30 problems and suggestions around Quod Libet
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Mathieu Bonnet
Feb 9, 2012, 9:34:30 AM2/9/12
to Quod Libet Development
NOTICE: I prefer not to stay subscribed to mailing-lists, even without
receiving new messages by email, so if you need me to reply, and it
does not take too much time, you will need to CC me. Otherwise, I'll
simply check the web archive once in a while.
AS: I sent this email to Christoph Reiter a few days ago, and while he
has already fully answered to many notes, he suggested I should still
post it here, so others could possibly pitch in.
Hi,
I started using Quod Libet 2.3 last year, and as I do regularly, I
noted various problems I encountered, and suggestions I could make.
There is about 2700 words for about 30 notes and 15 subnotes.
I suppose you know most of what I wrote already, and some things may
have already been solved since, but it's my experience with Quod
Libet, and I hope there can be some use for it :)
Feel free to contact me if you need some clarification, if it does not
take too much time.
Thanks for Quod Libet,
Good luck in the future,
Bye!
========================================
Here are my notes, with all the replies by Christoph Reiter (i.e.,
unindented text is by Christoph Reiter):
>
> ● I'm using quodlibet-2.3 and quodlibet-plugins-2.3, under a
> more or less updated Gentoo GNU/Linux system.
>
> ● No way to get a progress bar showed permanently, and to
> have the elapsed/remaining duration at the same time as we
> desire? It currently generally covers some metadata under it,
> it's ugly, and often too small, if we want to seek precisely
> in a song... It may be an option, like "Show extended
> progress bar", to show a full width progress bar above the
> search bar, with some options to show the elapsed time on the
> left, and the remaining time on the right.
AFAIR banshee now has something like a progress bar with a
handle on the right side to make it bigger. I guess that's a
good idea.
Regarding showing it always: I would accept a patch to have a
alternative control area that can be changed in the settings.
I personally couldn't care less for it, since 99,999% of the
time I'm not seeking, but listening. (and the other time I'm
using the scrollwheel on the button).
I was thinking about changing the default to show the remaining
time instead of the elapsed (That's the first thing I change in
QL)
> ● No way to show the album cover between the control buttons
> and the textual tags? (like in most file browsers). The
> picture is a bit isolated on the right, when we increase the
> size of the window. We can quite easily modify how the
> textual tags are displayed, which is very nice, but the cover
> is not included, and I do not see anything else to modify its
> location.
Imho it looks better now, but that's my opinion, ask in the ML..
> ● Apparently no option to show the track number padded with
> 0s. Even existing padding in the metadata gets removed, like
> in Rhythmbox...
Show where? It gets padded in the file renamer. I can't think of
another place that matters.
> ● Some small display bugs of the playing icon in playlists
> (it stays under some conditions showed on tracks previously
> played... it disappears on a simple mouse over), and of the
> remaining duration when changing track.
This is fixed.
> ● No "Repeat One" option... forced to create a playlist or to
> isolate the song with the search box. An option should be
> added in the right-click menu of the play button, and in the
> right-click menu of songs in the playlist/browser and in the
> queue.
Select "One Song" in the playorder and check the repeat
checkbox.
> ○ Also no "Repeat Queue" option. To simply repeat a few
> independent songs (i.e., no simple album filtering or search
> keywords), it is far more easy than having to create a
> temporary playlist, and then having to remove it afterward.
Well, a list of song that stays and get repeated is a playlist.
QL isn't playlist centric player.
But the queue is probably going to get some plugin support, so
that might possible then.
> ○ Ok in fact there is a "One Song" option in the 'Order'
> dropdown menu at the bottom of the main window... Not very
> intuitive, and when the window is too close to the bottom of
> the screen, the list gets cut with a scrollbar, so it's easy
> to miss, as it's the last option. There should be more ways
> to discover this option as said above.
That's how GTK+ handles comboboxes. So that you don't select
somethign different if you just click on it (the current active
has to be under the mouse cursor)
> ● We cannot modify anything from Internet radio tags except
> their titles? We should be able to override everything,
> including removing tags defined by the radio, and locking any
> future update from them (i.e., I want to be able to set my
> own tags precisely for the radios I listen to, and not have
> anything broken if the radio modifies the tags it sends, or
> if it sends something bogus to begin with, like a bad Genre,
> preventing me from easily searching through them...).
It's just there to prevent s.o. editing things that get reset
afterward anyway. I think we can agree that autofilling tags is
useful in this case.
There could be an option to lock auto updates...
> ○ And the file ~/.quodlibet/stations is in a binary format,
> so we cannot easily edit it. It should be in a text-only
> format, and if you want a more optimized format for when we
> have a lot of radios, you could generate the binary format
> from the text format, as a cache file.
Ok, would be possible.
> ○ The title should be modifiable directly from the station
> list (F2, standard rename keyboard shortcut, right-click menu
> entry, and some menu entry in the menubar).
That would be nice, yes. But would need quite some work atm.
> ○ The URL should be editable in place, without changing
> anything else to the metadata (e.g., simple radio IP change).
We could enable the rename file window maybe..
As a side note: QL wasn't build with radio streams / cue sheets
in mind. Most things are based on local files, so there are
many hacks atm, and some things don't work as expected.
> ● The list of displayed columns is shared among all views...
> Yet we may want different columns (e.g., for Internet radios,
> I would like to add the bitrate and audio format, and remove
> the Artist column which is empty... -why are the other
> columns removed? My Internet radios specified an empty artist
> tag, and it is displayed instead of being stripped? I don't
> see any Artist tag being shown when using right clicking =>
> Edit Tags).
There is a bugreport about having columns for each browser,
yes. But no one has find the time to do it.
In 2.4, artist shows website and title, organizer in the song
list, so the list at least shows something by default. That's a
workaround atm. The column removing is also a workaround.
> ○ Bizarrely, the column order is not shared. So I suppose
> there is already some code to separate them. There would be a
> need to modify the song list preference tab, though.
The problem is there is no code :)
> ○ The column sorting is shared. Again, we may want different
> things in different views, so it should be independent.
Yeah, same problem.
> ● In the radio view, when I add a title tag on a station I
> just added, it is not sorted automatically. It stays at the
> first position of the list. I have to click twice on the
> Title column so it gets sorted.
Yes, I thought about that. The problem is if you missed
something or do something with the selection again, it might be
spread across the whole list after editing.
> ● When editing tags from Quod Libet, there is no Save+Close
> button, to close the tag editing window immediately, instead
> of requiring an additional click on the window close button.
There is a bit of a space problem there..
> ● Can't modify Saved Values for search. We have to have to
> click the "Add" button, and then remove the old one.
Yeah, that's annoying. Probably replace the Add with New and
change the selected one while typing in the entries.
> ○ We should also be able to organize Saved Values with
> folders and separators. I have quite a number of saved
> searches, and it's quite hard to use currently. Saved
> searches should have their own view, similar to the playlist
> view, only showing the name (but enabling to easily edit the
> search if needed, and add new ones from this view).
Should be a plugin (once we get a plugin menu in the main menu)
> ● When removing a saved search from the "Saved Value" window,
> select the next one, so we can easily click multiple times on
> the remove button to remove multiple searches, without having
> to move the mouse so much (if using the keyboard too, we sure
> can use the delete key). We should also be able to select
> multiple searches to remove them all in one click (classical
> shift and ctrl keys for range/multiple selections).
OK.
So, need to go to bed now... will continue tomorrow.
.. overall: my time is limited, there are only two people
working in QL and, as you probably can imagine, I mostly like
to work on things I care about. So I would suggest, after I
finished the second part, you post this to the mailing list.
Also I would suggest you try the 2.4 beta or trunk. See the
Downloads section in the wiki. If you have 2.3 installed you
already have all dependencies, so you can simply run it from
source (no compiling, installing etc..).
There is for example the new internet radio browser and some
radio tag enhancements etc..
http://www.student.tugraz.at/christoph.reiter/ql-changelog/ql_2.3.99.html
> ● We cannot use '/' at all in searches as a string, without
> quotes (requiring complete matching). Using \/ does not work
> (search in red, syntax error). Using // seems to be
> considered as an empty regex, and as apparently Quod Libet
> does not support using multiple types of formats for one
> match (surely not really useful), it ignores the rest of the
> string, and matches everything. For \/ to work, we have to
> use it in a regular expression. Surely minor when we know it,
> but still unecessary and a bit confusing. In fact, as Quod
> Libet does not support using multiple types of formats, it
> might as well be permitted without escaping, as long as its
> not the first character. This would be cleaner for matching a
> few subdirectories (e.g., I want things like "~dirname =
> music/flac/best").
Yes, annoying. You can fall back to the exact match ~dirname =
"/blah/foo".
> ● There should be keyboard shortcuts for views. Currently, we
> have either to use Alt+v,x (by the way, 'p' is used twice,
> for "Playlists" and "Paned Browser"), or to use an external
> keyboard shortcut manager, and call "quodlibet
> --set-browser=BrowserName" (its not absolutely clear we have
> to use CamelCase, in spite of the example... the man page
> should read "Set the current browser, as listed in the View
> menu, in CamelCase format (e.g., InternetRadio)".
You can set a shortcut for every menu item (providing you
enabled can_change_accels in GTK+).
--set-browser=1..X also works (I think the other one is a
fallback)
good catch with the double 'p'.. needs fixing
> ● When we sort songs by track or disc, the column name is cut
> because the sorting arrow takes more room than available, but
> we cannot increase the width of these two columns, so its
> quite ugly and confusing. We should be able to resize all
> columns.
In GTK+ you can choose between auto mode (which imho works most
of the time) and set all columns manually.
I planned to add a checkbox in the context menu to switch
between those modes. The manual mode will lead to a list bigger
than the window, and wont change when you resize the window,
but allows restoring widths etc.
Maybe GTK+3 is better in that area, but the python bindings for
aren't ready.
> ○ There is also a bug which cause all columns to be fixed,
> except in the Internet Radio view... I'm not sure how it
> happened while I was testing... After a few more view
> switching an resizing attempts, it worked again... (but not
> for the disc and track columns, so I suppose this is
> intended).
Maybe GTK+3 is better in that area.
> ● No saved searches, nor even search history, for the
> Internet Radio view? No search at all for the File System and
> Playlist views?
iRadio is fixed in 2.4, Playlists/FSView support inline
searches.
> ● When I add a radio station which propose a playlist
> grouping multiple streams, Quod Libet allow me to chose which
> to include, which can be nice, but then it adds them
> individually, and I suppose never use the original playlist
> again. Considering these lists are often use to add or remove
> mirrors, when some appear or are not available anymore, this
> is a bit limited.
