What's best english? [it's for consistent file tagging]

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

What's best practise in english, what's correct, what's wrong? I ask especially because I've seen many op's and numbers without a space between them.

Jean Sibelius - Tapiola, Op. 112
Jean Sibelius - Tapiola, op. 112
Jean Sibelius - Tapiola, Op.112
Jean Sibelius - Tapiola, op.112

EDIT: The question is about the bold part...

[Mark]

From your list, I'd express it like this:

Jean Sibelius - Tapiola, Op. 112

But as you use foobar2000, it would be cooler to express it like this:

Jean Sibelius - Tapiola (Op. 112)

That way, the UI will display the opus number in a shade lighter.

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

I was just showing the Composer to have it complete here. I'm displaying it differently. I have "Tapiola, Op. 112" in one tag because I was to lazy to put Opus numbers consistently into specific tags.

The question is really just about "Op. - Upper or lowercase" and "use a blank space or not" .

Op. 112

OK, another vote?

[Mark]

The question is really just about "Op. - Upper or lowercase" and "use a blank space or not" .

OK, another vote?

It's not a question of votes. The rules of grammar state that the '.' denotes an abbreviated (abbr.) word. A bit like Mr. - you wouldn't write 'Mr.Williams', you'd write 'Mr. Williams'. Same rule applies for opus: 'Opus 34' would be 'Op. 34'. The upper or lowercase is a matter of preference these days.

[mahler10th]

Op.112
I have a qual as an English Language Teacher!  
More seriously, if you leave spaces there are some file readers etc out there which have trouble with spaces, misinterpreting them when exporting to spreadsheet, etc.  Mark has got it correct below, but for the purposes of integrity across so many file readers, interpreters, etc, I personally use the above format.

[Mark]

Op.112
I have a qual as an English Language Teacher!  

Isn't English a wonderful language? So many different (and sometimes, conflicting) rules.

More seriously, if you leave spaces there are some file readers etc out there which have trouble with spaces, misinterpreting them when exporting to spreadsheet, etc.  Mark has got it correct below, but for the purposes of integrity across so many file readers, interpreters, etc, I personally use the above format.

On the subject of systems/players being able to read MP3 tags, I've ditched all but ID3v2.4 8-UTF. This makes life very difficult with all the most 'popular' brands of media player, but fb2k has no problems, nor does MP3Tag, so I'm quite happy.

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

Op.112

I have a qual as an English Language Teacher!  
More seriously, if you leave spaces there are some file readers etc out there which have trouble with spaces, misinterpreting them when exporting to spreadsheet, etc.  Mark has got it correct below, but for the purposes of integrity across so many file readers, interpreters, etc, I personally use the above format.

OK, let's say I'd have no technical problems with "Op. 112". Isn't "Op.112" wrong english, because if you write it completely it is "Opus112"? Which is as wrong as "I am 17years old"?

[Mark]

Isn't "Op.112" wrong english, because if you write it completely it is "Opus112"?

FWIW, I'd say it is wrong ...

[mahler10th]

If it's perfect English you want, do as Mark suggested below.   

Aye Mark, English is a beautiful language full of contradictions, probably as hard a language for a learner to learn in the World, but it's great fun to teach.  My favourite students were Chinese.  One put in his diary that he had "flied lice" for his meal the previous night.     Great and funny kids.

[DavidRoss]

Do whatever works best for you, Sausagewater.  In a world where the illiterate masses habitually insert apostrophes before the "s" in plurals (i.e. "plural's"), among other grammatical crimes that ought be punished as capital offenses, there are no standards--particularly not when it comes to something as trivial as your personal shorthand in something not intended for publication.

[Opus106]

Mark has got it correct below

If it's perfect English you want, do as Mark suggested below.  

Above.



You see, we don't get to see how things are placed when you are creating the post.

