[Sansa Clip+] A better shortcut to return to WPS

[JdGordon]

Sorry, I was not aware of that.

So "short then long home" sounds like the best solution.

rockbox doesnt support that type of keypress generically which means it isnt going to work.

[Llorean]

Perhaps it should be considered for addition then. There's several devices that depend on combos for things where a short-long would be much easier for a user to interact with.

[JdGordon]

Not. A. Chance.
you really want *every* button press to be delayed while we wait and see if a double press is happening?

[Llorean]

Track skip certainly isn't delayed. In most cases you can perform the action that the short press performs, then if it's followed by a long, do that instead.

So that short+long home would wake you to the home menu (or back where you came from) then immediately to the WPS because of the interaction. This is more or less how it performed in the WPS last time I used it anyway - the short press would skip to the next track, but it didn't matter because it was immediately then moving on to the next folder.

While this allows the potential for some accidents, Rockbox already has plenty of that, and it will be entirely mitigated by intelligent keymap design while allowing for as much as a 50% increase in available keymaps within certain screens.

Thinks like Short+Long up/down to do paginated scrolling, rather than having to hold one button while pressing up or down would also be quite handy, for example.

[JdGordon]

then fix the keymap so long home from the main menu gets you to the wps which is exactly the same outcome

[Llorean]

Long home on its own already does something else. So it's not exactly the same outcome, at all.

[JdGordon]

would you just bloody take my word for it that what you propose isnt possible without quite a bit of work? you know, seen as I bloody write the action handling system?

[Llorean]

I didn't deny that it might take quite a bit of work. All I suggested was that it might be worth considering despite that for the benefits. Perhaps.

It's not my fault you didn't read the thread to the point where someone already suggested just using long home, and we already covered that it's already in use. You don't need to get upset at me for it.

[JdGordon]

sure, its been considered. And if someone really wanted to implement it I'd help them, but in the absense of volanteers I can confidently say it wont happen. You're of course welcome to prove me wrong.

[pabouk]

Why do you need to bookmark while cycling? I mean, what's the situation where you'd want to stop playback, and then resume it, without looking at the player?

Maybe it is not the most common usage of Rockbox: I listen to podcasts. Sometimes I have to stop/pause playback and later resume where I stopped. I do this several times a day in many situations and I think to be able to stop/resume using a single hand without looking at the display is very important and convenient.

The H100 has an extra button to spare for this.

Not really. H100 has "extra button" A-B while Sansa Clip+ has "extra button" HOME.

It doesn't really make sense for a button labeled "Home" to take you to the WPS in the first place. There's nothing about the button that would indicate it does this, and the common Rockbox function for the menu button is the alternating behaviour. To some degree it's beneficial to have button functions stay the same between devices. If you have an iPod and then get a Clip+, you know that the "Home" button does what the "Menu" button on the iPod did, and there's little more to learn about the issue.

OK, fair enough. I did not know about the effort of Rockbox to map special buttons (like HOME) to actions of a similar meaning. As far as I know on H100 there was not the function the HOME button on Clip+ offers. Contrary the return to WPS/resume playback function on H100 was very useful for me.

There's a lot of complications with having a button that, when pressed from some screens resumes playback, and when pressed from others does not, since it makes it easier to accidentally resume when you may not want to. The short->long combo, much like the current one, will always resume (from screens that can be resumed from) and so isn't as prone to accidental behaviour.

OK, I agree.

Pause allows you to do things like pause, then seek to a specific location, to queue something up inaudibly. This simply isn't possible while stopped. The reason Pause and Stop both exist is that they really are functionally different beyond simply the resume time.

OK, I just do not need to set the player to exact location in the paused state.

(I cannot use pause as it does not store bookmark when the player turns off automatically after a delay.)

This behaviour is a bug, which should have been fixed some time ago (see FS#11493). Is it definitely still not saving the bookmark on idle poweroff for you, with a current build?

It works. Great! Even bookmark is created if the player powers off during pause. I just did not notice that the bug was repaired because I simply gave up using pause. Now I can start to use it again. Thank you.

[Llorean]

Maybe it is not the most common usage of Rockbox: I listen to podcasts. Sometimes I have to stop/pause playback and later resume where I stopped. I do this several times a day in many situations and I think to be able to stop/resume using a single hand without looking at the display is very important and convenient.

That isn't exactly what I asked. I asked why you needed to bookmark while cycling. It's perfectly possible to pause and resume all you want with one hand. I do it all the time. Pausing still only requires one button. It's stopping that I asked about, and that's a somewhat different situation.

The H100 has an extra button to spare for this.

Not really. H100 has "extra button" A-B while Sansa Clip+ has "extra button" HOME.

The H100 also has a dedicate Play/Pause button that's separate from the navigation controls (via the stick) where the Clip+ does not. It's the "Play/Pause" button I was referring to. If you'll notice people are suggesting that the "Home" button contain some of the functionality of the "A-B" button and some of the functionality of the "Play/Pause" button, where it currently just contains the functionality of the "A-B" button.

OK, fair enough. I did not know about the effort of Rockbox to map special buttons (like HOME) to actions of a similar meaning. As far as I know on H100 there was not the function the HOME button on Clip+ offers. Contrary the return to WPS/resume playback function on H100 was very useful for me.

Like I said above, the "A-B" button on the H100 and the "Home" button on the Clip+ basically do the exact same thing, or should. They both functionally serve the purpose of a "menu" button. The main problem is that in the menus there isn't a spare button to do what the "Play/Pause" button on the H100 does.

[pabouk]

I am sorry. I forgot about the useful dedicated Play/Pause button on H100 so I confused it with A-B...

Now when I know that the bug of power off during pause was resolved I will start to use pause but still there is no single-button control for resuming playback after the player has been turned off.

[Llorean]

I am sorry. I forgot about the useful dedicated Play/Pause button on H100 so I confused it with A-B...

Now when I know that the bug of power off during pause was resolved I will start to use pause but still there is no single-button control for resuming playback after the player has been turned off.

Why would you turn the player off and back on again while doing something that requires at at least one of your hands the whole time?

The Clip+ is capable of sitting for the major part of an entire day on pause. You can just disable the idle power off if you wish to be able to resume with a single button press.

[mfe555]

New proposal for WPS:

"left" is currently doing nothing in the top level of the menu. Why don't we use that to exit the menu, going back to where you've been? Many users associate "left" with "back".

"home" in the menu would then be free to be used to go to the WPS. Thus pressing "home" twice would bring you from the playlist to the WPS (via the menu), without the necessity of detecting double presses or long presses.

"home" -> main menu

"left" from main menu -> back to where you've been
"home" from main menu -> WPS

[Llorean]

"left" is currently doing nothing in the top level of the menu. Why don't we use that to exit the menu, going back to where you've been? Many users associate "left" with "back".

Currently Rockbox stops in one place if you keep hitting left (the main menu) and blind users find this helpful since it's impossible to accidentally go too many levels "up" and cause something unexpected to happen. You'd lose this benefit to the blind users (which has been commented on as helpful in the past) if left were made to do something else in the main menu.

Most button assignments, including buttons that do nothing, were made for a reason. That's why I keep asking about how bad the situation is, and real world cases where this single button to WPS is so important, since it will *have* to displace an existing function or feature if it's just going to be a keymap change, and if that's the case, the case would benefit from having a case to be made for why it's more than simply an issue of convenience.