That's because QL is file based, and playlist don't quite fit
with everything. It's probably fixable somehow..
> ○ There should also be some support for grouping radios in a
> folder (easily playable without having to open it and select
> a mirror ourselves manually... a double-click, notably,
> should play a mirror... for opening the folder, it would be
> some right-click menu entry...), as mirrors of a single
> station, with some option, to either use them in order, or
> randomly each time (with some options to prefer mirrors with
> higher quality formats and higher bitrates... well, probably
> a bit complex to manage... at least allow some mirrors not to
> be used except if all the others do not respond...), and to
> associate the next/previous buttons either as "next/previous
> mirror" buttons, or as "next/previous station" buttons, and
> probably support keyboard shortcuts for both if people want...
same prob..
> • Don't only group automatically by title if you want to
> support it. We may add the mirror name in the title, so names
> could be different. Well, if we could edit all tags and add
> some comment tag, and display this column without having to
> display it in all the other views, this could be enough.
>
> ○ Managing all this may be a bit complex, with a separate
> window to manage mirror playlists, and non-intrusive alerts
> when a mirror is added or removed from these playlists (so
> the use can chose to add the new mirror to his list, or
> remove one if it really does not work anymore or for some
> other reason -it should not be removed automatically... it
> can happen that the playlist is dynamic and sends different
> mirrors sometimes, or things like that...). But it would
> really improve radio management, even when we have few of
> them, but when they all have a few mirrors, notably when we
> often switch between each of them.
I would prefer a more transparent solution like autoswitching
between mirrors on error.
> ● To develop the Internet Radio management, there could be
> some option to switch automatically between all or some
> stations (and not just to a new mirror of the same station of
> course... e.g., when we want to diversify the genres without
> having to switch manually regularly, or limit ourselves to
> more general radio stations), after some number of songs or
> some time (but always by cutting at the end of a song).
Should be easy as a plugin now. 2.4 supports event for that.
> ○ If there is no standard for Quod Libet to know when the
> current song will end, there could be an option to delay the
> stream by like 10 seconds, so Quod Libet could try to connect
> beforehand (in case of long connection time, or unavailable
> mirror), and smooth the station switching... Well, the
> 10-second delay would rapidly shrink as Quod Libet switches
> between stations, though...
Not sure if that's easy with the gstreamer backend..
> ○ If there is any standard to detect jingles, advertisings
> (maybe as an option...), and animator talks, or at least
> manually by specifying which title they use for these things
> (if they don't use the title of the previous or next song,
> and if they do change the title at all...), Quod Libet could
> also be configured to switch the station immediately (and
> again, not just to a new mirror of course).
There is a plugin in 2.4 to mute ads. It's nor configurable
atm. and only supports di.fm/sky.fm.
Feel free to submit titles. Switching could be an option.
> ● In the Internet Radio view, we can still chose to display
> the remaining time... If there is no standard to know when
> the current song ends for Internet radios, it should only
> allow to display the elapsed time (and restore to remaining
> time, if it's what we chose for the other views).
Some stations send a song duration.. some send crap.. but,
yeah, could be improved (the reset after pausing etc..)
> ● "Quod Libet" is too long in the window titlebar, in
> taskbars... we generally can only see a small part of the
> song title, and have to restore/focus the window to see it
> fully (or use a complete OSD or some desktop panel widget,
> but this should not be necessary)... There should be some
> option to shorten it to "QL". It's particularly useful for
> radios, with possibly a lot of songs we don't know the title
> of (and if we use an OSD for them, we would have to
> deactivate it when playing our own library... although there
> could be some option for the OSDs to only use it for
> radios... but again, simply shortening the title would be
> quite enough...). There may also be an option to even switch
> its position to the end of the title... Well, actually, the
> best would simply to be able to configure the entire title,
> so we can chose what to put in it.
I changed that one time, but the previous maintainer didn't
like it... maybe I can try again without him noticing ;)
The title configuration is a bit overkill, imho. Maybe flatten
(replace newlines by " - ") the main display pattern and use
that.
> ● It's difficult to manage the list of library directories to
> scan... it should be a normal list, with add/remove buttons,
> not a colon separated string which is reset if we select
> anything in the directory selection dialog.
Agreed. Has been long on my todo list.
> ● At least for radios, but probably in the other views too,
> when there is a very long title, it is shortened in the
> middle using the ellipsis "...". If the title bar is long
> enough, we can view the title entirely there, but its still a
> bit uncertain. Is there any way to show the complete title,
> even if very long, at its normal location? If there is no
> modifier to <title> or an alternative tag for this (I can't
> seem to find anything about it in the documentation), there
> should be. Even when an ellipsis is used, there should be a
> tooltip with the complete value.
Tooltip sounds like a good idea.
> ● Reset the connection error status icon for Internet radios,
> when restarting Quod Libet? For many radios, temporary errors
> are quite common, and it's quite useless and confusing to
> have connection error icons on half the radios...
Maybe reset if it was successfully played next time. That would
work for everything.
> ● Paned browser: default to listing all songs in the library,
> instead of having to click "All" every time.
Browsers don't change the main song list when switching to them.
We had some discussion recently about improving that. Should be
in 2.5.
