Suggestions for 3.9

[Dotpitch]

What would those favourites be? Tracks, playlists or something else?

[piovrauz]

I think he wants something like a favorite quicklist.

[Krstfr]

What would be nice is a shortcut to add the current playing song to the library. Just the current playing, none in the queue, none of the selected, unless it is the currently playing. Or the ability to loop the queue, without deleting the playlist, (when your dealing with the 2007 MA torrent, even deleting takes a while)

[Dotpitch]

What would be nice is a shortcut to add the current playing song to the library.

Bind the same shortcut to 'List nav - Jump to current' and 'List track - Add to/from library'.

Or the ability to loop the queue, without deleting the playlist

The queue is not built to function that way, tracks will always be removed from the queue once they're playing. You can achieve what you're looking for by setting all other tracks to 'Skip'.

[saga]

Not sure if this has been suggested before, but for easy navigation within files with cue sheets (when they are not split into several playlist entries), I think it would be interesting to make the cue list in the message window clickable, so that you can precisely jump to a certain cue point by just clicking on it.
Also, a minor annoyance right now is that the message window scrolls back to the top whenver a new cue point is reached during playback.

[Knurek]

Ian, could you perhaps change the "Stop at end of track" (Right-Click on Stop button) behavior to match the "Close at end of track" (Right click on Exit button)?

When you enable "Remove after playing" option, the later removes the last played entry from playlist (as it should), while the former keeps the played song in the playlist, so resuming playback will play the same song again.

[Ian @ un4seen]

Not sure if this has been suggested before, but for easy navigation within files with cue sheets (when they are not split into several playlist entries), I think it would be interesting to make the cue list in the message window clickable, so that you can precisely jump to a certain cue point by just clicking on it.
Also, a minor annoyance right now is that the message window scrolls back to the top whenver a new cue point is reached during playback.

Clickable cue entries could be tricky as XMPlay doesn't currently keep track of what text is where in the info window (so it doesn't know whether a cue entry is under the mouse cursor), but I'll stick it on the "look into it" list. I'll fix the scrolling to top thing for the next update.

Ian, could you perhaps change the "Stop at end of track" (Right-Click on Stop button) behavior to match the "Close at end of track" (Right click on Exit button)?

When you enable "Remove after playing" option, the later removes the last played entry from playlist (as it should), while the former keeps the played song in the playlist, so resuming playback will play the same song again.

I'm not really sure about that, as the "Remove after playing" option only comes into play when the track is unloaded, and the "Stop at end of track" option doesn't unload the track; it's basically the same as pressing the stop button yourself, and the stop button will need to be pressed a 2nd time to unload the track. But perhaps enabling the "Unload final track" option will achieve what you want?

[piovrauz]

I'd like to ask for the ability of sobstituting accented or special letters to plain ones for the bitmap font in the skins.
For example, if a song has some capital é, è, or à in the title string, it becames a space.
Obv this happens only with some skin, and the default is fine.
As much I understand it's not grammatically correct, I'd like to get an understandable title...
Is it possible to add an option for that?

[Muxson]

Mute/Unmute is available via shortcuts and right-click on the volume slider but I don't see an option for a mute button on the skin.
I could well imagine a "button_mute.bmp" and corresponding mask entry...
Is that possible?

...
It adds a mute button with mask index 28, and a "button_mute.bmp" (and optionally "button_mute_mini.bmp") bitmap for the muted state. Let me know if you have any trouble with it (I've not tried it yet myself).

Ian, I realize, I never gave you a feed back on the Mute button...
It works fine to mute but there are two things that could possibly be improved:

 - I know you offered a .bmp but I couldn't refrain from trying .png. and I see it does support transparency as long as it is not totally transparent (alpha=0).  
Edit: *** BTW, it is the same with some other buttons, knobs and sliders. ***

 - The slider_volume is [dis]appearing, which is nice and intuitive, however it [dis]appears only when hovering the Volume slider area after mute was toggled.

But thank you for that function!
Maybe you could add it to xmp-skin man.