[Gurn Blanston]

I never use the period to denote the abbreviation: it's understood in any case that it is abbreviated. I always use spaces, without spaces it is just a run together mishmash. So:

Beethoven Op 5 #1 Sonata in F for Cello & Piano 1st mvmt - Adagio sostenuto - Allegro - Adagio - Presto

Easy to read and understand.



----------------
Listening to:
Warsaw PO / Wislocki  Richter - K 466 Piano Concerto #20 in d 3rd mvmt - Rondo: [Allegro assai]

[karlhenning]

You, if I may say so, da man, Gurn.

[DavidRoss]

Shouldn' dat be U R da man?

[Gurn Blanston]

You, if I may say so, da man, Gurn.

Why yes, yes I am...

Anyway, we're talking ID3 tags here, not literature. Readability and understandability are far more important than grammatical correctness. I have imported hundreds of tags through Gracenote and CDDB that were scarcely worth the effort it took to delete them.





----------------
Listening to:
Wind Soloists of The Chamber Orchestra of Europe - K 439b #1 Divertimento in Bb for 3 Bassett Horns 4th mvmt - Menuetto - Trio

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

Do whatever works best for you, Sausagewater.  In a world where the illiterate masses habitually insert apostrophes before the "s" in plurals (i.e. "plural's"), among other grammatical crimes that ought be punished as capital offenses, there are no standards--particularly not when it comes to something as trivial as your personal shorthand in something not intended for publication.

I disagree I'm the biggest enemy of Deppenleerzeichen and Deppenapostroph, a german problem which has it's cause in a) über anglicising words (a post ww2 brownnosing phenomen), b) new german orthography rules, c) confusion about this and d) carelessness.

Anyway, we're talking ID3 tags here, not literature. Readability and understandability are far more important than grammatical correctness. I have imported hundreds of tags through Gracenote and CDDB that were scarcely worth the effort it took to delete them.

No! No! No! What I want is literature in ID3 tags and do the rest with computeing power. All practical things about understanding and sorting stuff is done by code in my player.

Example: A composer tag says "Anton Bruckner". I did not choose to use "Bruckner, Anton" only because of sorting purposes. I chose the reality. His real name. The rest is done by computing horsepower. In my favourite player I extract the surname and sort by the result.

Code Select Expand

$substr(%composer%,$add($strrchr(%composer%,' '),1),999)
(In human language this means "detect the far right whitespace, add 1 to the position and take all characters from there until position 999") - BTW Names like "Vaughan Williams" should not include a whitespace char, but an ALT+0160.

See my point?

[Keemun]

Jean Sibelius - Tapiola, Op. 112

This one (the first option) is most correct, IMO. 

[Gurn Blanston]

No! No! No! What I want is literature in ID3 tags and do the rest with computeing power. All practical things about understanding and sorting stuff is done by code in my player.

Example: A composer tag says "Anton Bruckner". I did not choose to use "Bruckner, Anton" only because of sorting purposes. I chose the reality. His real name. The rest is done by computing horsepower. In my favourite player I extract the surname and sort by the result.

Code Select Expand

$substr(%composer%,$add($strrchr(%composer%,' '),1),999)
(In human language this means "detect the far right whitespace, add 1 to the position and take all characters from there until position 999") - BTW Names like "Vaughan Williams" should not include a whitespace char, but an ALT+0160.

See my point?

Yes, I understand what you want to do, although your motives are best left a mystery to me. In WinAMP all I do is type "Bruckner" into the search box and it shows me every file I have by Bruckner, and I can choose to play whatever I want. I have no problem with the concept of writing code, but I sure don't want to do it unless I have to. Clearly you DO want to do it when you don't have to, which is great for you.

In that case.   "Op. 5" is the most correct.

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

Haha, Gurn, I'm not (only) doing it because code is a fetish to me, but also because I'm totally free to have my player display the stuff exactly how I want it.

OK, my choice will be "Op. 112". I'll have to replace a lot of (regex):

op\.[0-9]
by
Op\. [0-9]

then, but as a code fetishist I'll handle this

[mahler10th]

Pah!