[Rhythmbox-devel] Jukebox playlist

[Thomas Lunde <tlunde mac com>]

Sorry that this is so long, but I came to the thread late.  


Please count me down as someone to is 95% happy with iTunes and wants to
switch to Linux full time.  Rb looks pretty darn good.  I've played with
it off and on since .40something.  The speed improvements have helped
greatly, and it is a really wonderful program, IMHO.

Please, please don't lose sight of the "fact" (?) that most folks who
will come to GNOME will have the intuition that there is one application
that should be able to handle their music playing needs.  Colin said:
"Well I think having two totally separate music players for the two
kinds of people kind of sucks."  (I think) he was talking about
Playlist'ers vs. Random'ers, but the same sort of intuition applies to
listening to music from my iPod vs. from a CD vs. from net.radio vs.
from my hard drive.  I realize that this cuts against the UNIX
philosophy of small, specialized tools.  But there is a lot in common in
all of these listening scenarios:  select, play, pause, volume, upcoming
choice, etc.

I dug a bit in the archives, but could not find the answer:
Colin -  why do you want to get rid of Sources?

Seth Hadley wrote:
>On a side note, being a Library "shuffle all" person, my only dislike
of
>the main display is the inability to create separate sources for
>personal files.  I have several audiobooks, and I find myself listening
>to Harry Potter Chapters in between my music, (not something I would
>suggest). It would be nice to force mp3's to be outside the "Library"
>and in there own source. This way I can continue having my Library as
my
>playlist (like most people).


As someone who is used to iTunes, I wondered why you didn't just create
an automatic playlist that excluded the Books (and probably) Christmas
genres.  So, I tried it -- I don't want to listen to HHGTTG any more
than you want to listen to Harry Potter.  Oops.

I didn't realize that, in RB, I'd lose the Browser and the ability to
sort by clicking on the column heads while looking at a playlist instead
of my Library.  Ugh.  In iTunes, the rest of the app's functionality is
the same whether you have selected the Library or a particular playlist
as the Source.

Do y'all take feature requests via bugzilla?  ;-)


As for a Jukebox (aka Party Shuffle) feature, I was all set to cheer on
Gisli's prototype -- until I read Dan8827's proposal.  A four vertical
pane approach:
a.  Controls and status
b.  Jukebox
c.  Browser
d.  Library

is, again IMHO, ideal.  (b), (c), and even (d) can be optionally turned
off to save screen real estate.  I have an old laptop with an 800x600
display.  I'd be perfect for parties showing (a) and (b) most of the
time and, when I want to add more music, either (c) or (d) to add songs
to (b).

Like Jorge, I started using Party Shuffle very heavily as soon as it was
available -- it makes so much sense, even flawed as it is to add songs t
-- and I'd really love to see such a feature added to RB.


Colin - in your reply to Gisli, you wrote:
>"Hm, interesting idea, but I don't think that there's enough space
there for
>having both the browser and play queue side by side.  I think we
>still want columns like the raing, etc in the play queue so people can
>easily rate the playing songs.

The four vertical pane approach deals with this nicely.  

In any case, how about adding a Rating widget that would sit in the (a)
area between the song name and the position slider.  If the window is
big enough, it fits easily into the otherwise dead space.  Also,
(perhaps) both it and the position slider (and the volume control? and
the track info?) could be optionally turned on/off.  In the View menu,
there would be items for: 
Display/Hide Song Information
Display/Hide Song Rating
Display/Hide Song Position
Display/Hide Volume Control

(Display or Hide would change, as appropriate, for the state of the
given UI.)

This echo's Seth's concern (and mine) that having the option of a very
small window is HUGE.  Having a Rating widget would allow the user to
continue rating songs while the Small Display is active.

Thanks for reading this far and for a great and growing application!
thomas