Good idea.

Sounds good. And of course we would like the XML export to show the roles the same way.

Me Too!!!!!!

this would solve quite the debate over in the rules forum.... i love it.

Quoting Behemot:

Quote:
It would be great if there could be added a second type of divider (only necessary for cast, not crew), different from the current dividers. I propose that the current dividers be renamed "Episode dividers" and only used for separating cast/crew of different episodes, and that the new dividers be called "Group dividers". The Group dividers can be used when the cast credits are divided into different groups, for example

Quote:
Russian Army
Actor A    - Colonel
Actor B    - Lieutenant

German Army
Actor C    - Colonel
Actor D    - Lieutenant

and

Quote:
Orcs
Actor A
Actor B

When clicking the cast member's name to see which DVDs he/she appears in, it would then be nice if the role name could be shown like this (or something like it):

Quote:
Actor A  - Colonel [Russian Army]

and

Quote:
Actor A  - [Orcs]

I would also like to request that when clicking a cast/crew member's name it is specified which episode(s) (determined by the Episode dividers) the person appears in. Either this could be made optional (in the Tools menu), or it could be made to look like the Box set profiles, where you by default only see the actual TV series/main profile the actor appears in, and then you can see which specific episode(s) by clicking the "+".

If you're going to go to the trouble of adding another type of divider, then let's make sure we cover ALL the variations presented by the cast list.  There are a lot of movies where the cast is broken up in groups and the actors names are listed below, where the role is only given in the group name.  Such as:

Elves          group header
Actor A
Actor B                no role name shown with individual actors, only in header
Actor C

Otherwise, I agree with this.

[Note:  OK, apparently I misread above, cause it looks like Behemot included that variation in his request.  Oh well, doesn't hurt to reiterate it.]

Quoting northbloke:

Quote:
Good idea, and I think it would also help if there was a special divider that told the program when these lists ended, so it would know to put a small gap then everyone below would be listed as normal cast.
So it would have:
Actor A
<divider Russian Army>
Actor B
Actor C
<end divider>
Actor D
Actor E

Yes, this would of course be necessary, didn't think of this. Thanks! Will add it to my original post, so that it contains all the specifics.

Right, isn't really a divider per se.  If you're creating groups, you need an in point (the first name of the group) and an out point (the last name of the group).  Sounds more like a tagging system that's trying to be shoehorned into a pure list format.

At a more direct level, assuming we had the ability to select a range of names in the cast editor, select the names of the relevant actors in the credit list and hit 'Tag', where it will bring up a little entry box like for roles, and enter in "Russian Army" or whatever.

How would it handle sub-grouping, though (either in tag or list format)?  For example, might you expect the English and Japanese casts for anime to be separately 'tagged' instead of using dividers?  If so, we might have: Episode 1 (divider): English Cast, Additional Voices (subset of English cast).

Of course it could be that language casts are better handled with dividers anyway so it wouldn't be an issue.

If you wanted to get reeaaally fancy, perhaps eliminate dividers entirely and move to a fully tagged system.  Have a drop-down checkbox list (like the region selection drop-down in the disc editor dialog) attached to the cast listing populated with all the tags that exist for that cast.  Check the boxes you're interested in having info shown for (eg: Episode 1, Japenese cast, Additional Voices, Russian Army, etc).

Enter new TV show actor, and if they're already in the cast list just add an extra tag value to the entry (already in Episode 1 for this role, add tag of Episode 2).

Note: Left a lot of speculative possibilities in, but overall I'm thinking it's not going to be that useful (the fully tagged system, that is), and would be far too complicated to implement in the current database anyway, at least if we want to maintain the concept of the cast list closely matching the credits of the show. 

The primitive tagging system using fake dividers, though, has some potential.

Another possibility for indicating the "end of the list" might be to indent the list under the divider.  That way you wouldn't need a blank space "end divider".