> ● Paned browser: I click on "All" to view All current songs.
> Then I add a few new folders: the new songs are not displayed
> until I click again on "All" (they are properly listed live
> as album/artist/genre, however).
Fixed in 2.4 (this works now in all browsers)
> ● Switching from the Playlist view (with a playlist
> selected), to the Paned Browser view, only the songs from the
> playlist we selected will be visible, even though "All" is
> selected in each pane and we should thus see all the songs in
> our library.
Same problem.
> ● Button to randomize the play queue immediately, in addition
> to the current checkbox. Sometimes we want to randomize the
> current play queue (or even only just a number of selected
> songs... maybe include this a right-click menu on selected
> songs), but then add other songs to play them in order
> afterward.
Queue plugins..
> ● I'd like the 'Order' option to be more or less view
> specific. For example, I want it to be "In Order" for the
> "Internet Radio" view (so I can get automatically to the next
> mirror of some radio in case of a problem, if there are
> multiple ones and it's not already the last), but "Shuffle"
> for the "Paned Browser".
Uh.. I think that would be confusing for most people.
> ● Internet Radio view: confusing that the Music menu in the
> menu bar has nothing to do with adding radio stations. We
> currently have to use the "New Station" button under the
> playing controls... There should be a new entry in this main
> menu, with the "Add x" entries, like "Add a Radio Station".
OK.
> ○ The button may be kept though (there is enough room for
> it), unless replaced by something else.
>
>
> ● "New Station" dialog: the "Stations..." button is not clear
> enough. There should at least be a tooltip telling it is
> about finding a station in some list. But there is far enough
> room to change it's text too, to something like "Station
> list...", or "Find a station..." (BTW the "New Station"
> dialog should be resizable... small URL text boxes can be
> quite annoying when editing an URL manually...).
That button is gone now.
> ○ And this button should probably not close the "New Station"
> dialog... if I started writing/pasting a URL, when wanted to
> check the list just for information, and then cancel the list
> dialog, I'll have to go back on clicking the "New Station"
> button and rewrite/paste the URL I originally wanted...
> However, you probably should close it if the user adds
> stations through the list dialog, *and* the station URL is
> empty. You may also possibly close it before the user adds
> stations if the URL was empty, but this would still be a bit
> peculiar. The most classical behavior would be for the list
> dialog to simply fill the URL in the "New Station" dialog, or
> to fuse the two dialogs (only showing the list if some
> "Stations..." button is clicked).
All gone...
Please check out 2.3.92 (2.4 beta 2) or trunk (which now has a
output device selector, yay!)
========================================
========================================
... And here is my reply to him (i.e., unindented text is mine):
Hi,
Thanks for your reply.
>
> > ● Apparently no option to show the track number padded with
> > 0s. Even existing padding in the metadata gets removed,
> > like in Rhythmbox...
>
> Show where? It gets padded in the file renamer. I can't think
> of another place that matters.
>
Paned browser track field (and probably in other views too). I
like having padded numbers there... Well I won't insist, it's
really mostly cosmetic, and it can be less readable.
>
> .. overall: my time is limited, there are only two people
> working in QL and, as you probably can imagine, I mostly like
> to work on things I care about.
>
I perfectly understand this, it's really just my own experience
with the software, if it can be of any use :) Semi-amateur
partial usability test at my own initiative, or something like
this.
>
> So I would suggest, after I finished the second part, you
> post this to the mailing list.
>
I'll post it (with your replies, as they already answer to many
notes) in a few minutes, but I prefer not to stay
subscribed, even without email subscription, so if there is any
need, I'll have to be CC-ed (I'll specify it in my message).
>
> > ● I'd like the 'Order' option to be more or less view
> > specific. For example, I want it to be "In Order" for the
> > "Internet Radio" view (so I can get automatically to the
> > next mirror of some radio in case of a problem, if there are
> > multiple ones and it's not already the last), but "Shuffle"
> > for the "Paned Browser".
>
> Uh.. I think that would be confusing for most people.
>
Well, I would think the radio view at least would be considered
as quite independent by most people, and the use case I gave as
an example seems to me as being quite classical... (when
listening to radios which regularly time out, at least, or not
limiting upload enough for some other software running at the
same time). But yeah, for all the other views, I wouldn't mind
if it was kept merged.
>
> Please check out 2.3.92 (2.4 beta 2) or trunk (which now has a
> output device selector, yay!)
>
2.3.92 is in Gentoo now actually, I'll possibly check it out,
but in the short term, I'm really content with QL (and I used
quite a few other players before it, most notably XMMS, Amarok,
and Rhythmbox, but I tested many others), so all is good :)
Thanks again to everyone who contributed to Quod Libet,
Good luck and bye!
========================================
receiving new messages by email, so if you need me to reply, and it
does not take too much time, you will need to CC me. Otherwise, I'll
simply check the web archive once in a while.
AS: I sent this email to Christoph Reiter a few days ago, and while he
has already fully answered to many notes, he suggested I should still
post it here, so others could possibly pitch in.
Hi,
I started using Quod Libet 2.3 last year, and as I do regularly, I
noted various problems I encountered, and suggestions I could make.
There is about 2700 words for about 30 notes and 15 subnotes.
I suppose you know most of what I wrote already, and some things may
have already been solved since, but it's my experience with Quod
Libet, and I hope there can be some use for it :)
Feel free to contact me if you need some clarification, if it does not
take too much time.
