Why is a question mark displayed for absent (not empty) tag fields?, Split from necrothread “The '?' problem”, ID 50551 Options

[Dandruff]

Why does foobar2000 display a question mark at all for empty columns/fields? Would look much better without the question marks all over the place ...

[db1989]

Why does foobar2000 display a question mark at all for empty columns/fields?

It doesn’t.

It displays ? for fields that are absent, not empty. The latter will be displayed as-is, i.e. actually empty.

[q-stankovic]

@dandruff

%artist% %album%[-%date%]
Think some minutes about how useful the square-brackets are and make your conclusion.

[Dandruff]

I know how to "workaround" it. Maybe a global option would be perfect for this: "Disable question marks display in empty columns"?

This would avoid the need to add "double" user custom columns to "disable" the question marks. Any opinions on that?

This post has been edited by Dandruff: Feb 22 2012, 17:57

[db1989]

Again, question marks are displayed not for empty fields but rather for absent fields.

With such a distinction in mind, it makes sense to have some way to differentiate between the two. And it makes sense to display empty fields as empty!

The corollary is that absent fields are flagged for the user, which is potentially very useful as it could alert them to something that is unintentionally missing from their metadata.


Edit: The original thread doesn’t seem to have any place in the Support subforum; I’ve moved it, and because it was from 2006 I’ve split this new discussion from it.

This post has been edited by db1989: Feb 22 2012, 18:30