You can't do that; TAGZ can only "see" the tags of the file it's dealing with, not the next or previous file in the playlist. There's no way for track 2 to "know" that it's not preceeded by track 1.

i was thinking of making a new column and somehow numbering each track by its position in the album in the current playlist. or maybe finding the smallest track number in a given album, but i dont know how to limit a comparison string to compare each track to only other tracks with the same album tag.

That's what I was trying to say, you can't do that. Individual tracks don't "know" what's surrounding them.

i have a suggestion, if you like. a lot of people have used this method, as do i. if you know the album is incomplete, use a %faketracknr% tag, and start it at 1, 2, 3, etc. then in your string set up the if statements so it looks to see if there's a %faketracknr% tag first, such as this:

which will produce something similar to...

but other than this, like topdownjimmy suggested, is the only alternative... and not too difficult either!

Or a better solution:
- either play them in singlemode
- or keep the tracks which you do not like, give them a low trackrating, and then use foo_skip to skip them automatically.

No non-standard-tags hell necessary then, and with the added bonus that you may like some tracks later in the future which you didn't like at first.

Giving tracks weird non-standard tags just to make them work in an audio-player display IMHO is something quite insane and completely beats the purpose of metadata(independent of platform). But maybe thats just me who's insane and the others are just "normal".

- Lyx

@musicmusic:

I do have a solution to the problem that formatting-strings in a track cannot look ahead and behind - without the need to make them able to look ahead/behind and without the need to make metadata of other tracks directly accessable:

The playlist is rendered on a left-right/top-down manner, right? If a column-"cell" could store and export vars, and other columns could then make use of those vars, then the problem can be overcome. For example, the first track of an album could just store all album-relevant metadata in vars - then the other tracks can directly access those vars - until another track1 is processed which just overwrites the vars again. As a sideeffect, this would automatically make incomplete albums work in albummode.

- Lyx

Not neccessarily. Cells are always formatted left to right, yes, but in terms of items, if columns is formatting a group of adjacent items they are formatted top to bottom. But this is not always the case - items may be obscured by another window, and they are also formatted in isolation when its metadata is editted, or dynamic info etc.

Then again I kind of lost you in your second paragraph

Loophole in my above proposal: via repeated exporting, then importing, inheriting the previous value and adding a new one, and then exporting again - an overflow may be produced - example:

// import
// export
tracknumber_list=[%_tracknumber_list%]%tracknumber%
// goto import of next track

I dont know if there is a solution to this.
- Lyx

edit: nevermind - i didn't know that cells are also parsed and rendered in isolation of their neighbours. And when looking at the above mentioned exploit, i guess it may open up a can of worms. Too bad :-(

i've been thinking about that too, Lyx, and i saw the problems and that you can't ensure top-to-bottom processing, processing may start on arbitrary track etc ...

but most of the time you get desired order and you could simply export variable containing playlist position, filepath, directory etc ... and compare that variable after import. then you would just compare it to current info (i.e. stored playlist position == current playlist position + 1, stored directory = current directory etc.) and then decide whether to use imported data or update them ...

easy and simple

as for buffer overflow, it's just a matter of few tests ... and you don't need unlimited space, there could be limit on total size of variables (like few kB).

I've got a problem I hope someone could help me with.

I'm trying to move the computation of the julian date from globals to a column, to make it possible to turn everything off when the column is disabled. The problem is that the code I use doesn't return the same result when moved to a column, so now I'm wondering if this is caused by rounding errors or something. Does it work differently in those two places?

I have simply assigned %_system_day% and so on to global variables (as e.g. %_sys_day%) to be able to use them for computation in a column itself. But even though I've just done a simple find and replace, the results differs at times.

This code in globals:does not always return the same as this code in a column:

Example:
A file I played yesterday has a JULIAN_DATE tag with the value 2453419. At the moment the code in global calculates the julian date to be 2453420, while the code in the column returns 2453419. Hence it looks like I just played the song.

Any help would be appreciated.

I guess you might have forgotten to assign %_system_hour% to %_sys_hour%? it would make such a difference.

Thank you!
I kind of expected it to be something simple, but it's always hard to spot your own mistakes. Thanks again.

Hey, thanks for the plugin...

Maybe I'm missing something, and maybe this has nothing to do with ui_columns, but where do I change the font of the foobar menu?

Thanks you and sorry if I've missed something obvious,
-Tristan

Its not customisable on a columns ui level - you have to change the sysem setting. I believe it uses the Menu font, this is adjustable in display properties.

Ok, thanks!

-Tristan

Topic: exporting global vars for sorting

I do have a problem here. Background is that as you know i do have a quite large global string. Parsing during sorting is slow as hell. For most columns i don't need it, but with the new date-stuff in play i do have a problem: i could port only the necessary date-calc stuff to those 3 columns which need it, so that not the entire global string needs to be parsed - just one problem: system-date/time info is only available to the global string.

So, it would be nice if one could make system-date/time stuff available to the custom-sort strings. Possibly on an individual basis.

- Lyx

edit: nevermind - found a workaround.

Is it possible to disable the selected item frame? I know I can set it to the background color of my formatting, but I want to go further than that.

I have a couple of questions:

1. Where can I find these buttons? I've looked on the Custom Buttons section at http://columns.outerspase.net/ and couldn't find them.



2. I've set the playlist switcher up as shown below, but I can't find a way to change its minimum height so it takes up the available space. How can I do that?

Not (currently?) possible.