Thanks for Quod Libet,
Good luck in the future,
Bye!
========================================
Here are my notes, with all the replies by Christoph Reiter (i.e.,
unindented text is by Christoph Reiter):
>
> ● I'm using quodlibet-2.3 and quodlibet-plugins-2.3, under a
> more or less updated Gentoo GNU/Linux system.
>
> ● No way to get a progress bar showed permanently, and to
> have the elapsed/remaining duration at the same time as we
> desire? It currently generally covers some metadata under it,
> it's ugly, and often too small, if we want to seek precisely
> in a song... It may be an option, like "Show extended
> progress bar", to show a full width progress bar above the
> search bar, with some options to show the elapsed time on the
> left, and the remaining time on the right.
AFAIR banshee now has something like a progress bar with a
handle on the right side to make it bigger. I guess that's a
good idea.
Regarding showing it always: I would accept a patch to have a
alternative control area that can be changed in the settings.
I personally couldn't care less for it, since 99,999% of the
time I'm not seeking, but listening. (and the other time I'm
using the scrollwheel on the button).
I was thinking about changing the default to show the remaining
time instead of the elapsed (That's the first thing I change in
QL)
> ● No way to show the album cover between the control buttons
> and the textual tags? (like in most file browsers). The
> picture is a bit isolated on the right, when we increase the
> size of the window. We can quite easily modify how the
> textual tags are displayed, which is very nice, but the cover
> is not included, and I do not see anything else to modify its
> location.
Imho it looks better now, but that's my opinion, ask in the ML..
> ● Apparently no option to show the track number padded with
> 0s. Even existing padding in the metadata gets removed, like
> in Rhythmbox...
Show where? It gets padded in the file renamer. I can't think of
another place that matters.
> ● Some small display bugs of the playing icon in playlists
> (it stays under some conditions showed on tracks previously
> played... it disappears on a simple mouse over), and of the
> remaining duration when changing track.
This is fixed.
> ● No "Repeat One" option... forced to create a playlist or to
> isolate the song with the search box. An option should be
> added in the right-click menu of the play button, and in the
> right-click menu of songs in the playlist/browser and in the
> queue.
Select "One Song" in the playorder and check the repeat
checkbox.
> ○ Also no "Repeat Queue" option. To simply repeat a few
> independent songs (i.e., no simple album filtering or search
> keywords), it is far more easy than having to create a
> temporary playlist, and then having to remove it afterward.
Well, a list of song that stays and get repeated is a playlist.
QL isn't playlist centric player.
But the queue is probably going to get some plugin support, so
that might possible then.
> ○ Ok in fact there is a "One Song" option in the 'Order'
> dropdown menu at the bottom of the main window... Not very
> intuitive, and when the window is too close to the bottom of
> the screen, the list gets cut with a scrollbar, so it's easy
> to miss, as it's the last option. There should be more ways
> to discover this option as said above.
That's how GTK+ handles comboboxes. So that you don't select
somethign different if you just click on it (the current active
has to be under the mouse cursor)
> ● We cannot modify anything from Internet radio tags except
> their titles? We should be able to override everything,
> including removing tags defined by the radio, and locking any
> future update from them (i.e., I want to be able to set my
> own tags precisely for the radios I listen to, and not have
> anything broken if the radio modifies the tags it sends, or
> if it sends something bogus to begin with, like a bad Genre,
> preventing me from easily searching through them...).
It's just there to prevent s.o. editing things that get reset
afterward anyway. I think we can agree that autofilling tags is
useful in this case.
There could be an option to lock auto updates...
> ○ And the file ~/.quodlibet/stations is in a binary format,
> so we cannot easily edit it. It should be in a text-only
> format, and if you want a more optimized format for when we
> have a lot of radios, you could generate the binary format
> from the text format, as a cache file.
Ok, would be possible.
> ○ The title should be modifiable directly from the station
> list (F2, standard rename keyboard shortcut, right-click menu
> entry, and some menu entry in the menubar).
That would be nice, yes. But would need quite some work atm.
> ○ The URL should be editable in place, without changing
> anything else to the metadata (e.g., simple radio IP change).
We could enable the rename file window maybe..
As a side note: QL wasn't build with radio streams / cue sheets
in mind. Most things are based on local files, so there are
many hacks atm, and some things don't work as expected.
> ● The list of displayed columns is shared among all views...
> Yet we may want different columns (e.g., for Internet radios,
> I would like to add the bitrate and audio format, and remove
> the Artist column which is empty... -why are the other
> columns removed? My Internet radios specified an empty artist
> tag, and it is displayed instead of being stripped? I don't
> see any Artist tag being shown when using right clicking =>
> Edit Tags).
There is a bugreport about having columns for each browser,
yes. But no one has find the time to do it.
In 2.4, artist shows website and title, organizer in the song
list, so the list at least shows something by default. That's a
workaround atm. The column removing is also a workaround.
> ○ Bizarrely, the column order is not shared. So I suppose
> there is already some code to separate them. There would be a
> need to modify the song list preference tab, though.
The problem is there is no code :)
> ○ The column sorting is shared. Again, we may want different
> things in different views, so it should be independent.
Yeah, same problem.
> ● In the radio view, when I add a title tag on a station I
> just added, it is not sorted automatically. It stays at the
> first position of the list. I have to click twice on the
> Title column so it gets sorted.
