iRiver H120: Shuffle Selections w/o Shuffling the Playlist?

[ebounding]

I remember way back when ROCKbox was first released, that when I would enable "Shuffle" on my iriver H120, it would shuffle the selections but when you would go to view the actual playlist it would still be in order.

But now it actually keeps the playlist shuffled when you go to view it.  This makes finding a specific song a lot harder since I have to "unshuffle" it, or just scroll through the shuffled playlist to find a certain song.

Is there some setting I can't find that will just "unshuffle" every time I go to view the playlist?  Or is there an archive with 1 year old + builds? Thanks!

[Yotto]

As a workaround, I have before gone to the file tree, found the file, and inserted or queued it.  Sure, it's now in there twice (if you inserted it.  Or queued it.  I don't remember which is which but I'm pretty sure it's insert), but with any sizeable playlist that won't matter all that much.  I'm not big on static playlists though and recreate mine frequently.

[bascule]

But now it actually keeps the playlist shuffled when you go to view it.

For me, that's exactly how it should work. It's the difference between 'shuffle' and 'random'. If I'm shuffling, I want to be able to see what is coming up in a few songs time, or I may wish to go back a couple of songs if I missed something I like (I listen a lot at work and sometimes just leave it playing while I deal with a phone call etc.)

This makes finding a specific song a lot harder since I have to "unshuffle" it, or just scroll through the shuffled playlist to find a certain song.

The question is why, precisely, you want to do this, as there may be another workaround if your intention is clear.

If you just want to listen to a known song, as Yotto said, just browse to it the normal way (File Browser or DataBase) and then do '[Context menu]>Playlist>Queue next'. This will insert it into the playlist, but only until you have listened to it, upon which it will then be removed, leaving your playlist unchanged.

Is there some setting I can't find that will just "unshuffle" every time I go to view the playlist?  

No

Or is there an archive with 1 year old + builds? Thanks!

I thought you could go a fair way back, but I can't find the info now. Anyway, you would be missing so many other cool features, that it would surely be better to find a solution...

[ebounding]

This makes finding a specific song a lot harder since I have to "unshuffle" it, or just scroll through the shuffled playlist to find a certain song.

The question is why, precisely, you want to do this, as there may be another workaround if your intention is clear.

I mainly listen while driving.  So if the playlist unshuffled whenever I would go to view it, it would make finding a specific song in that list easier since I could just scroll down to find it.  But to do that now, I have to turn off shuffle, go back to the WPS, then go to Playlist-View Playlist and then turn on the shuffle again.  If it did what I wanted all I would have to do is go to View Playlist.

[bascule]

Despite not answering my question and offering precisely zero additional useful items of information, I am assuming you want to locate the song in order to listen to it?

I'm struggling a bit to see how browsing to the song and queuing it is more difficult/time consuming than scrolling through a potentially huge list of songs (even if you know do where it is in that list).

However, as you made no comment at all about the alternatives offered by Yotto and myself, I'm in the dark as to how to help you further.

[ebounding]

Since I'm driving I like to keep my eyes on the road as much as possible.  That's why it would be a lot easier to just scroll down an alphabetical playlist than to go through the file tree to queue a song.  Currently, I do browse through the files to queue a song since it's sometimes easier than unshuffling and reshuffling the playlist.  Browsing is easier when your attention doesn't need to be paid elsewhere, but when you're driving, it's easier to just hold down the joystick to scroll.  I found this to be ideal in the earlier builds since my playlists are only around 200 or less songs.

So what I want to know is if there's any way to return to this as in the earlier builds.  Or is there another method that will allow me to view my playlist unshuffled and return to the WPS shuffled in less than 5 moves.  I don't really want to go back to the earlier builds so I might just have to deal with this.

thanks

[bascule]

So what I want to know is if there's any way to return to this as in the earlier builds.  Or is there another method that will allow me to view my playlist unshuffled and return to the WPS shuffled in less than 5 moves.
thanks

No, unless you are willing and able to dive into the code and write a patch that gives you what you want.

I see your need, but I don't think there is an easy way around it...

[Llorean]

I'm also somewhat uncertain Rockbox ever worked the way he described, since it was aways a "shuffle" feature, rather than a random feature, and it's been a true shuffe pre-h100 (though I didn't look at my playlist in the early days of h100, I imagine if it didn't display a shuffled playlist, that it was actually considered a bug that it didn't rather than an intentional function).

[ebounding]

Ideally it'd be nice if I could just turn shuffle on and off (A-B) while actually viewing the playlist.  Is there already a patch out there that could do this?

[bascule]

Not that I can find doing a quick search on 'shuffle' in the patch tracker (link), but maybe you are more motivated to search deeper?

I presume you do use the quick menu (from WPS, press and hold the Menu button) to switch shuffle on and off?

[ebounding]

Well the best solution I found for my situation was the Record Button Configuration patch.  This way I can just go to the Quick Menu, Turn off Shuffle, and then just push the Rec Button to view the playlist.  


thanks guys