Re: [Muine] Song information dialog

[Lars Weber <lars brokenbits de>]

It's always tempting to hack up user interfaces with glade...

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.

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).

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

> > > > > 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.)

> > > > > 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

(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.

> > > 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?

Regards,
Lars