Alphabetical Playlists?

[Geoff Davey]

Hi all

Is it possible to sort Playlists alphabetically?

Thanks,

Geoff

[Daniel Taylor]

Not that I know of.  I alphabetize manually as I add new items to a playlist.

The Playlists are a series of text files with pointers to the items that are to be played.  You can backup the playlists to a USB disk, copy them to your computer, alphabetize them, rewrite the files to the USB stick, and then import them back onto the B2.

These are the two pertinent commands from the Playlist menu:

Save Playlists       (Saves the playlists to USB C - no music)

Load Playlists       (Loads the playlists from USB C - no music)

[Geoff Davey]

Thanks Daniel

[Les Stanley]

Hi Daniel,

Does this allow you to alphabetize the content of the playlist? I realize the music isn't stored, just the tack names. That'd be really useful but as far as I can see when I save my playlists the content of each one is just a text file which I can't edit it in any way.

Thanks for all your tips and info over the years, always useful.

Les

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Yes, playlists are just text files. You can not edit them in a text editor on the B2 but you can export them off the B2 and edit them on your PC. Then you can get the B2 to delete its version and re-import the edited version.

Fred

[Daniel Taylor]

When I tried to look at a playlist file on my PC, I double clicked on it and the computer told be it didn't khow what to do with the file.  So I renamed it by adding ".txt" (without the quotes) to the end of it to identify it as a text file.  Then after I edited it, I had to rename it back to the way it was before without the .txt extension.  Another thing you have to watch for is that some text editors may have a setting where they add some sort of End-of-File character to the file.  I'm pretty sure you don't want that.  I've seen it here where a particular text editor has been recommended.  I'm not sure but I think it is Notepad+.

The easiest way to alphabetize a playlist is to place the items in the proper spot when they are added.  If your playlist is short, it might be easier to delete it and start over.

One thing I have not tried is to drag and drop a name from one spot on the playlist to another.  I don't think it would hurt to try.

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

I got these replies to my personal email - but they do not appear here

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Thanks Fred but I don't see how I should edit the file.

Here's an extract

Last login: Sun Nov 28 09:01:24 on ttys000

/Volumes/NO\ NAME\ 1/playlists/C\ N\ P ; exit;

The default interactive shell is now zsh.

To update your account to use zsh, please run `chsh -s /bin/zsh`.

For more details, please visit https://support.apple.com/kb/HT208050.

Tracys-MacBook-Pro:~ tracystanley$ /Volumes/NO\ NAME\ 1/playlists/C\ N\ P ; exit;

/Volumes/NO NAME 1/playlists/C N P: line 2: /Tom: No such file or directory

/Volumes/NO NAME 1/playlists/C N P: line 7: /Jackson: No such file or directory

/Volumes/NO NAME 1/playlists/C N P: line 17: /Jackson: No such file or directory

/Volumes/NO NAME 1/playlists/C N P: line 18: /Randy: No such file or directory

/Volumes/NO NAME 1/playlists/C N P: line 19: /Randy: No such file or directory

/Volumes/NO NAME 1/playlists/C N P: line 20: /Randy: No such file or directory

/Volumes/NO NAME 1/playlists/C N P: line 21: /Tom: No such file or directory

/Volumes/NO NAME 1/playlists/C N P: line 21: the: command not found

/Volumes/NO NAME 1/playlists/C N P: line 22: /Tom: No such file or directory

/Volumes/NO NAME 1/playlists/C N P: line 22: the: command not found

/Volumes/NO NAME 1/playlists/C N P: line 23: /Tom: No such file or directory

/Volumes/NO NAME 1/playlists/C N P: line 23: the: command not found

I guess, naively, I was expecting to see a text file listing the track names saved to the wishlist but it's not that simple.

Unless this is an apple thing as I am using a mac.

Les

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and then

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OK, I've answered my own question. If I use a proper PC with windows then I can open the file with Word or Notepad and edit it quite easily. 

Excellent. Gawd, I hate Apple.

Les

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[Daniel Taylor]

When I first saw that list with NO NAMES and No such file of directory, I though there was a problem with the B2's playlists.  But when Les reported that he could edit the file as expected on a Windows PC, it makes me wonder again about Apple computers.  Sometimes I'm tempted to buy one just to find out about these types of things.  But they are far too expensive for such a limited purpose.

Given the text reproduced above, do we know that that is what the Mac text editor thinks is the contents of the file?  Or is that what the Mac displays when you try to access the file?  If the latter, I think the Mac may have been trying to execute the file and was trying to interpret the pathnames and could not find them on it's local disk.

[Jeff. M.]

So glad I never went down the Apple rabbit hole when I started my computer days in the early noughties! 

[Les Stanley]

I inherited the Mac, I wouldn't buy one to save my life. I've grown used to its foibles over the time I've had it but it always seems that Apple developers take something from MS and then spend time adding extra layers of complication to it.

You can drag and drop plyist track names in the UI which I guess is handy if you only have a few tracks in a playlist.

Les

[Mark Fishman]

The way you edit a text file is the same on a Mac as it is on any other computer. You open it in a TEXT EDITOR. You don't just click on the name and expect magic. macOS comes with an application called TextEdit that will do the job.

Under the fancy and sometimes annoying user interface, the Mac runs Unix. You can also open a Terminal window (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal) and use vi, a Unix text editor that can be found on any Unix or Linux system and is simple enough that all the important commands fit on a coffee mug. (example: https://www.cafepress.com/mf/59954381/vi-reference_mugs?productId=325554978)

In my experience, for the past 15 years, both Apple and Microsoft have been converging on the worst practices of each other. There's little to choose in terms of foibles.

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Hi Mark,

Can you make sense of what Les did to get the output he posted to me?

Fred

[Les Stanley]

Fair comment about not just clicking on a file and expecting magic!

That's exactly what I did to get the response I posted before. If I right-click the file I can see that the default is to open it with something called "terminal" which I guess is what Mark is referring to.

I think I'll stick to rearranging my playlists with drag and drop which is more fun.

Les

[Daniel Taylor]

REferring back to my post above... Unless you append the .txt extension to the filename, the computer will not know what kind of file it is.

[Mark Fishman]

Terminal is the name the Mac gives to a window containing a command shell. On MS-Windows, the equivalent is running CMD.EXE.

So, when you double-clicked the playlist file, what happened was that the Mac opened Terminal and tried to execute (run) the file, thinking it was a Unix shell script (equivalent of a Microsoft .BAT file, or a Windows PowerShell script).

Instead, you could right-click (or if you have an old one-button mouse, Control-click) and choose Open With, then pick TextEdit from the Appplications folder.

Cheers -- m.

On Monday, November 29, 2021 at 6:30:30 PM UTC-5 ljstan...@gmail.com wrote: