Re: [Muine] Song information dialog

[Jorn Baayen <jbaayen gnome org>]

Heya.

Alright, finally. Sorry for the - extreme - delay.

The Reply:
==========

> Jorn Baayen <jbaayen dds nl> wrote:
> > > > > > 1. It will be read-only, we won't do tagging. Tagging is
> > > > > > something that belongs in a tagging app, which will be much
> > > > > > better at doing the job.
> 
> Hmmm... because of "direct manipulation" considerations I personally
> always thought that it would actually be a good thing to provide
> tag-manipulation functionality with music players that work with some kind
> of music library; well, at least if it can be integrated in an
> non-obtrusive way.

You're probably right. Although in the ideal case, people would only
have legally ripped music, which generally means correct tags. That
sort-of is the kind of user I am aiming at with Muine. 

> The editing functionality wouldn't need to be suitable for mass-tagging of
> files (that's *really* functionality that belongs inside a separate app);
> however, it would for example provide an easy way to rename single album
> or track titles (e.g. to fix spelling errors) or to add some missing
> information (e.g. year of release).

Agreed. We first need a tag editing backend for that, though. 

> 
> UI-wise there could perhaps be a button in the Album Information dialog
> (also see below) that would bring up a dialog similar to the following:
> 
>   http://brokenbits.de/lars/cruft/edit-album-tab1.png
>   http://brokenbits.de/lars/cruft/edit-album-tab2.png
>   http://brokenbits.de/lars/cruft/edit-album-tab3.png

I really like these .. I've added links to these shots to the TODO list.

> 
> > > > > > 2. We want it to display the following information, at least:
> > > > > > - Song title
> > > > > > - Song artists
> > > > > > - Song performers, if any
> > > > > > - Year of release
> 
> One might think about whether individual tracks really need their own info
> dialog... anyway, here is a simple mockup of how such a dialog may look
> like:
> 
>   http://brokenbits.de/lars/cruft/track-info.png
> 
> (Perhaps it would be better to also prefix the title and the artist
> accordingly and perhaps to right-align the prefixes.)

I think we do need something like this. Because not all tracks have an
album associated to them. But this raises the question.. what do we do
when a user asks information on the playing song? Do we launch the
single track dialog, or the album info dialog, with the tracks tab
opened and the playing track selected? Or do we make it depend on
whether the song has an associated album or not?

> 
> > > > > > Then, what do we do with the associated album information?
> > > > > > - Cover image
> > > > > > - Album tracks
> 
> Another mockup using only standard Gtk widgets:
> 
>   http://brokenbits.de/lars/cruft/album-info.png

I like the earlier one better..

> 
> (The mockup doesn't include the "Edit Album..." Button mentioned above.)
> 
> The small-print section below the title would also be the place to display
> other secondary information like "Performed by..." for example.
> 
> For albums with tracks by different artists it would also make sense to
> display the artist alongside the tracks I think.

Yeap.

> 
> > > > A thing we need to decide on:
> > > > Say, the user selects a song, calls the info window. We show song info,
> > > > alright, but what do we do with the album info? do we put like a
> > > > separator under the straight song info and then put the album info? or a
> > > > link to the album info? or a button?
> 
> As I said, perhaps a thing that should be decided first is: is there
> really any need for a separate Track Info dialog?

See above.


Again, my apologies for the delay. Thanks for all the work, this is
exactly what I needed- thanks a lot!

Jorn