Cheers,
Muxson

[saga]

I'm sure I've brought this one up before, but anyway...
It is well known that in ScreamTracker 3, most effect letters share the same effect memory. This can make some drastic difference in some tunes, the most famous one probably being a stuck note at around 1:00 in Purple Motion's Satellite One.
Most trackers (e.g. Impulse Tracker) and players do not implement this behaviour, but it is easy enough to tell these apart and treat them differently.
So here is what XMPlay should do:
- If an S3M file was made with ScreamTracker 3, OpenMPT, CreamTracker or BeRoTracker, enable S3M playback mode (to properly tell these trackers apart from others, have a look at http://wiki.openmpt.org/Development:_Formats/S3M)
- When encountering any non-zero effect parameter during playback, store its value. Every channel has its own memory.
- When one of the following effects is encountered with a zero parameter, use the previously stored value instead of regular effect memory: Dxy, Kxy, Lxy (Volume slide variants), Exx / Fxx (Portamento), Ixy (Tremor), Jxy (Arpeggio), Qxy (Retrigger), Rxy (Tremolo), Sxy (special commands)

[Ian @ un4seen]

- The slider_volume is [dis]appearing, which is nice and intuitive, however it [dis]appears only when hovering the Volume slider area after mute was toggled.

Here's an update to fix that...

   www.un4seen.com/stuff/xmplay.exe

Maybe you could add it to xmp-skin man.

The mute button isn't in the current release version, so can't add it to the skinning kit yet

It is well known that in ScreamTracker 3, most effect letters share the same effect memory. This can make some drastic difference in some tunes, the most famous one probably being a stuck note at around 1:00 in Purple Motion's Satellite One.
Most trackers (e.g. Impulse Tracker) and players do not implement this behaviour, but it is easy enough to tell these apart and treat them differently.

The update above should use the shared S3M effect memory except when the file was created by Impulse Tracker (the "General" info window will also now show if a file was created by Impulse Tracker). Let me know if it still has a problem with that stuff.

[saga]

Yup, that sounds much better. Thanks!

[Muxson]

- The slider_volume is [dis]appearing, which is nice and intuitive, however it [dis]appears only when hovering the Volume slider area after mute was toggled.

Here's an update to fix that...

   www.un4seen.com/stuff/xmplay.exe

Yes, Thanks Ian. Fixed indeed!

Maybe you could add it to xmp-skin man.

The mute button isn't in the current release version, so can't add it to the skinning kit yet

Oh! I see. Sure...
I'll try to be patient!

[xaos]

.. being an 'extended options' window has been suggested before .. some settings that could be useful there (yes, somewhat trivial but...)

user configurable checkbox ..

auto-mini
flashtrack
noflashpause
nocheckdead
norandomreset
nospectrumfade
UpdateStuff

(.. there were a few more but they're lost at the moment)

[PSXGamerPro1]

back from getting my nose fixed(it hurts like a SoB kinda) anyway can someone look into how I can make a plugin to get XMPlay to be able to use my Bitmap 2000's instead of actual bitmaps so that way it can reduce the sizes of my skins that I create?

I made a topic about this before: http://www.un4seen.com/forum/?topic=16214

[Muxson]

Maybe you could add it to xmp-skin man.

The mute button isn't in the current release version, so can't add it to the skinning kit yet

Oh! I see. Sure...
I'll try to be patient!

Ho ho ho, the Mute button has appeared in the Skin man (Rev. 3.8.1)!
Thanks Ian. Merry Christmas!
 

[Zzyzx]

I had mentioned these two in other threads, but wanted to capture them here for reference...


1. Add Reset On New Track to the AMP saved settings. I would like to have it checked for a random play list of single songs, but unchecked when playing albums in their entirety. This seems to make sense since all the other Amplification settings are saved by AMP, and it avoids having the level bounce down (with Auto-Amp: Reduction) and back up (on a new track load) for louder albums.


2. When displaying conditional formatting in the Playlist or Queue displays, add an option to cut the rightmost n characters instead of leftmost (still using the Omit Filename Extension switch), since with a file naming convention like "Artist - Album - ## - Title.wav" it's the rightmost that are most significant for identifying the track if I only have 12 characters on the little Playlist or Queue panel. Maybe: %cut{%0|12r|~} - and it puts the ~ at the left instead of the right when r is used?


