There really aren't advantages to the current method. It came about because originally playlists vanished when they reached the end, and were only viewable while playing (if you hit stop, it was treated as if there was no playlist, with the ideology being that when music is stopped, resuming re-loads the playlisted songs, matching more or less what happens on a technical level). As a convenience, it was added that the playlist is preserved to be viewable when it ends, but this was just added on to the old method, meaning there's no longer a consistent definition of when a playlist is available.
The debate on IRC was on a more or less peripherally related topic or two, but it seems most agree that the entire playback system could use more consistency in how the end of playlists are treated, as well as the playlist status when music is stopped. For example, if you reach the end of a playlist, you've already pointed out that you can still view it. But if you shut down the player, and bring it back on, you can't any more even though arguably you're just as stopped as you were before, and it's just as "previously" (or "currently" depending on your definition of the situation) playing as it was immediately before you shut down the player. This is inconsistent with the idea that the playlist should always be available (what things seem to be moving toward right now) and treated as "current" whether it's in-use or not.
Rockbox Technical Forums
Topic: End of playlist behaviour and resume from playback (Read 1764 times)