creating a simple dynamic playlist

[pmennen]

> they probably shouldn't attempt refute that answer based on what they believe to be correct ...

If I gave you a device and asserted that "this is not a USB stick". But it looked like one, and when you plugged it into your computer you were able to write data to it and later retrieve that data. So you ask "why is this not a USB stick?", and I reply "because I said so" perhaps you would not be pleased with that answer. Now if I said "If you leave it on the shelf for more than 24 hours it will forget all the data you wrote to it, and USB sticks are not supposed to behave that way" you might be more accepting of that answer. Your answer to my question was more like the first kind. I suspect you are an expert, and possibly even a developer, so there is probably a reason for your contention that there is no playlist in the stopped state, I'm just saying that I don't know what that reason is. Perhaps you don't have the time or interest in trying to explain further ... and that is certainly fine. I'm not so rude as to think you owe it to me!

~Paul

[[Saint]]

If I attempted to offer a more in depth explanation to this, it would simply be repeating the words of JdGordon in a more convoluted fashion.

You'll need to forgive me for not doing so initially, but user's often don't want to know the behind-the-scenes workings that make things how they are, they usually just want to know why something doesn't behave the way they expect them to, and if possible acquire a resolution

If I felt that I could offer a concise explanation, or that one was indeed wanted, I would have at least attempted to offer one but at this late stage I sincerely doubt that I would be able to add any more relevant content to the discussion, at least not in a concise non-technical fashion. JdGordon summed it up quite simply.

It basically boils down to "Yes, we know it appears as though there is always a playlist to manipulate, but, there isn't. We simply do a clever trick that makes it appear that there is".


[Saint]

[pmennen]

Ok ... perhaps we are talking more about philosophy than mp3 players, so hopefully those of you interested primarily in mp3 players have long ago stopped following this thread.

> It basically boils down to "Yes, we know it appears as though there is always a playlist to manipulate, but, there isn't.

It appears that you have some notion of how a playlist should be implemented, but since it is implemented some other way you refuse to call it a playlist. As I mentioned earlier, a user has little interest in implementation issues. Since you apparently are unwilling or unable to point out even a single difference between the way this behaves vs. the behaviour of a playlist, I would say continuing the discussion is pointless. I'm not even sure why you brought it up in the first place (referring to the notion that no playlist exists in the stopped condition). Perhaps it was to explain the different effect of "insert" in the playing vs. stopped states but it is sufficient and more helpful just to specify the behavior for those two states. (BTW "inserting" into a non-existing playlist makes little sense to me either. Something like "create" would be more meaningful).

~Paul

[jks]

Ok ... wow. It now works following your instructions. But wait ... isn't this "create playlist" thing pretty much essential. Shouldn't it appear in the main menu so it could be discovered without a manual? Maybe I could have figured this out if I didn't have the manual ... but long press on playlist catalogue would certainly not be an easy guess. And with the manual, I had no chance. (Perhaps this manual should be deleted, as it may be doing more harm than good.) Don't thousands of people learn how to use this? This manual is dated yesterday ... but perhaps there is a more up to date manual that people are looking at? Otherwise I'm still confused about how people use this.

~Paul

Creating a single playlist of every file on your DAP is a very niche feature, proof of that is the very few (if any?) complaints about it being moved. IIUC you do the same by just using the database or the file manager anyway.

To me this is Rockbox's killer app.  Editing playlists on the device is very clunky.  With rockbox I used to be able to quickly generate a root.m3u8 with all tracks on the device and use a shell script to grep it and output customized playlists.

[jks]

The manual is (waaay) out of date here.. hold down select/ok/middle button (whetaver it is on the clip) so you get to the context menu on the "playlist catalogue" item and the "create playlist" option is there

This isn't working for me.  I just installed Rockbox on a Clip Zip (with the installer).  When I get to the Create Playlist option instead of creating the playlist in root.m3u8 like it used to I'm taken to the virtual keyboard.  When I hold down the center button to accept the filename I'm returned to the menu.  An empty playlist file has been created in the filesystem, I assume because Rockbox is trying to save the current playlist.  What I want is the old behaviour that lets me create a playlist of all files on the device.

[jks]

This isn't working for me.  I just installed Rockbox on a Clip Zip (with the installer).  When I get to the Create Playlist option instead of creating the playlist in root.m3u8 like it used to I'm taken to the virtual keyboard.  When I hold down the center button to accept the filename I'm returned to the menu.  An empty playlist file has been created in the filesystem, I assume because Rockbox is trying to save the current playlist.  What I want is the old behaviour that lets me create a playlist of all files on the device.

I figured out why this isn't working for me anymore.  In tree.c:

 

Code: [Select]

  if (tc.currdir[1])
        snprintf(filename, sizeof filename, "%s.m3u8", tc.currdir);
    else
        snprintf(filename, sizeof filename, "%s/all.m3u8",
                catalog_get_directory());

I'm guessing that it used to be that the Create Playlist would be accessed from the main menu and tc.currdir wasn't set to anything, but now the Playlists menu item sets c.currdir to the Playlists directory because that is where playlists are stored now.  So now instead of putting all tracks into all.m3u8 it creates an empty file (since there aren't any files under the Playlists directory).

I'd post this in the bug tracker but it isn't working right now.