Detective Work : Chinese Character Sorting in Itunes

3/08/2011 05:22:00 pm wsquare 0 Comments

Alas, after much tidy-up to my Itunes media library (which i'm already pretty proud of), I am still fumbled with more issues with particular mention to my Chinese song collection!

Issues that are troubling me :
1. Music Songs not sorted according to Hanyu Pinyin, and in a rather weird order!
2. Traditional & Simplified Chinese Characters in my music tags which confused the Itunes sorting



As usual, my curiosity to perfection and playing my little teeny-weeny bit of detective work and googling..


Workaround Solutions discovered:

I've found many forums dictating Hanyu Pinyin ordering of Chinese characters can be done through 'Regional Setting's Sorting Tab', but alas, in Windows 7, i can't find any! Interestingly, it seems that I have answered my question to how bizarre the sorting of Chinese characters in my computer is - Unicode (unknown to the common eyes)

"It sorts them in order of Unicode:

阿拉伯语 &# 38463;&# 25289;&# 20271;&# 35821;
英语 &# 33521;&# 35821;
美国语 &# 32654;&# 22269;&# 35821;
泰语 &# 27888;&# 35821;
法语 &# 27861;&# 35821;
中文 &# 20013;&# 25991; "

Credits to Roddy

2. The Real Practical Use of 'Sort Artist' field in iTunes !

Another interesting discovery as I bumped across numerous points about the actual use of Sort Artist field that is present in Itunes, and how different it differs from just sorting by the actual artist column.

Alas! It does help when comes to this teeny weeny language problem of mine!

As I have been using Tuneup media for most of my scrubbling, and to avoid any further standardization issues, I actually went on choosing Traditional Chinese characters information as my main bulk, despite the fact I'm actually using Simplifed Chinese characters as main working mode.

Nothing is perfect, and this goes. I still have a large potion of songs (especially from Mainland Chinese)

Just to sidetrack abit, i also discovered most Mainland China albums usually have tag information in Simplified Chinese, while those that originated from HK or Taiwan would have majority as Traditional Chinese.

The only workaround i used is to enter the Hanyu Pinyin name manually into the 'Sort Artist' field.

Labour work includes :
1. Manual hanyu pinyin entry to all your Chinese Songs

What i do enjoys now is I don't have to switch to my input Chinese tool to search for Chinese artists as well, as I can now enter by the Hanyu Pinyin artist names!! Viola!

Pay attention to the areas highlighted in Yellow on the solution implemented!


Alternatively, you may wish to enter either the simplified/traditional artist name into the sort field but it does not solve Hanyu Pinyin sorting. It only helps to lump similar artist names together. Ie to quote from my example above is ' 許志安' and '许志安’ .

Ideally, it would best have sorting done by Windows 7 native OS system! But i guess I loved the search by entering hanyu pinyin name to get my Chinese songs.

Points Left to Ponder/Explore further...
1. Where can I decide on the ordering of Chinese characters by Pinyin or even strokes in Windows 7?