Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Shuffle is really Random?

[Colin Walters <walters verbum org>]

On Sun, 2003-08-17 at 22:46, jorge o. castro wrote:
> Guys,
> 
> Great job on .5, it's a great release and the first one that's really
> been rock solid for me.

Glad you like it!

> I've been listening to music all day and I think I found a bug at worst,
> a discrepancy at best. 
> 
> The shuffle checkbox doesn't shuffle, it randomizes. 

Yeah, it randomizes about as stupidly as possible :)

> What is the intended behaviour?

The intended behavior is as you describe with the stereo shuffle.  The
problem is that it's somewhat difficult to implement, for reasons
relating to both the node system and the current UI.

First of all, not repeating songs implies you need to keep track of
which you've played.  And to do that with the current node system, you
need to at *least* handle deletions.  This is only slightly tricky; you
have to attach a signal handler for NODE_DESTROY.  But even more
complicated is handling additions - or do we want to?

And actually, there is a more fundamental problem - what to do when the
user changes the view filter?  Do you clear the list of played songs and
start playing from current filtered view?  If not, then when do you
clear the list?

And because of this, I think the issue ties in a lot with the real
"playlist" that people have been wanting to see - i.e. an explicit list
of songs to be played in order.  If that was implemented, then our
"randomization base" would be quite clear.

>  I haven't found anything in bugzilla
> about this but I can file a bug if need be.

Yeah, that'd be a good idea.  If you do I'll paste my above comments in
there.