Yes, I thought about that. The problem is if you missed
something or do something with the selection again, it might be
spread across the whole list after editing.
> ● When editing tags from Quod Libet, there is no Save+Close
> button, to close the tag editing window immediately, instead
> of requiring an additional click on the window close button.
There is a bit of a space problem there..
> ● Can't modify Saved Values for search. We have to have to
> click the "Add" button, and then remove the old one.
Yeah, that's annoying. Probably replace the Add with New and
change the selected one while typing in the entries.
> ○ We should also be able to organize Saved Values with
> folders and separators. I have quite a number of saved
> searches, and it's quite hard to use currently. Saved
> searches should have their own view, similar to the playlist
> view, only showing the name (but enabling to easily edit the
> search if needed, and add new ones from this view).
Should be a plugin (once we get a plugin menu in the main menu)
> ● When removing a saved search from the "Saved Value" window,
> select the next one, so we can easily click multiple times on
> the remove button to remove multiple searches, without having
> to move the mouse so much (if using the keyboard too, we sure
> can use the delete key). We should also be able to select
> multiple searches to remove them all in one click (classical
> shift and ctrl keys for range/multiple selections).
OK.
So, need to go to bed now... will continue tomorrow.
.. overall: my time is limited, there are only two people
working in QL and, as you probably can imagine, I mostly like
to work on things I care about. So I would suggest, after I
finished the second part, you post this to the mailing list.
Also I would suggest you try the 2.4 beta or trunk. See the
Downloads section in the wiki. If you have 2.3 installed you
already have all dependencies, so you can simply run it from
source (no compiling, installing etc..).
There is for example the new internet radio browser and some
radio tag enhancements etc..
http://www.student.tugraz.at/christoph.reiter/ql-changelog/ql_2.3.99.html
> ● We cannot use '/' at all in searches as a string, without
> quotes (requiring complete matching). Using \/ does not work
> (search in red, syntax error). Using // seems to be
> considered as an empty regex, and as apparently Quod Libet
> does not support using multiple types of formats for one
> match (surely not really useful), it ignores the rest of the
> string, and matches everything. For \/ to work, we have to
> use it in a regular expression. Surely minor when we know it,
> but still unecessary and a bit confusing. In fact, as Quod
> Libet does not support using multiple types of formats, it
> might as well be permitted without escaping, as long as its
> not the first character. This would be cleaner for matching a
> few subdirectories (e.g., I want things like "~dirname =
> music/flac/best").
Yes, annoying. You can fall back to the exact match ~dirname =
"/blah/foo".
> ● There should be keyboard shortcuts for views. Currently, we
> have either to use Alt+v,x (by the way, 'p' is used twice,
> for "Playlists" and "Paned Browser"), or to use an external
> keyboard shortcut manager, and call "quodlibet
> --set-browser=BrowserName" (its not absolutely clear we have
> to use CamelCase, in spite of the example... the man page
> should read "Set the current browser, as listed in the View
> menu, in CamelCase format (e.g., InternetRadio)".
You can set a shortcut for every menu item (providing you
enabled can_change_accels in GTK+).
--set-browser=1..X also works (I think the other one is a
fallback)
good catch with the double 'p'.. needs fixing
> ● When we sort songs by track or disc, the column name is cut
> because the sorting arrow takes more room than available, but
> we cannot increase the width of these two columns, so its
> quite ugly and confusing. We should be able to resize all
> columns.
In GTK+ you can choose between auto mode (which imho works most
of the time) and set all columns manually.
I planned to add a checkbox in the context menu to switch
between those modes. The manual mode will lead to a list bigger
than the window, and wont change when you resize the window,
but allows restoring widths etc.
Maybe GTK+3 is better in that area, but the python bindings for
aren't ready.
> ○ There is also a bug which cause all columns to be fixed,
> except in the Internet Radio view... I'm not sure how it
> happened while I was testing... After a few more view
> switching an resizing attempts, it worked again... (but not
> for the disc and track columns, so I suppose this is
> intended).
Maybe GTK+3 is better in that area.
> ● No saved searches, nor even search history, for the
> Internet Radio view? No search at all for the File System and
> Playlist views?
iRadio is fixed in 2.4, Playlists/FSView support inline
searches.
> ● When I add a radio station which propose a playlist
> grouping multiple streams, Quod Libet allow me to chose which
> to include, which can be nice, but then it adds them
> individually, and I suppose never use the original playlist
> again. Considering these lists are often use to add or remove
> mirrors, when some appear or are not available anymore, this
> is a bit limited.
That's because QL is file based, and playlist don't quite fit
with everything. It's probably fixable somehow..
> ○ There should also be some support for grouping radios in a
> folder (easily playable without having to open it and select
> a mirror ourselves manually... a double-click, notably,
> should play a mirror... for opening the folder, it would be
> some right-click menu entry...), as mirrors of a single
> station, with some option, to either use them in order, or
> randomly each time (with some options to prefer mirrors with
> higher quality formats and higher bitrates... well, probably
> a bit complex to manage... at least allow some mirrors not to
> be used except if all the others do not respond...), and to
> associate the next/previous buttons either as "next/previous
> mirror" buttons, or as "next/previous station" buttons, and
> probably support keyboard shortcuts for both if people want...
same prob..
