new toy to play with... playlist viewer in WPS (FS#10898)

[JdGordon]

bertrik got this silly idea into my head today that it would be relativly simple to implement a playlist viewer for the WPS...
well it turns out it was


Thats a simple example as usual... the 4 lines are in a viewport which dumps many upcoming tracks as will fit (or are in the playlist).
The top three show the title and track length because they have been buffered already. The bottom one shows the filename because its not on the buffer yet.

My goal is to make it very customisable, so while its in development I need help figuring out the syntax for the wps token.

Right now you just add %Vp in a viewport and it will display in the whole viewport. I'm thinking something like the following would be good...
%Vp|<start offset>|<WPS code to display if ID3 is loaded>|<display if not loaded>
start offset is the first track to start the listing.. I want to allow this to be negative so you can see the previous tracks also, but that doesnt work yet, 0 would be the current track and 1 is the next track
I really want to make this flexible which means putting in a very simple skin parser for the text (limited to pretty much just %i* tokens and a few others)
Right now none of the lines scroll... if a skin parser is used we can probaly get scrolling happening, but maybe its not needed? a flag for scroll all or scroll none could be enough?
do we need to bother showing the current track differently? like with an icon or shading like the lists? I'm thinking not really...

anyway, have a play with the patch, or come up with ideas on what to add...

[JdGordon]

nuts... Its looking very likely that without major work of som sort or another, I wont be able to aadd the full customisability I want.
so instead I'll just hard code two versions which you can chose from (suggestions welcome)

the first will be one line per track, like the screenshot but the time display aligned on the right and the title scrolling (if enabled)
the second will be 2 lines per track, the first being the artist (scrolling if enabled) or the directory if no id3 is avilable, the second line will be the title/filename

That should be enough to waste screen space

[ew]

Since you invited ideas....

What about a line for totals (number of tracks, time)

It would also be nice if this (or something similar) could be available from the WPS context menu.  That way, it would be available even if one does not want to allocate space on the wps for the viewport for the playlist viewer.

Just my $.02 for what it is worth.

[JdGordon]

the point of this is to add more info which isnt available in the standard WPS tokens. number of tracks is easily available, and total time isnt ever going to be (without reading every track in the playlist there is no way to know this, and thats a nodo)

you have the real playlist viewer available in the wps context menu which is much more useful than this.

[BdN3504]

I'd suggest dropping the "start value" and just check if there's already a %X (X stands for Next in playlist info) tag used. Then only the end value has to be defined and the start value will always be either track 3 or track 2 (if no %X tag is used). Do you read me?

[JdGordon]

nope, I have no idea what you are trying to say
by the way, the end value isnt defined, it goes by the size of the viewport, so if there is enough for 3 lines, 3 lines will be displayed.

I originally wanted to be able to display something like:
4: previous
5: current <- the track that is currently playing
6: next
7: next+1

which is why the start offset is important (not everyone is going to want to see the previous and current track).

Also, from a codeing point of view, looking back to see if any tokens were used is bad.

[ew]

the point of this is to add more info which isnt available in the standard WPS tokens. number of tracks is easily available, and total time isnt ever going to be (without reading every track in the playlist there is no way to know this, and thats a nodo)

you have the real playlist viewer available in the wps context menu which is much more useful than this.

I see your point about not reading time for all of the tracks in the playlist - perhaps it would be useful to display a total time for the tracks available in the buffer.  The playlist viewer does not display any times at all.

Anyway, thanks for all of your contributions in making Rockbox a great product.

[soap]

I see your point about not reading time for all of the tracks in the playlist - perhaps it would be useful to display a total time for the tracks available in the buffer. 

As much as I too wish there were a way to display a total time for all tracks in the buffer (don't worry!  I understand why it's a nodo) I do not see the value in displaying the total playtime left in the buffer.

I can not think for an honest use for this, outside the entertainment of watching the number go down and up, down and up.

[JdGordon]

oh yeah! I got a very limited parser/displayer working



Those top 3 lines are being drawn from the skin line "|%pp.%ia - %it|"

[ew]

I can not think for an honest use for this, outside the entertainment of watching the number go down and up, down and up.

Heaven forbid that we would think a feature be added to Rockbox just for entertainment. 

[[Saint]]

Could there be a way to implement this conditionally?
Like when Hold is on for instance?

I'm thinking from the viewpoint of limited screen size.
Just curious, no importence.


[St.]

[JdGordon]

of course. just put it in a conditional viewport.

[JdGordon]

well bugger the lot of you.... I'm having fun implementing this wehether you want it or not!



I've come up with a clever way to make it extremely customisable (including partial scrolling) without making the code complex
Everything under "Up next:" in that screenshot is this playlist viewer. except there are 3 of them! One does the playlist number, one does the track title/filename (could be scrolling if you wanted but I tihnk that looks crap), and one does the track time (-- is because those tracks havnt been buffered yet).

I've attached my wps to give you an idea how it looks... the skin language is now looking like:
%Vp|<offset>|<code to show if id3>|<show me otherwise>|
the offset is how far from the current track to start displaying. 0 is the current track, 1 is the next track, etc

The code in the next two parts is a very limited skin code. NO conditionals, and just about no tags are supported... the following list are supported:
<free text>
%pp - playlist position
%fn - file name
%fp - file path
%ia - artist
%it - track title
%pt - track length
%s - scroll the whole line


add suggestions for which other tags to add support for.

[Ste-]

Good work. I also like the look of this and cant wait to get started themeing with it.

[perfectdrug]

I'm looking forward to try this out 
thanks