Posted by Charles Russell on 09/01/06 17:06

I infer from comments in this newsgroup that many non-Apple players now
permit simple drag-and-drop from the Windows file system without
requiring any specialized music database. My question is: how do you
control the sequence of play after drag-and-drop? Alphabetical by
filename? Alphabetical by title in id3 tag? Numerical by track number?
Playlist?

Can you drag-and-drop playlists too? Wikipedia lists several playlist
formats. Is there a single format that works with most players?

I expect to replace my iPod at some point with a cheap generic, and hope
to avoid the need for bloated player/organizer/device-loader software
(e.g. iTunes) even if it is free. It would be ideal if I could simply
copy the directory tree from Windows or Linux, but that does not appear
to be an option with existing players. Most of my files are things like
symphonies where tracks must be played in the original sequence, and
some means of enforcing this is an absolute requirement.

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