks* the user *should* be inputting.

maybe you cannae see any problem in having to play "chinese whispers" with your software, but i [and quite a few other people] can. and again, the auto-capitalisation rant is only an *example*

Originally Posted by Kevin

I am sure it enrages him that "Addicted to MacNN" has capitols in them.

it enrages me that someone who can't tell the difference between "capitals" and "capitols" has the cheek to criticise someone else's writing style.

[DeathMan]

Developers correct me if I'm wrong here, but this is a very likely scenario.

Dev1: Hey, I made it so when you start to type an ID3 tag value, it looks in your library and tries to auto-match with stuff in there.

Dev2: Did you make sure there isn't some weird case where if they change the tags to lowercase, the future auto-matches ALWAYS also use all lowercase?

Dev1: Why would someone do that?

Dev2: You're right, don't worry about it. Maybe we'll fix next version if its a problem.

The only thing I'm not sure about is that even if you change all tags to lowercase you'll get uppercase auto-complete. In fact I just tried it and it auto-completes the appropriate case.

So it appears, in my limited testing, there is no auto-capitalization, and the auto-complete works off of what is currently in your library. At least as far as I can tell.

[lavar78]

Originally Posted by m a d r a

you're probably right, but the weird thing is that i haven't got any capitalised items in my library at all. every time i import a track i convert everything to lower case straight away. i have no capitalised items in my library at all - yet itunes still [autocapitalises | autocompletes with capitals] on occasion.

Something is wrong. Your iTunes is possessed. As a workaround, you could use a script that automatically makes all of the letters lowercase. Doug probably has one.

[Apfhex]

Originally Posted by DeathMan

So it appears, in my limited testing, there is no auto-capitalization, and the auto-complete works off of what is currently in your library. At least as far as I can tell.

That's exactly the case, but the auto-completion ALSO preserves capitalization from existing library entries, and therein lies the issue. What *I* at least have experienced, and the reason I agreed above with madra, is this scenario:

I import tracks into my library. Maybe they were downloaded with tags with bad capitalization, maybe the CDDB entry had bad capitalization, or maybe I simply want to change the capitalization.

So let's say I have tracks from Blue Öyster Cult, only the tags say BLUE ÖYSTER CULT. I want to change this. I select the title, start typing "Blue" and iTunes says, oh, you mean BLUE ÖYSTER CULT and changes the lowercase letters I already typed into uppercase. That's not what I wanted!

The problem here is that iTunes replaces what the user has input, rather than simply completing it. Does that make sense? I type "Blue" and iTunes should add "ÖYSTER CULT," but instead it also changes the "Blue" to "BLUE." It actually makes sense because it keeps consistency in the caps of names and there's really nothing *wrong* with this behavior, I mean, assuming you had good tags in the first place. But it's insanely annoying trying to fix them otherwise.

[mhuie]

Originally Posted by Apfhex

That's exactly the case, but the auto-completion ALSO preserves capitalization from existing library entries, and therein lies the issue. What *I* at least have experienced, and the reason I agreed above with madra, is this scenario:

I import tracks into my library. Maybe they were downloaded with tags with bad capitalization, maybe the CDDB entry had bad capitalization, or maybe I simply want to change the capitalization.

So let's say I have tracks from Blue Öyster Cult, only the tags say BLUE ÖYSTER CULT. I want to change this. I select the title, start typing "Blue" and iTunes says, oh, you mean BLUE ÖYSTER CULT and changes the lowercase letters I already typed into uppercase. That's not what I wanted!

The problem here is that iTunes replaces what the user has input, rather than simply completing it. Does that make sense? I type "Blue" and iTunes should add "ÖYSTER CULT," but instead it also changes the "Blue" to "BLUE." It actually makes sense because it keeps consistency in the caps of names and there's really nothing *wrong* with this behavior, I mean, assuming you had good tags in the first place. But it's insanely annoying trying to fix them otherwise.

Type it in textedit, copy, paste. How hard was that? I'm sure much more of a timesaver than ranting on some forums .

[lavar78]

Yes, I can see how that behavior would be annoying. mhuie has a good workaround, but I would suggest typing it in a blank field (Comments? Grouping?) before cutting and pasting it.

[cleanup]

Solution:

Select all songs to be named same album/artist. Right click, Get Info, check "Artist" and type it in. iTunes may or may not auto-capitalize and correct your grammar. If this is the case, just Get Info again and change those few letters. You don't have to do it everytime. Just once.