> • Don't only group automatically by title if you want to
> support it. We may add the mirror name in the title, so names
> could be different. Well, if we could edit all tags and add
> some comment tag, and display this column without having to
> display it in all the other views, this could be enough.
>
> ○ Managing all this may be a bit complex, with a separate
> window to manage mirror playlists, and non-intrusive alerts
> when a mirror is added or removed from these playlists (so
> the use can chose to add the new mirror to his list, or
> remove one if it really does not work anymore or for some
> other reason -it should not be removed automatically... it
> can happen that the playlist is dynamic and sends different
> mirrors sometimes, or things like that...). But it would
> really improve radio management, even when we have few of
> them, but when they all have a few mirrors, notably when we
> often switch between each of them.
I would prefer a more transparent solution like autoswitching
between mirrors on error.
> ● To develop the Internet Radio management, there could be
> some option to switch automatically between all or some
> stations (and not just to a new mirror of the same station of
> course... e.g., when we want to diversify the genres without
> having to switch manually regularly, or limit ourselves to
> more general radio stations), after some number of songs or
> some time (but always by cutting at the end of a song).
Should be easy as a plugin now. 2.4 supports event for that.
> ○ If there is no standard for Quod Libet to know when the
> current song will end, there could be an option to delay the
> stream by like 10 seconds, so Quod Libet could try to connect
> beforehand (in case of long connection time, or unavailable
> mirror), and smooth the station switching... Well, the
> 10-second delay would rapidly shrink as Quod Libet switches
> between stations, though...
Not sure if that's easy with the gstreamer backend..
> ○ If there is any standard to detect jingles, advertisings
> (maybe as an option...), and animator talks, or at least
> manually by specifying which title they use for these things
> (if they don't use the title of the previous or next song,
> and if they do change the title at all...), Quod Libet could
> also be configured to switch the station immediately (and
> again, not just to a new mirror of course).
There is a plugin in 2.4 to mute ads. It's nor configurable
atm. and only supports di.fm/sky.fm.
Feel free to submit titles. Switching could be an option.
> ● In the Internet Radio view, we can still chose to display
> the remaining time... If there is no standard to know when
> the current song ends for Internet radios, it should only
> allow to display the elapsed time (and restore to remaining
> time, if it's what we chose for the other views).
Some stations send a song duration.. some send crap.. but,
yeah, could be improved (the reset after pausing etc..)
> ● "Quod Libet" is too long in the window titlebar, in
> taskbars... we generally can only see a small part of the
> song title, and have to restore/focus the window to see it
> fully (or use a complete OSD or some desktop panel widget,
> but this should not be necessary)... There should be some
> option to shorten it to "QL". It's particularly useful for
> radios, with possibly a lot of songs we don't know the title
> of (and if we use an OSD for them, we would have to
> deactivate it when playing our own library... although there
> could be some option for the OSDs to only use it for
> radios... but again, simply shortening the title would be
> quite enough...). There may also be an option to even switch
> its position to the end of the title... Well, actually, the
> best would simply to be able to configure the entire title,
> so we can chose what to put in it.
I changed that one time, but the previous maintainer didn't
like it... maybe I can try again without him noticing ;)
The title configuration is a bit overkill, imho. Maybe flatten
(replace newlines by " - ") the main display pattern and use
that.
> ● It's difficult to manage the list of library directories to
> scan... it should be a normal list, with add/remove buttons,
> not a colon separated string which is reset if we select
> anything in the directory selection dialog.
Agreed. Has been long on my todo list.
> ● At least for radios, but probably in the other views too,
> when there is a very long title, it is shortened in the
> middle using the ellipsis "...". If the title bar is long
> enough, we can view the title entirely there, but its still a
> bit uncertain. Is there any way to show the complete title,
> even if very long, at its normal location? If there is no
> modifier to <title> or an alternative tag for this (I can't
> seem to find anything about it in the documentation), there
> should be. Even when an ellipsis is used, there should be a
> tooltip with the complete value.
Tooltip sounds like a good idea.
> ● Reset the connection error status icon for Internet radios,
> when restarting Quod Libet? For many radios, temporary errors
> are quite common, and it's quite useless and confusing to
> have connection error icons on half the radios...
Maybe reset if it was successfully played next time. That would
work for everything.
> ● Paned browser: default to listing all songs in the library,
> instead of having to click "All" every time.
Browsers don't change the main song list when switching to them.
We had some discussion recently about improving that. Should be
in 2.5.
> ● Paned browser: I click on "All" to view All current songs.
> Then I add a few new folders: the new songs are not displayed
> until I click again on "All" (they are properly listed live
> as album/artist/genre, however).
Fixed in 2.4 (this works now in all browsers)
> ● Switching from the Playlist view (with a playlist
> selected), to the Paned Browser view, only the songs from the
> playlist we selected will be visible, even though "All" is
> selected in each pane and we should thus see all the songs in
> our library.
Same problem.
> ● Button to randomize the play queue immediately, in addition
> to the current checkbox. Sometimes we want to randomize the
> current play queue (or even only just a number of selected
> songs... maybe include this a right-click menu on selected
> songs), but then add other songs to play them in order
> afterward.
Queue plugins..
> ● I'd like the 'Order' option to be more or less view
> specific. For example, I want it to be "In Order" for the
> "Internet Radio" view (so I can get automatically to the next
> mirror of some radio in case of a problem, if there are
> multiple ones and it's not already the last), but "Shuffle"
> for the "Paned Browser".
