(Some points are stolen. Some features are things I personally don't care about or would use (like everything concerning the Media Library for example), but I realize others would care about.)
• Being able to choose what info to be in the Playlist info popup
• Let Write to Disk in the track context menu double as an automatic chooser of the WAV Writer and write the module to disk with the default settings. It's always annoying having to manually change the output device and stuff for the odd track. One foreseeable quirk is determining what settings to use... I guess one could have a "Default Disk Writer" setting in the Options and Stuff dialog...
• Snapping/dockable/magnetic windows. At least make the Info window dockable with the main/mini panel. And make it move with the edge of the panel it's sitting flush with when switching between Mini and Main mode (and panels).
• Sort files on load option.• Remove/don't add duplicates on load option.• Range looping. Just right-click+drag on the track slider and it'll automagically loop between the loop points. "Drop loop point" shortcut might be cool too. Another right-click/"Clear loop points" shortcut press to clear.
If dropped on different files, XMPlay will loop the selection of files between, and including, these files plus automatically create a queue for you, so you'll easily know what's happened. [this stricken-out part is stupid]
• Tenth of seconds option. : D• Simple/lean/unobtrusive multiple playlists solution: alt+1-5 (or whatever you choose) to switch between 5 playlists. When switching to another playlist, XMPlay will automatically pause playback on the previously active playlist. The number of allowed playlists is made-up on the spot, but I think 5 is a pretty good number, no?
• Bookmarks. 1 through 0 for setting bookmarks. Ctrl+1 through 0 to recall them (or whatever you choose). Especially handy for talkshow streams or other long files. 10 slots should suffice I think. Preferably, they would work over multiple playlists detailed above. Maybe also add an option for whether they should persist per session or be saved to disk.
• Periodic saving of playlist(s). Maybe with configurable delay. Would cut down on the aggravation accumulated when losing your playlist(s) due to a crash.*
*: preferably, crashes should never occur, but they do. Also, even if you manage to one day get XMPlay to be rock solid, Windows might crash heh.• "Prevent multiple instances" option.• Option for average VBR bitrate display versus dynamic VBR bitrate display for MP3s (updating could be 1 or 2 Hz or something). in_mpc.dll outputs the dynamic one, so it should be trivial, yes? Both Info Display and Info Window -> General. With the dynamic chosen, an average bitrate could be shown in parenthesis in the Info Window -> General for good measure.
(• Right-click menu option or hotkey thing: Move selection to top/bottom (of playlist))
• Playlist track numbering option. (I don't waaaaant it!)
• Right-hand side Playlist track count... let it show amount of files selected (when there's a selection) instead of which number track you're on, or flash it like the time display. I find myself never ever ever caring about just which number track I'm on at the time... I can already see that as it is, but I often want to know just how many files I'm currently selecting. The current setup is kind of "eh?".
• Info Window auto-sizing should preferably be settable as Horizontal, Vertical or Both. Either by clicking through all options, or let left mouse button control vertical and right horizontal. I want vertical, but not horizontal, so thus I can't use it at all. Actually, I think it might be best if right-clicking brings up a menu with 3 choices (Horizontal, Vertical, Horizontal & Vertical) and let left-click toggle it. Nice and simple. Won't require any more bitmaps or anything either.
• Make "Size" in Info Window -> General thousand separated, either with EU-standard spaces or American commas. Right now, it's kind of difficult to see if a file is tens of MB or hundreds or whatever. You have to count the digits/divide them up into groups of 3; it's not instantly recognizable/overviewable.
e.g.:
Current:
Size: 16598464 bytesProposed:
Size: 16,598,464 bytes or
Size: 16 598 464 bytes(Do the same with Hz/frames/whatever that will have thousand separators listings. (e.g.
Sample rate: 44,100 Hz).) This is not really as important.
• Option to have XMPlay NOT select the files you just added to the playlist, or only select them if they're added to a playlist with other tracks already present.
[X] Automatically select files added to playlist
|-[X] Only if not alone in playlist
• Focus options. (Apparently not easy to fix, if even possible at all, according to Ian)
[X] Don't steal focus when loading a new file
|-(•) In Always-on-Top mode
|-( ) Ever
• More extensive CUE support. This might be a tricky one. If you open a .CUE instead of the actual playable files, virtually "cut up" cuesheet songs (regardless of format... plugin-played ones too) into tracks in the playlist with the correct tags brought in from the .CUE. Myself, I don't like tags so I always use filename display... which would suck for this (filename would just be [c:\mongoloidmusic\]retardsong.flac,numericoffset) ... so, have alternate Track Display formatting for albums with cuesheets? It's no huge deal, but it could be a nice touch. Basically, treat .CUEs as mini-playlists. Or, do it automatically... Or even better, option between this and the current way, which could also be an option for sub-song MODs.
• Media Library: For those who don't want to rely on ID3 tags being correct (since they rarely are), being able to deconstruct path/filename into relevant fields (artist, album title, tracknumber, track title and year of release blablabla)? Either as a simple %Artist% blabla thing, or with a neat regexp.
Outlined here.• Find Tracks dialog should be separate from the Options and Stuff dialog. An additional, more specialized dialog like Winamp's "Jump to Track" dialog would also be nice (or it could supersede it), with quick-filtering. A la this thread:
http://un4seen.com/forum/?topic=2888.msg18902#msg18902It could be skinnable too, or maybe construct itself from the Info Window bitmaps (with a few additional bitmaps), but that's just icing on the cake.
• "Disable flashing time display when paused" option.
• Shorter tooltip delay if possible (possibly hardcoded in Windows? But I believe Ian is using his own tooltips). Making it configurable would be total boss, man!
• Options and Stuff redesign. Tree control or like Photoshop CS's.
http://un4seen.com/forum/?board=2;action=display;threadid=1923;start=msg15901#msg15901• Configurable icon for every plugin filetype, so you can still use XMPlay's integration settings instead of having to make your own.
• Width/Height presets for the different Info Window subwindows. Usually, you might probably want to have the Media Library/Pattern View way wider (or in the case of other visualizations, smaller) than the playlist, but still have it restricted since the auto-sizing might do way too drastic size changes for you. Maybe even have Max/Min settings that override the auto-sizing where chosen.
• I made a
thread regarding future skin system improvements, but I decided to add this here because it's fairly trivial and it's kind of more immediate: Font stuffs:
http://un4seen.com/forum/?topic=3022.msg20304#msg20304 Make separate font_ settings for every single field and "status", please. And I mean all possible ones, like colour, size, bold, align (and shadowstuffs (mentioned in the skinning thread)).
I know, I rock. I have PayPal if you want to show your appreciation of my well-honed intellect! (:
Added on Dec 7, 2005:
• How about adding a configurable list in XMPlay on FORBIDDEN filetypes? Apart from working around the highly annoying case when plugins for some reason think it's a good idea to add non-playable files to the playlist, I'd like to be able to block any adding of .m3us for instance... I add albums on mostly a per-directory basis, via drag 'n' drop or the context menu, and why would I want that pesky .m3u that I haven't tracked down and deleted yet added when I'm already getting the files added anyway?