question about wrapping text

[vermillion1]

Does anyone know if there is a way to make text wrap instead of scroll for the filename?  I have a number of files with long names and the scrolling that all the themes do makes it way too slow to switch between songs without waiting to hear what they are or for it to scroll, for instance when many filenames have the same prefix in the name that doesn't fit on the screen, so until it scrolls awhile you can't tell what it is at all.

This may not matter to most people but I use my X5 a lot while biking and use the remote, so I use a larger font size than default to make it easy to read, but then not much text fits on the screen before scrolling.  I'd like to make a theme where I can devote maybe 2 or 3 lines on the screen just to the filename so if it has a long name I can see the entire name at once without waiting for the scroll, which can be impractical on a bike since I want to keep my eyes on the road aside from quick glances.

Anyway, does anyone know if this is possible in themes presently?  If there isn't a way to do this in the theme config does anyone think this might be easy to patch into the rockbox code to support?  I may try to do it myself if necessary but I haven't examined the code too closely yet so maybe one of you has an idea where to start with this.

Thanks.

[bluebrother]

Does anyone know if there is a way to make text wrap instead of scroll for the filename?

Currently there is no way that I know of.

I'd like to make a theme where I can devote maybe 2 or 3 lines on the screen just to the filename so if it has a long name I can see the entire name at once without waiting for the scroll, which can be impractical on a bike since I want to keep my eyes on the road aside from quick glances.

you can filename and the last three parts of the path separately with wps tags. So it should be fairly easy making a wps that shows the filename in one line, the last folder from the path in the next and even two more hierarchies.

[Yotto]

Sadly, the "Right Justify" tag doesn't continue to justify right when the line is longer than the screen is wide.  This:

Code: [Select]

                | <-------- Screen --------->|
Really Long Band|Name - Really Long Song Name|
                | <-------- Screen --------->|

Would be better than this: (What is current)

Code: [Select]

| <------- Screen ------>|
|Really Long Band Name - |Really Long Song Name
| <------- Screen ------>|

Note, if you had your id3 tags set up, you could get the Artist and title tags seperately and put them on their own lines.

[vermillion1]

I suspected this would be the case.  Does anyone know where in the rockbox source the parameters used as keywords in the wps files are initialized?  I'd like to try making a patch to support multiple filename keys (fn1,2,3 or fm1,2,3) for a custom wps that has that many lines allocated.  I tried briefly grepping through the source, however I haven't found so far where these parameters are created.  I'll spend some more time looking but does anyone know offhand where in the rockbox source this mechanism is?

[Yotto]

(I know nothing about coding Rockbox)

Were I to tackle this, I'd start by looking at one of the patches that modify these tags, like the Album Art or Scrolling Margins patches.  They'll only have the code they need, so you can zero in on the area you're looking for much quicker.

[lowlight]

The wps parsing and display code are in apps/gui/gwps*

[Febs]

Wouldn't the better/easier solution be either to (1) rename you files so that the names are not so long or (2) use tag information instead of file name in the WPS?  Either of these is easy to accomplish with any decent tag editing software.

[DetlevSchm]

I second the wrapping option.

I do not use any tags because I organize my files in the operating system's file system, where I need to see all information at one glance. All my files look like:

genre - artist - title - comment.ext

this way I am additionally independent of any player's capability to display tag information or not.

[Llorean]

So, you're saying that even when you have better options, you refuse to use them even if it doesn't cost you compatibility with the worse alternatives?

[DetlevSchm]

Right. I think it is just a matter of taste.

[Llorean]

Well feel free to code a solution to a problem you're creating for yourself then.

[bascule]

Well feel free to code a solution to a problem you're creating for yourself then.

LOL

I do not use any tags because I organize my files in the operating system's file system, where I need to see all information at one glance. All my files look like:

genre - artist - title - comment.ext

this way I am additionally independent of any player's capability to display tag information or not.

But why not tag them as well? MP3Tag could scan your collection, write tags based on your well-defined naming system and then you would have the best of both worlds.

[Febs]

I second the wrapping option.

I do not use any tags because I organize my files in the operating system's file system, where I need to see all information at one glance.

That's just pure silliness.  Even if you do feel it necessary to have *all* of that information in the filename (rather than organizing your files in some sort of hierarchical structure), nothing prevents you from using tags to display the information on your portable player.

[bluebrother]

That's just pure silliness.  Even if you do feel it necessary to have *all* of that information in the filename (rather than organizing your files in some sort of hierarchical structure), nothing prevents you from using tags to display the information on your portable player.

There is also an additional benefit from using tags: if you happen to loose some file names you can still recover the artist / title information (and a couple more that can get stored in the tags) from the tags. And, something I found to like really much, ReplayGain informations are stored inside of the file's tags. Not to mention the possibility to build up a database like TagCache...

So I don't see any reason why not to use tags.