A problem with organizing and browsing both classical and non-classical music in the same application (and in the same file system) is that for non-classical music we tend to organize by performer, whereas for classical music we tend to organize by composer. This presents a problem when browsing in iTunes, and also presents a problem for automatic organization of MP3's -- which tag should one use to organize by?
My ideal solution for working with iTunes (and my iRiver MP3 player) is to organize classical music such that the composer appears in the artist field and the artist/ensemble appears somewhere else. The obvious choice would be to use the now vacated composer slot, and I do exactly that. I've modified iTunes to support this new paradigm and am VERY happy with the change. The final result looks like this:
The only file you need to change is Localized.rsrc located in iTunes.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj if you use iTunes in English.
Back up this file first!!!
You can either replace your copy of Localized.rsrc with my finished copy or follow the instructions below.
Replace your Localized.rsrc with mine (right-click to download localized.rsrc.sit)
Use Resorcerer or your favorite resource editor to open Localized.rsrc:.
The way that I did this was systematically search for the string 'Artist' in the entire resource fork (which is big!) and start changing things around. This certainly took a little time, so I'll go over exactly which changes to make. These don't have to be made in any particular order. It would be fine to search for 'Artist' in the entire resource fork, as that will open all the things you need to edit (as well as some things you shouldn't edit)
Everything else is in string resources (iST's). Most of these store the strings as p-strings (the first byte stores the length of the string), so you have to change the string AND change the length byte. Luckily, Resorcerer makes this pretty easy. To edit the string data, edit where you see text, and to edit the numeric data (to change the length byte), click where you see the hex.
06 to 0F. Change iST #9006 "Track Field Column Strings" and iST #132 "Exported Field Names" in exactly the same manner.
0F instead of 06. There is one "Artists" string to be changed to "Artists/Composers". The string is 17 characters (11 in hexadecimal) so change the length byte to 11, as illustrated below:
06), then modify Artist to read "Artist/Composer" (length 0F as usual) and change Composer to Ensemble as usual. The final product is shown below:
Those are all the textual resources you need to change. Note that you should NOT edit TMPL 198 "CWid". Now you have to edit some window resources. This is pretty straightforward.
You may need to resize the Artist/Composer text box; to do so click on it once and drag the edges.
Once you've made these changes, fire up iTunes and everything should work just fine! If not, look around for more occurrences of Artist and Composer and change them based on the methods here.
If you have a question/comment or have found this particularly interesting or helpful, I'd love to hear from you. If you're not a spam bot and know a little about surrealist painters, you can reach me at mgelfosalvadordali@indiana edu minus the famous painter and adding the dot back in after indiana.