[Rhythmbox-devel] Feature suggestion: Random playback in the scope of albums

[Jan Rathmann <JanRathmann t-online de>]

Hello,

I have used Amarok before I switched to Rhythmbox (due to the much much 
better support of gapless playback), and there was one feature in Amarok 
that I liked very well and would love to see it also in Rhythmbox: 
Random playback for albums.

This works the following way:

- If enabled and the user clicks the play-button, a random album from 
the music collection (or playlist) is selected and played (in regular 
order of the tracks)
- If the last track from the album is over, another random album is 
selected and so on

Allthough I am not a very experienced programmer, I think I could try to 
implement this myself, since I suppose this might be a rather minor 
change/enhancement (or at least I hope so ;-) ). But I thought it would 
be a good idea to ask here first, if there is any chance at all that a 
feature like this might become integrated into Rhythmbox.

I also have already made up my mind about how this feature could be 
integrated in the GUI of Rhythmbox. In Amarok it is solved the way that 
there is a small icon in the lower window corner which toggles the 
current play mode between "normal" "random (song scope)" and "random 
(album scope)" when you click on it. This fits well to the user 
interface of Amarok, but I am not sure if it would also fit to the one 
of Rhythmbox. Maybe it could be solved by adding a additional button 
next to the one that is already there to enable random playback, called 
"Play albums in random order" (or something like this). If this button 
is clicked, then the random-button for songs would automatically be 
"unpressed" if random song playback was enabled (and vice versa).

It would be great to hear what you think.

Kind regards,
Jan