[Rhythmbox-devel] Rhythmbox Searches For "AND" vs "&"

[Kyle Baker <kyleabaker gmail com>]

It recently came to my attention that searching for artists, albums,
and/or titles in Rhythmbox has an annoying limitation. I'm unaware of
how other media players (not only those found in Linux) handle this,
but it occurred to me that there may be a simple solution. Even if
other media players don't do this, it could still be a feature to
contribute to ease of use.

The problem:
When I'm searching (as an example) for an artist such as "Angels &
Airwaves" I usually tend to quickly type out the ampersand to "Angels
and Airwaves". Rhythmbox won't find what I'm looking for when I type
it out like this unless "and" just happens to be elsewhere in a songs
meta-tags.

Solution:
What are some opinions on adding a conditional to interpret search
input containing the "and" term as both "and" as well as "&" and vice
versa? Basically, just make these two strings search interchangeably.
There may be other examples similar to this that could also be fixed.

The only immediate draw back that I can think of is that this extra
condition would depend on the language in use on the system, however,
wouldn't that also mean that the code for this could also be fluid
enough to work with different languages depending on the lang files
that Rhythmbox is loaded with?

I'd be willing to look into a possible patch and submit something to
be reviewed, but I'd first like to get some feedback on the general
idea. If it seems like it would be useful/beneficial at all and if so,
other ideas for possible ways to implement this?

Cheers.
--
Kyle Baker