Is not possible..

Workaround: put the playlist switcher in a tabbed panel stack.

Yep, I realised afterwards that that was the only way. If foo_temple is ever updated to include panel support, I might well keep that configuration...

i remember them, but i cannot find them, sorry.

here you go: http://img203.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img203&image=toolbar1yh.png

Thanks Killmaster, but when I install the buttons, I get this:



Do I have to edit the buttons before I can use them?

@musicmusic: this is actually a thing that has been bothering me since you added the sidebar but I've never bothered to ask it as it isn't that big a deal. Would it be possible to have the sidebar auto-appear (I use the auto-hide option) not only when hovering the mouse over it, but also when you're drag-n-dropping files (to create a new playlist, for example)?

How difficult would it be for the developer of foo_ui_columns to add the following feature?

Please look at the image below to get a better understanding of that I mean:



If you look closely at that image, you will see that I have 5 panels:

1. Playlist
2. Track Info
3. Playlist Tree
4. Spectrum Analyser
5. Album Art

Can we please have an option which will automatically minimise the height of all panels except for the one which is clicked.

For example, currently I have the panel "track info" showing, I think it would be really cool if we could have an option which allows the user to simply click on one of the other panels which will minimise the height of any showing panels and increase the height of the panel which was clicked on.

A little like the way microsoft outlooks side menu works

If I try to click on a different panel now, the "track Info" remains open and it also maximises the panel which I click on.

I guess this is a feature request

@ AndiL:

You need to check the box that says "Bitmap includes mouseover images".

That`s all.

That makes things better, thanks. Now all I need to do is to get rid of the black bits, bearing in mind that I can't make anything transparent without decreasing the colour depth to 256 colours. Does anyone have any suggestions?

sorry... see next post

I got a problem with every columns_ui config I've downloaded. Some tracks appears in the wrong album. See for example the attached screenshot where track 10, 11, 12 and 13 belongs to the second album but shows up in the first. As the screenshot shows, there's no tagerrors(?)
So irritating... Have searched the forum, please help!

Check your sort string, or move them back down manually.. by default they sort by file name, maybe try renaming your files? A proper sort string should take of it though.

Playlist > Sort > Sort by...

Thanks!

is there a way to shows artist ? in a new panel block

I started delving into foobar2k yesterday and i've already hit a snag.
hope you all dont mind me asking for help, here goes;

i am using columns ui. i want to add new panels. looking at this:

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/images/4/4d/Sidebaradd.png


it looks easy to do... but can i find that menu anywhere? nooooo!
am i doing something wrong?!
can anyone help me out? thanks

http://music.everywebhost.com/wiki/doku.php

This is the "wiki" link from the first post of this thread. Check the "Columns UI" wiki section to see if you find a solution to your problem (I'm thinking specifically the "Installation" and "Troubleshooting" headings should be helpful)

Is there a panel that will show just the artist name and when you click it,it will show thier songs

You could try Playlist tree, it's highly customizable so you could use the main window to create a 'by artist' view and the (playlist Tree) browser to display all the artist files. However: this component is in the known problematic components, so you can have some stability issues.

Why not the album list panel ?

Yep, that's right, much simple

I have just came across foo_ui_columns plugin several hours ago, tried it and stayed very pleased with it. However, I found an annoyance: when Playback->Follow cursor is on and song switches - my current selection drops and the only selected track is the one that has just started playing
I liked the Folow Cursor feature very much on FB's Default User Interface (eg. make a big selection to transfer a bunch of songs into a new playlist), I also used to "mark" a song that I'd like to listen now and again later (I mark a song X which then plays right after the current one, then follows songs Y, Z etc., but song X still remains highlighted/selected and I can find it quickly to replay).
With ColumnsUI, the selection is lost when song switches: I have to hurry up to finish selecting and make a desired operation on the selection until the end of the current song or temporarily switch off Follow Cursor - both approaches irritates a bit.
Could this feature be bringed into otherwise very great ColumnsUI?

adrius_u: take a look at foo_temple to see if maybe it fits what you need. I know it isn't quite the same behavior as you describe for the default UI, but perhaps it can help with what you're trying to do.

Thanks gfngfgf - foo_temple is quite interesting thing - I will surely use it, but still I miss selection persistency... I'm afraid of myself thinking to go back to DefaultUI

hey:)




Wondering if there was a separate thread for feature req's given this ones size....

It would be awesome if it were possible to have multiple resizable and re-movable 'frames' that could contain instanced panels, main file view ect with different customisations.......if its not too convoluted to code fast that is:)

Wouldn't mind a TAGZ command addition with different font types/sizes for a proffesional look or character/background pixel colouring based on x,y coord being drawn either but ui is pretty good as is:)



btw this ui R0X0RS!!!

Been using this for quite a while now, and was thinking: There is only ONE thing wrong with C_UI. You can only have a sidebar on the right, if you were able to have 2 (one on the right, one on the left) this (in my opinion) would be perfect.

I am sure such a thing has been requested quite a few times though...

Yup, asked many times and, IIRC, it's on the to-do list.

I want know what new features will propose in next version of this plugin.

It is possible:
1. add support right sidebar?
2. hide tolbars?

1. This was asked *just* two posts above yours.

2. In foobar's preference, go to "Display->Columns UI->Other", then uncheck "show toolbars"

TO gfngfgf

I want hide toolbal as sidebar - see it only when i click on top border by mouse.

Ah, I understand now. Thanks for clarifying.