Rockbox Development > Feature Ideas

PictureFlow Improvement

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Avalon:
First of all, thanks to the developer(s) of PictureFlow.  If you enjoy playing albums as I do, it is a great way to quickly get to the album of choice.

I would like to suggest a couple of items if development is ongoing:

1.  The albums are aranged by album title and if you have many albums, it would help if they were ordered by artist/album.  I have changed the ID3 album tags to include artist & album, but this is inconvenient and complicates other ID3 tag uses.  It would help a lot if PictureFlow displayed the artist and album tag information in separate lines and ordered the album art by artist/album.

2.  I have read several forum entries suggesting a PictureFlow main menu item.  It appears that this may not happen, so I would like to offer a suggestion.  I usually configure my settings to have the start screen as "Previous Screen" or "Resume Playback".  If PictureFlow is running on shutdown, the start up screen becomes the "Plugins" screen or the WPS screen respectively.  Both require navigating back to the PictureFlow selection.  It would help on startup if "Previous Screen" was configured, then the selected PictureFlow screen would be the startup screen.  Also, if "Resume Playback" was configured, then the Pictureflow track list would be the startup screen if it was the previous playback screen.  As it is, the WPS screen is the startup screen.

3. Some way to toggle between WPS and PictureFlow would be nice.  Perhaps a quickmenu item which remembers the previous PictureFlow screen would be useful.  PictureFlow allows selection to go to WPS but there is no direct return route.  As a general enhancement for all items including PictureFlow, perhaps a "Previous Screen" selection would help a lot, similar to a TV remote.  It could be a key or a quickmenu item.

I would appreciate some indication as to whether these types of enhancements are being considered or have already been added to recent revisions.

Thankyou for reading this.

[Saint]:

--- Quote from: Avalon on January 01, 2010, 10:50:47 AM ---1.  The albums are arranged by album title and if you have many albums, it would help if they were ordered by artist/album.
--- End quote ---

I guess this depends entirely on which type of ordering you expect it to be in.

The people who expect it to be ordered alphabetically might not see eye to eye with this however.



--- Quote from: Avalon on January 01, 2010, 10:50:47 AM ---It would help a lot if PictureFlow displayed the artist and album tag information in separate lines and ordered the album art by artist/album.

--- End quote ---

Personally, I disagree.

Do you perhaps mean that "you yourself would find it usefull, and *possibly* some others may too", instead of "this is the way it should be"....?

A compromise could be a "Sort By" option in the settings that allowed the user to choose the sorting order (default *should* be alphabetically, by title in my opinion though), with various options for sorting to suit the users personal preference...


Just a suggestion,
[St.]


EDIT:


--- Quote from: Avalon on January 01, 2010, 10:50:47 AM ---If you enjoy playing albums as I do, it is a great way to quickly get to the album of choice.

--- End quote ---

Doesn't it take quite a few more menu selections (and as a result, more time) to navigate to a specific album using the Pictureflow plugin than it would to say navigate to the same album using the File or Database menu?

Avalon:
Thankyou for commenting.

Of course I agree.  The beauty of Rockbox (for me) is the variety of options and the ability to tailor them to the user preferences.

My comments only reflect what I would see as slight improvements for my use of the PictureFlow demo if it is to remain a demo and is not added in some way to the main menus.


--- Quote ---A compromise could be a "Sort By" option in the settings that allowed the user to choose the sorting order (default *should* be alphabetically, by title in my opinion though), with various options for sorting to suit the users personal preference...

--- End quote ---

Great idea!  The PictureFlow settings could have the option added to select if artist name is desired for display and sorting (alphabeticaly).


--- Quote ---Doesn't it take quite a few more menu selections (and as a result, more time) to navigate to a specific album using the Pictureflow plugin than it would to say navigate to the same album using the File or Database menu?
--- End quote ---

I agree...that was the reason for my comment.  Some may want to remain in PictureFlow when you power off/on to avoid having to navigate back to the last screen.  Since there is no way to directly get back to PictureFlow from the WPS, the last screen selection may be a way of doing this.  This may be useful for other demos and plugins as well....just a thought.





 

M_Koga:

--- Quote from: Avalon on January 02, 2010, 05:43:36 AM ---Some may want to remain in PictureFlow when you power off/on to avoid having to navigate back to the last screen.  Since there is no way to directly get back to PictureFlow from the WPS, the last screen selection may be a way of doing this.  This may be useful for other demos and plugins as well....just a thought.
--- End quote ---

I wonder what it would involve to include a primitive run-at-boot-time function? Not a batch processor, just something simple like CP/M used (it's been decades since I've played with CP/M, I've by now forgotten more than I ever knew), as I recall, there was a trick we used to stuff a SINGLE command into a buffer, which would be executed ONCE, the next time the OS booted.  (To invoke execution of multiple commands, we had to... boy, reaching way around to the back pages of my brain here... I think we had to take a list of commands, put them into a file in reverse-order, and then use the SUBMIT utility as the single boot-time command).

If it WAS possible to stuff a single command into a slot to be executed at boot time, then one user could have his player boot into Pictureflow, another could have his start out with the Clock display, and so forth.

torne:
You can do this already, but it's not compiled in by default. There's a #define to enable booting a plugin (with a specific name) automatically on start.

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