Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Command line feature suggestions

[Adam Theo <theo theoretic com>]

Adam J.Kaplan wrote:

> > 1. An "absolute" volume control, so I can start the music off at 0 
> > (or muted), and then slowly fade it up or down gradually. Perhaps 
> > replace the CLI '--volume-up' and '--volume-down' args with 
> > '--volume=%', being a percentage volume to play at. Example: 
> > 'rhythmbox --volume=30%'.
>
>
> I like this feature.  A .rythmbox file would be probably be better for 
> most purposes though.  I may look into adding a --volume type option 
> as first patch soon.


Thanks, although in response to your concerns about request #2, instead 
of using percentages as I'd originally thought, use simple integers 
instead, on a range of 0 (muted) to 9 or 10. Then you could do relative 
volume control with '--volume=+2', and not run into the percentages problem.

> > 3. Allow certain playlists, songs, or sources to be played from the 
> > command line, so I can start playing a internet radio stream or a 
> > local music file upon command. How to refernce this from the command 
> > line is tricky, I suppose, since trying to use the display name of 
> > the file would be complex. Perhaps instead allow the user to specify 
> > the number of the source from a certain view. Like 'rhythmbox 
> > --play-file=Radio/Title/3', which would play the 3rd file listed by 
> > Title in the Radio section. Messy, I know, but it's the best I could 
> > think of unless Rhythmbox already identifies each file somehow. Or 
> > perhaps simplify it by only allowing playlists to be started from the 
> > command line.
>
>
> Definitely a valid idea.  Many other media players have this capability.

The more I play around with Rhythmbox and think about it, the harder it 
is to think of a solution. Only allowing playlists to be started from 
the command line could work very well from a user interface POV, but you 
can have multiple playlists named the same thing (two or more playlists 
called "Wakeup", for example), which prevents us from using the playlist 
name as a unique identifier.

And the "number by list order" is just too messy from a user interface 
POV. It would just confuse everyone. This problem would be solved if 
each song or stream was uniquely identified in Rhythmbox, and easily 
viewed by users, so they could reference that to specify songs.

> I just upgraded my Ubuntu linux to the Hoary development branch which 
> broke some of the dependancies needed to compile Rhythmbox-devel 
> (specifically the Gnome and gtk libraries). Once I sort that out ill 
> look into making a patch for suggestion #1.

Thanks, I'll look out for it, and give it a try on my devel system, 
reporting back of course.

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