[johnc_22]

I have the MOST adapter and am making do with it's somewhat limited usability but wanted to see if someone can suggest a reasonable solution to one of my problems.

Oh, and BMW if you're listening, remove the haptic feedback and allow nested folders or playlists. This would make it VERY usable.

Now, back to reality. I listen to my music an album at a time, and this makes using playlists a little more difficult unless I create a playlist per album, and I have way too many of them for that to be possible with the limitations in the iDrive interface.

So, my solution is to create playlists of each of my favorite artists, and that works for the most part, but if you go into an artist with say 6-7 albums, it's very hard to tell which album a song is from. Some of the songs show up with just the song title, and others show up as "Artist - Title" - it seems that this name is based on the physical file names (minus the .mp3 extension). In either case, I'd like the ability to see things in the format "Album - Track# - Title", or at least "Album - Title". This would guarantee sorting (should already be that way with ID3 tags) and allow me to scroll to the beginning of the album I'm looking for.

I know there are alternatives to iTunes for the PC but does anyone know of software that will allow you to customize the naming of songs on the iPod itself? This would be a great workaround if I could figure out how to make it work.

I write software for a living and have looked at the iTunes SDK but it only allows you to manipulate the information in iTunes but not affect the naming, specifically the physical filename on which the displayed name on the iPod/iDrive is based (I tried).

Any ideas?

[jmonier]

BMW was listening. Haptic feedback is gone on March production and later.

[johnc_22]

Originally Posted by jmonier

BMW was listening. Haptic feedback is gone on March production and later.

Sigh . . . and you get the USB connector. If I'd waited a month to order my car . . .

[johnc_22]

OK, if you "Get Info" on a track and edit the Name field, whatever you put there will display on the iDrive interface.

So, I'm using the following script to add the track number at the beginning of each name so that you see something like "01 - Radio Free Europe", etc. This will allow me to scroll through a band's material and at least start a disc on the first song. iDrive shows the songs in track order instead of alphabetical order so you don't wind up with all the track 1's first, etc.

Don't run this script unless you understand the ramifications, and how to tweak the script to undo it. Save it as javascript (".js") on your XP machine with your iTunes library, double click it and wait.
USE AT YOUR OWN RISK:

var iTunesApp = WScript.CreateObject("iTunes.Application");
var mainLibrary = iTunesApp.LibraryPlaylist;
var tracks = mainLibrary.Tracks;
var numTracks = tracks.Count;
var i;
var s;

for (i = 1; i <= numTracks; i++)
{

var currTrack = tracks.Item(i);

s = (currTrack.TrackNumber < 10 ? "0" : "") + currTrack.TrackNumber;
currTrack.Name = s + " - " + currTrack.Name;

}
WScript.Echo("Done");