Happy Holidays!

[Zzyzx]

One more...

On the default XMPlay skin, the currently playing track is marked in the playlist with a little triangle on the left margin that is only slightly bigger than the little triangle that marks all the other tracks. I'd like to see a more prominent way to mark the currently playing track. Perhaps a more distinctive color, or a different larger shape or maybe something configurable or whatever.

[Jace]

All the other tracks don't have a triangle marking them. Queued files have a much smaller triangle mark. Plus you can always get to the currently playing track by Ctrl-up/down.

Not against making it more obvious, just pointing out the painfully obvious things.

[Ian @ un4seen]

On the default XMPlay skin, the currently playing track is marked in the playlist with a little triangle on the left margin that is only slightly bigger than the little triangle that marks all the other tracks. I'd like to see a more prominent way to mark the currently playing track. Perhaps a more distinctive color, or a different larger shape or maybe something configurable or whatever.

Do you have "Don't auto-remove" enabled on those tracks? A marker was added in the 3.8.1 release to make it clearer which tracks have that enabled. I wasn't really sure what colour to make it, but settled for dark yellow. If you would like to try a different colour, you can create an XMPLAY.SKINCONFIG file (alongside XMPLAY.EXE) and put the following in it...

Code Select Expand

color_liststicky = rrggbb

For example, the default is 808000 = 50% red+green = dark yellow.

[Zzyzx]

On the default XMPlay skin, the currently playing track is marked in the playlist with a little triangle on the left margin that is only slightly bigger than the little triangle that marks all the other tracks. I'd like to see a more prominent way to mark the currently playing track. Perhaps a more distinctive color, or a different larger shape or maybe something configurable or whatever.

Do you have "Don't auto-remove" enabled on those tracks? A marker was added in the 3.8.1 release to make it clearer which tracks have that enabled. I wasn't really sure what colour to make it, but settled for dark yellow. If you would like to try a different colour, you can create an XMPLAY.SKINCONFIG file (alongside XMPLAY.EXE) and put the following in it...

Code Select Expand

color_liststicky = rrggbb

For example, the default is 808000 = 50% red+green = dark yellow.

Yes, I have "Don't auto-remove" enabled for all the tracks in the playlist.

Ah, so now I get to learn a little about skinning! 

OK, so I set color_liststicky to a medium grey, so it wouldn't be too overpowering (a0a0a0).

And then I also set color_listmark to a bright lime green (9fff1f) so it would be very obvious.

The colors work great, but there is one little gotcha. Since the liststicky marker is painted over top of the listmark marker, even though the listmark marker is larger and very bright, it gets half covered over by the liststicky marker. It's not a big deal, the color change helps a bit, but it's still hard to pick it out at a glance (I have small fonts on a dedicated music laptop a few feet away).

I suppose if it painted the listmark marker over top of the liststicky marker it's lime green glory would be fully visible, but that would hide the fact that it's marked as "Don't auto-remove".

Any other ways to make the now playing marker really, really visible (or otherwise more visibly highlight the now playing track)?

Thanks for the pointer!

[Zzyzx]

Any other ways to make the now playing marker really, really visible (or otherwise more visibly highlight the now playing track)?

Setting "poslistoff = 5" gave it some extra space before the track text started, which helped. Now it's more visible (even from a distance) that the now playing marker takes up 100% of that space, while the Don't auto-remove marker only takes up about 50% of the space.

[saga]

I'm not sure if this is related to what you are talking about here, but see some weird lime triangles next to some of the entries in my queue view using the Neutrino skin which weren't there before. Bug?

[Ian @ un4seen]

Are the lime triangles only in the queue view, not in the playlist view? The new "Don't auto-remove" marker mentioned in the last few posts will currently also be shown in the queue view if the corresponding playlist entry has the "Don't auto-remove" option enabled, so you should see the marker in the playlist view too.

[saga]

Yeah, it's only in the queue view. I don't make any use of the autoremove functionality, though.
It seems to consistently happen with certain files, but I don't know why. None of them have "don't auto-remove" checked in the context menu, just like all other files.