Uh.. I think that would be confusing for most people.
> ● Internet Radio view: confusing that the Music menu in the
> menu bar has nothing to do with adding radio stations. We
> currently have to use the "New Station" button under the
> playing controls... There should be a new entry in this main
> menu, with the "Add x" entries, like "Add a Radio Station".
OK.
> ○ The button may be kept though (there is enough room for
> it), unless replaced by something else.
>
>
> ● "New Station" dialog: the "Stations..." button is not clear
> enough. There should at least be a tooltip telling it is
> about finding a station in some list. But there is far enough
> room to change it's text too, to something like "Station
> list...", or "Find a station..." (BTW the "New Station"
> dialog should be resizable... small URL text boxes can be
> quite annoying when editing an URL manually...).
That button is gone now.
> ○ And this button should probably not close the "New Station"
> dialog... if I started writing/pasting a URL, when wanted to
> check the list just for information, and then cancel the list
> dialog, I'll have to go back on clicking the "New Station"
> button and rewrite/paste the URL I originally wanted...
> However, you probably should close it if the user adds
> stations through the list dialog, *and* the station URL is
> empty. You may also possibly close it before the user adds
> stations if the URL was empty, but this would still be a bit
> peculiar. The most classical behavior would be for the list
> dialog to simply fill the URL in the "New Station" dialog, or
> to fuse the two dialogs (only showing the list if some
> "Stations..." button is clicked).
All gone...
Please check out 2.3.92 (2.4 beta 2) or trunk (which now has a
output device selector, yay!)
========================================
========================================
... And here is my reply to him (i.e., unindented text is mine):
Hi,
Thanks for your reply.
>
> > ● Apparently no option to show the track number padded with
> > 0s. Even existing padding in the metadata gets removed,
> > like in Rhythmbox...
>
> Show where? It gets padded in the file renamer. I can't think
> of another place that matters.
>
Paned browser track field (and probably in other views too). I
like having padded numbers there... Well I won't insist, it's
really mostly cosmetic, and it can be less readable.
>
> .. overall: my time is limited, there are only two people
> working in QL and, as you probably can imagine, I mostly like
> to work on things I care about.
>
I perfectly understand this, it's really just my own experience
with the software, if it can be of any use :) Semi-amateur
partial usability test at my own initiative, or something like
this.
>
> So I would suggest, after I finished the second part, you
> post this to the mailing list.
>
I'll post it (with your replies, as they already answer to many
notes) in a few minutes, but I prefer not to stay
subscribed, even without email subscription, so if there is any
need, I'll have to be CC-ed (I'll specify it in my message).
>
> > ● I'd like the 'Order' option to be more or less view
> > specific. For example, I want it to be "In Order" for the
> > "Internet Radio" view (so I can get automatically to the
> > next mirror of some radio in case of a problem, if there are
> > multiple ones and it's not already the last), but "Shuffle"
> > for the "Paned Browser".
>
> Uh.. I think that would be confusing for most people.
>
Well, I would think the radio view at least would be considered
as quite independent by most people, and the use case I gave as
an example seems to me as being quite classical... (when
listening to radios which regularly time out, at least, or not
limiting upload enough for some other software running at the
same time). But yeah, for all the other views, I wouldn't mind
if it was kept merged.
>
> Please check out 2.3.92 (2.4 beta 2) or trunk (which now has a
> output device selector, yay!)
>
2.3.92 is in Gentoo now actually, I'll possibly check it out,
but in the short term, I'm really content with QL (and I used
quite a few other players before it, most notably XMMS, Amarok,
and Rhythmbox, but I tested many others), so all is good :)
Thanks again to everyone who contributed to Quod Libet,
Good luck and bye!
========================================
Nick B
Feb 12, 2012, 8:32:47 AM2/12/12
to quod-libet-...@googlegroups.com, mat...@kawagama.net
On 09/02/12 14:34, Mathieu Bonnet wrote:
> AS: I sent this email to Christoph Reiter a few days ago, and while he
> has already fully answered to many notes, he suggested I should still
> post it here, so others could possibly pitch in.
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I started using Quod Libet 2.3 last year, and as I do regularly, I
> noted various problems I encountered, and suggestions I could make.
> There is about 2700 words for about 30 notes and 15 subnotes.
> AS: I sent this email to Christoph Reiter a few days ago, and while he
> has already fully answered to many notes, he suggested I should still
> post it here, so others could possibly pitch in.
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I started using Quod Libet 2.3 last year, and as I do regularly, I
> noted various problems I encountered, and suggestions I could make.
> There is about 2700 words for about 30 notes and 15 subnotes.
Some interesting points and Christoph has already supplied detailed
answers. Overall what I'm taking from this is:
* You'd like a lot of Internet Radio improvements
* Columns / ordering / views / menus could reconfigure depending on
current browser
* Some play-order enhancements / plugins (see also Issues 894, 903)
* The progress-bar debate is back (See Issue 204)
* GTK+ (2.x at least) isn't perfect
There are a lot of points mentioned, so please raise a feature/fix
request for any of these (or others) you feel strongly about, so we can
track development:
http://code.google.com/p/quodlibet/issues/entry?template=Feature%20request%20from%20user
Thanks
Nick
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