Hi again, On Thu, 2004-02-26 at 16:07 -0800, Link Dupont wrote: > On Thu, 2004-02-26 at 14:32, Jorn Baayen wrote: > > Hi, > > > > On Thu, 2004-02-26 at 13:39 -0800, Link Dupont wrote: > > > > > Obviously all this is IMHO only, so I'm not going to interject that > > > elsewhere in my comments. > > > > > > On Thu, 2004-02-26 at 09:55, Jorn Baayen wrote: > > > > Hi, > > > > > > > > I've been paving the way for getting a song/album information window > > > > in.. but I can't figure out a design. Ideas/help would be most welcome. > > > > > > > > Some things: > > > > 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. > > > > (I've been planning to write a decent tagger supporting multiple artists > > > > for a while..) > > > > > > Yes! A decent tagging app is much needed in my opinion. Something that > > > has a nice UI and can do advanced batch tagging (like easytag, only with > > > an infinitely better UI). I've hacked up a little tagger I call > > > musictag[0] (goes along with my now-in-deep-hibernation music playing > > > program musicbox). > > > > Yeap. > > > > That thingie looks pretty neat- what formats does it support.. and what > > libs did you use..? > > Currently, it only reads/writes Vorbis tags, using libvorbis directly. > I've been meaning to install and learn gst 0.7's metadata API, but I've > never gotten around to it. K. > > > > > > > > 2. We want it to display the following information, at least: > > > > - Song title > > > > - Song artists > > > > - Song performers, if any > > > > - Year of release > > > > > > Genre? Or is genre going out of style/usage. > > > > I have no strong opinion here.. > > > > I think that when you are listening to a song there is no need to know > > what genre it is, as you know what kind of music you are listening to > > already anyway.. > > > > Also, I find genre information rather useless myself.. I have a lot of > > music that could be categorised as either progressive rock, > > instrumental, or jazz, or whatever more.. so whats the use then .. > > Of course, it works pretty well if you have a collection composed of > > both Mozart and trance, but I tend to think that's pretty rare .. > > > > But if the tag carries any real value to people I don't mind adding it. > > Good points about genre. It really is something I could live without. I > just use it because its there. The fact you use it does imply it has some use. What do you use it for exactly? > > > > > > > > Then, what do we do with the associated album information? > > > > - Cover image > > > > - Album tracks > > > > > > Yes I'd say both for albums. Maybe lay it out in a way similar to > > > Amazon's, with the album image, info, then track listing down below. > > > > Yea.. > > > > 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? > > What if when a user selects a song, it pulls up the nifty HTML-ish page > with an amazon-ish style layout. In the track listing, all songs that > the user has from the album are listed in bold, and the rest of the > tracks are normal black (OR, all tracks on the machine are black & > normal text, and songs that aren't there are greyed out). THis would > require downloading album info from a site, but it'd be kind cool when > hunting for a complete album... Neat for p2p overlords indeed.. but a bit much for muine I think. Also.. well, in my case, most of my albums are not even at Amazon. But then again, I have an odd taste .. I think we should just stick to the metadata we have available locally .. > > > > > > > > We could also have: > > > > - Link to the allmusic site, a link to a google query on the artist, > > > > whatever. > > > > > > > > Also, how will the user be able to call up the dialog? > > > > - From the tray? > > > > - From a menu in the playlist UI- but on the selected song or on the > > > > playing song? Selected song would be better probably, but all other > > > > items in the song menu work on the playing song .. > > > > - From the Add song/Add album windows? > > > > > > What about a small button somewhere with the light-bulb icon in it. Info > > > from the tray is fine as is, currently playing song title & artist. > > > It seems that both the light-bulb button &/| a "Song information" entry > > > in the Song menu would both be centered on the currently playing song, > > > and I think that's fine. > > > In the Add Song dialog, I'd consider adding in another light-bulb > > > button, but this button pulls up the dialog on the selected song. > > > Dare I suggest adding a right-click context menu to the playlist? > > > Frankly, I love the fact that Muine _doesn't_ have that, but it seems > > > like a logical place to put song info. > > > [ On second thought, I'd have the light-bulb button pull up the selected > > > song. The currently playing song info is displayed in the main UI > > > already. If the user wanted more information about it, would it make > > > sense to select it, then hit the info button? I'm leaving my other > > > comments above too, just in case it sparks anything. ] > > > > I think selected song makes me more sense indeed.. also, most of the > > time the playing song is selected anyway, so most of the time it would > > be that anyway. But yea, a button is a good idea.. but I think we > > should put it in the toolbar once we use one. (The idea is to use one > > once Gtk# supports the Gtk 2.3 APIs..) > > > > > > > > > I'd like to display it in an attractive form, basically like a webpage > > > > or something.. not like the xmms file info dialog for example. That > > > > would be a pain for multiple artists, it would imply editing, and most > > > > of all it is not an attractive way to read information about what you > > > > are listening to. > > > > > > I like the "webpage" concept rather than the GtkLabel/GtkEntry layout. > > > Maybe something like the GNOME About dialogs? Use some pretty pango font > > > markups and layout on a simple canvas. What about something kind of like > > > the actual GNOME About (right-click on gnome-panel, select "About > > > GNOME"). That might break UI conformity though. > > > > Yea, I started implementing something like that.. until I found out that > > you can't select text in a canvas :( Well, there is one canvas item that > > does support selection but it doesn't support markup. Blah ;) > > > > I also tried GtkHTML.. but it doesn't support CSS so doing a decent > > layout without evil hacks is a pain.. also, I had to do really ugly > > hacks to pass the cover image. Write it out to a tmp file and load it in > > again, etc. > > > > So what I did for now (Just a proof-of-concept dialog..) is just a > > GtkTable with widgets, in a scrolledwindow, but all given a white > > background. Looks neat, but you cant select the whole page for example.. > > feels a bit crappy :/ > > > > If anyone's got good suggestions for doing the layout technically > > speaking they'd be very welcome .. > > Got any mockup screenshots? They always help me visualize better. This isn't a mockup I'm attaching, but a screenshot of CVS. This is just to show what the GtkTable layout looks like. This is not at all what the end result will look like .. hopefully, anyway .. Cheers, Jorn > > > > > Thanks! > > > > Jorn > > > > _______________________________________________ > > muine-list mailing list > > muine-list gnome org > > http://lists.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/muine-list > -- > Link Dupont <link subpop net> > > _______________________________________________ > muine-list mailing list > muine-list gnome org > http://lists.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/muine-list
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