Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[don570]

I noticed one more unusual thing about adding a song
to a playlist.
As I mentioned before using Lucid Puppy,
if a filename begins wih a hyphen ,then using the script

[don570]

I thought of a few more improvements to pmusic
if you were thinking of continuing to work on it.

1) your clickable option 'Add after playing' is
confusing to english speakers. It would be clearer if you
wrote out the complete phrase 'Add after track that
is currently playing'

2) Here is one of my favorite features of Apple iTunes.
First I select a track on the playlist then I select from menu
'Show Location' This is the only fast method to open the folder
containing the song, since it may be located anywhere on a hard drive.
Pmusic does things differently. The path of track is shown which helps.
However a 'Show Location' menu item would still be a nice feature.
Rox Filer would be launched and the folder opened, showing the file
that is currently playing.

3) A very useful feature would be the ability to 'lock' a playlist.
By 'lock' I mean that there would be a dialog box for confirmation
each time you deleted a track from a 'locked' playlist. I come from
the Mac OS so I am easily confused by right clicking and left clicking.
I am concerned that I might accidentally delete a track in a
thoughtless moment. This feature would require another menu
item 'Lock current playlist'. A small padlock next to the playlist name would
provide a visual indication that a playlist has gone thru the locking procedure.

4)The pmusic built-in help/faq should end with a section called 'Known Bugs'.
You could warn users about using special characters in filenames.

[zigbert]

don570

1.)
'Add after playing' has got a complete explanation in the tooltips. It shows up when holding the mouse over the radiobutton.

2.)
Show location would be a good feature, and you'll get it in Pmusic 1.0.3

3.)
Lock playlist...hmmmm......I don't know. I think we will see a right-click-menu in the future, and that should solve the accidently deleted song.

4.)
The FAQ is written by Overdrive, and I hope he will continue to update it. I have not seen him around lately. My english sucks, so I am not qualified writing docs........ If you want to, feel free to make your changes, and I will upload it.


Thank you for all your input
Sigmund

[zigbert]

And yes, I intend to continue to polish this audioplayer

[zigbert]

Version 1.0.3
See main post

Changelog
- iguleder has made a tray-app for pmusic. Turn On/Off in preferences.
- Send signal to a running instance of Pmusic (pmusic -s SIGNAL). See pmusic -h for signals.
- 'pmusic -q' has been replaced by 'pmusic -s quit'.
- Show location (in rox) of playing file (thanks to don570)
- Hide gui from 'Window' menu
- Language support for brazilian portugese (thanks to fyujj)
- NLS: added LOC279, 1410
- Bugfix: syntax error in faq (thanks to don570)
- Bugfix: Huge cpu-usage when running as backend - 'pmusic -b'

[zigbert]

iguleder
I have included your Pmusic_tray into the pet. - It works great!!!

Some thoughts:
- Why do you use xpm-icon, when png is supported. I have linked the xpm-file to pmusic20.png
- pmusic -b shows trayapp, but at first click it will hide gui which is not yet there. Is it possible to check this somehow?
- Is it possible to make a right-click-menu for next and previous song. Pmusic 1.0.3 now includes the -s switch (signal), and at this point you can send 'next' and 'prev' to navigate a running Pmusic. more signals is described with pmusic -h
- What about controlling hotkeys with pmusic_tray
- $HOME/.pmusic/tmp/ffmpeg_NOW_PLAYING shows playing song. and might be used as info.


Thanks for your effort
Sigmund

[don570]

I've been using pmusic now and getting familiar with it.
The more I use it the more I like it.
In some respects it's better than iTunes.
Two more suggestions

1) In the 'classic' interface the name of the current
playlist should be more obvious and obtainable
than going to a menu item.
I would suggest that the word 'pmusic' in the
window be changed to 'pmusic - Playlist1' or whatever
is the name of playlist.

2) I came across this problem while trying out pmusic.
I store most of my music on a second hard disk. Usually
it is mounted but on rare occasions it isn't. Pmusic
tries to play the music stored on a unmounted hard drive.
It says 'buffering' but that is confusing. I didn't
catch on to what was happening for several minutes.
I'll be more careful from now on.
But here's a suggestion. ---> A preference option
where the user inputs the hard disk name like 'sda5'
and a check is then made at subsequent pmusic launches
to see if this hard disk is mounted. A simple
warning message is given if it is not mounted.
By making it a preference option, people who don't
think this is useful or needed can avoid setting
the option.

---------------------------------------------
I will re-read the faq again and write up a few tips
for users.

[zigbert]

Uploaded Pmusic 1.0.3 one more time.
Thank you don570 for mention the broken link


Sigmund

[zigbert]

[don570]

In future apps you might need some ideas about an interface and font colors.
I came across this old Unix app called Yudit that is very creative.
Click on the image to enlarge.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?search_id=1902766720&t=57866

The guy who wrote this app must be very talented.

[Iguleder]

zigbert: I'll play with it, I think I'll to make some bash wrapper for the tray icon. In the current mode, this is how it works:

pmusic -> tray icon

I'll change it:

pmusic -> icon wrapper -> tray icon

A bash wrapper is the easiest way to check whether the GUI is running or not, by using ps and grep on "pmusic -b" or whatever it was, don't remember.

[don570]

I tested pmusic 103 on lucid puppy 504 and there
was one feature that didn't work at all.
'Hide GUI' just launched another nameless app
that wasted valuable tray space.
Also I noticed that Puppy Package Manager didn't
show pmusic on it's list, so I couldn't uninstall it
apparently.

The feature had worked right when I used pmusic102
if I installed Iguleder's package pmusic_tray-1.0.2-lupu.pet
that I got from this thread.
There was just one icon on the right hand side of tray.
So no space was wasted and it was easy to use.


On the bright side the feature 'Show location' works
perfectly! Your motto should be 'Better than an Apple'

[don570]

These are some dumb questions that I'm sure have been asked before.

How does the user know that he has reached the maximum size of an
Audio disc before launching pburn? In other words, a playlist of 80 minutes.

Isn't there any limits to the number of file names on the 'most recently played'
and 'most played' lists?
I had so many on list because of my testing of program that I had to delete the
two relevant preferences files. That fixed the problem.

[zigbert]

[zigbert]