View Current Playlist

[iPodVT]

Thanks chris_s for making the below change in the current dev build.  I use that a lot, so it's a great convenience to now have it at the top of the menu and automatically selected.


2e91a67c3f: Deprioritize 'Create Playlist' option

Make "View Current Playlist" option more accessible by moving it into the spot of the 'Create Playlist' option, which currently appears first in the context menu, and is thus automatically selected

[chris_s]

That's good to hear.

I was actually wondering if it would make sense to get rid of the Create playlist option in that menu, or at least to simplify its behavior. If you or anyone else has input on that, too, it would be great to hear it. My current thoughts:

• No way to predict how it behaves without reading the manual, and you have to remember that it depends on the state of the File Browser
• You can already create playlists from directories using the context menu (and need to select a directory first in any case, so not saving any steps)
• Remaining functionality that may be of use is to create a playlist from all files on disk (since you can't select the root directory from the File Browser)

[iPodVT]

I don't recall ever previously using Create Playlist, but now that I understand what it does and have tried it out I see its usefulness.  However, its current implementation seems too indirect, which makes it abstract and obscure.  Perhaps a different implementation to consider would be to put a Create Playlist item into the context menus within the File and Database Browsers.  The context menu for an entity within the File Browser would include a Create Playlist item which would yield a playlist that includes all track files within that File Browser entity.  Similarly, the context menu for an entity within the Database Browser would include a Create Playlist item which would yield a playlist that includes all track files within that Database Browser entity.  The context menu for the File item in the Main Menu would include a Create Playlist item which would yield a playlist that includes all track files on the device.  The context menu for the Database item in the Main Menu would include a Create Playlist item which would yield a playlist for all track files in the Database.  Implementing this would be a lot of work, but from a UI standpoint it seems more logical IMHO.  (Are you now sorry you asked? ;-)

• You can already create playlists from directories using the context menu (and need to select a directory first in any case, so not saving any steps)

Do you mean by using Playing Next… and then Save Current Playlist?

[chris_s]

I was referring to 'Add to Playlist...'. It should already support the scenarios you've described... that's why the Create Playlist option is pretty redundant, possibly with the exception of creating a playlist from all tracks on your device.

[iPodVT]

Oh, now I see.  I've never used Add to Playlist and it didn't occur to me that it offered an Add To New Playlist option.  So that's somewhat less obscure than the current implementation of Create Playlist and it does make Create Playlist redundant.  But it still leaves the issue of how to add all tracks on the device or all tracks in the database?

[iPodVT]

• Remaining functionality that may be of use is to create a playlist from all files on disk (since you can't select the root directory from the File Browser)

Could you eliminate the Create Playlist item and then put an Add To Playlist item in the context menus that hang off the Database and Files items in the Main Menu that would, respectively, act on all tracks in the database or all tracks on the device?

[chris_s]

Thanks for the idea. In theory, yeah. Doesn't fit too well with the existing menu items, though. The database already supports selecting all tracks, e.g. by adding (all) 'Artists' to a new playlist, so that should be covered (the sorting of tracks is another matter, but there are some patches for that)

Adjusting it, so that "Create Playlist" creates a playlist from all tracks on the player under all circumstances, instead of having the behavior depend on what directory was last selected in the File Browser, as well as what "Recursively Insert Directories" is set to, makes the most sense to me, at this point.

[iPodVT]

Yeah, it occurred to me, too, that Add To Playlist would be a bit out of place among all the other items already in the Database and Files context menus.

Adding every file on the device to a playlist in one fell swoop is potentially a pretty gigantic operation.  Is there currently an "Are you sure you want to proceed?" query before it actually kicks off for that case?  (I'm afraid to try it to find out...  ;-)

If you modify Create Playlist to the single purpose of gathering all tracks on the player, would you alter its name to something more descriptive along the lines of (though probably less verbose than) Create Playlist From All Tracks?

[chris_s]

There isn't a warning, but you can abort at any point.

May make sense to rename it. I can't come up with a better description that is similarly succinct, at the moment, tbh...