Just curious, what does the part I've emphasized refer to? I searched this thread and the change logs, but nothing turned up.

Regarding the confirmation dialog when deleting playlists:

As far as I know, there is a recommendation from Microsoft that irreversible actions should be confirmed by the user. However, this does not eliminate user error. Confirmation dialogs add a thin barrier in this case; thin because users get effectively trained to dismiss them. The best solution is to make all/as many as possible actions reversible. I proposed a trashcan for playlists during the 0.9 alpha cycle, however it didn't make it into 0.9.

Changes in the 0.9 SDK allow a component to add functions and variables that become available to all other components that use title formatting. The down side is that the more components that add hooks into the title formatting, the slower every title formatting call is going to be, even the ones that do not need use the added functions and variables.

I have tried hunting through a number of pages here and didn't see the answer, so if I just missed it, I apologize. In the previous version there was a drop down menu on the Playlist View screen that allowed you to adjust the "exposed background color". I am struggling to find it in the most current release.



I would love to make that unsightly white disappear.

How about $ifequal(%totaltracks%,%tracknumber%,DO_THIS,DO_THAT) ?

Go to the "Colours and Fonts" tab in Playlist view, click on "Use custom colours:" box, set "Background:" color to whatever you want.

It would work for cuesheets and if the files are tagged with the tracknumber as NN/NN (01/12, for instance), since foobar2000 would make a %totaltracks% field available. Otherwise, one would have to add a "totaltracks" tag to the files.

edit: fixed "quote" tag

@ gfngfgf & lyx, tnx for answering, but i'm afraid this "$select($num(%tracknumber%,1),your_code_here)", did't help, and i'm not familiar with coding, so "your code_here" 's not good, 'cause i don't know how to draw a line above first track. and what about track info's mode "follow cursor even when playing", would really like to know if that's possible. thanks again.

In that case, you should use premade FCSs by other authors, or learn how to code in TAGZ. Premade codesolutions wont help you in the long run, because you will require additional help over and over, because you won't understand your own code. What you would be doing in that case, would be kinda asking others to code your own FCS.

So, the bottom line is: if you cannot code in TAGZ, then either use premade FCSs by others, or learn how to code. In the latter case, you should ask questions in a seperate thread.




1. Ask questions about an FCS in the relevant thread.

2. Read the f**** manual of the FCS - your question is answered there.

ok. tnx for encourageing me lyx. so, i put %album% instead "your code there", then it worked, but it was left of the title, and i didn't want that, so i made a new column, put the code in, put it on top of all columns, and now it's ok . but how do i do the line above the first one or below last? i tried a few things, but i just have no idea

$select(%tracknumber%,$set_style(frame-top,1,$rgb(240,240,240)),)

That should add a very light gray line above the first track. Alternatively you could use something like:

$if($strcmp($num(%tracknumber%,2),01),$set_style(frame-top,1,$rgb(240,240,240)))

That should add a very light gray line above the first track. Alternatively you could use something like:

no... it's says unknown function, i'm usin' 0.9...

I would propose that you start out with something more simple: a singlemode display. And while doing that learn how ui-columns coding works (reading the columns ui manual is a must - it simply is too complex to just figure out everything by intuition).

Having almost no experience in tagz-coding and trying to do an albummode display is like building high-tech aircrafts as a 6 years old. Start out simple.

Sorry I got a stupid question here. What should I do if I want the colour of the texts of a song (in the playlist) to change whenever it's playing? I tried for quite a while but didn't work out....

In essence it's done like this:

And here's an example:

That certainly gave my confidence a boost

A good advice, IMHO.
It was easier "back in the old days", when we started out. No album mode, no UI Columns, just a plain and simple formatting. But, one huge advantage with UI Columns, is that you can easily add a column for testing, and just delete it when you got everything figured out. That's something I use alot.

I haven't read all the formatting guides that seem to turn up from time to time, but a very simple fcs with album mode formatting, would probably be useful to people that want to start playing with TAGZ. Maybe I'll make one myself if I find the time.

[edit]
@cwbowron
Thanks for explaing "custom functions / hooks". It will be interesting to see what it will bring.
[/edit]

I have a quick question about some of these themes. When I use a theme similar to Klyith's, the last track on the album doesn't put the underline in there. I've tried downloading other themes and taking the code from there to get it to work properly, but it just doesn't want to do it for me.. It's making my whole playlist look stupid
Here's a picture so you can see what I mean.

Looks to me like he uses some kind of custom tag on his files like %lasttrack% or %totaltracks% to indicate the last track of an album.

It sounds like you're adding this code in the wrong place (like in the column's Display tab).
Style code needs to go in the Style tab of either "Globals" or a specific column.
(And you will also need to have the appropriate box checked in either case:
[x] Use global variables for display, for the former
[x] Use custom style spec, for the latter)

.I can't get any other themes to do it either. Even ones that have the code put directly into the Column rather than placed in the Global tab.

I don't think you correctly read what you just quoted. What he said is that he uses a custom tag, inside the file. Doesn't matter if the lasttrack code is there if you don't have the tags necessary.

Hmm.. I may have read it wrong, but it did remind me that I could just add a tag to the last track of an album to do the underline. But from what I understand (I'm still really new to this whole thing) there isn't anything in his code that references any other tag other than %tracknumber%.

These are the two lines that supposedly indicate the last track of an album from Kylith's .fcs.

he checks for TOTALTRACKS in a foobar 0.8.3 style of way. This may or may not work at all in fb2k 0.9.

If you want an FCS which does not depend on custom tags to know the last track, try Navigator.

OOooohh, ok. For some reason I assumed the "is_last" variable was being created there. But anyway, I just added a %lasttrack% to the last tracks in each of the albums and told it to add a line to whatever track it saw with a LASTTRACK=1. Might not be the best way of doing it, but it's working fine now

And thanks a lot for your help!

I edited my previous post, check it again - his FCS may be incompatible with fb2k 0.9final.

Ah well. All I wanted was that line on the bottom of my albums and now I have it. I'm one of those guys that just steals code from everybody and puts it into one big pile of letters to make the final product look pretty.

@musicmusic:

Proposal regarding inline-metadata-editing:
This feature can become quite powerful. It however currently has some limitations regarding feasability of implementation. With some playlist-display layouts, it is feasible to display more than one kind of information in a single-cell. But only one fieldname can be defined for the cell regarding inline-metadata editing.

The problem also wont go away in the future, because at least when someday contentgroups get implemented, the interest in hybrid-displays will increase dramatically. But for hybridmode-displays, merging multiple kinds of metadata into one field is a must.

My proposal - if technically reasonable - would be the following:
Change the current behaviour so that when clicking a cell two times, a small dialogbox pops up allowing to edit metadata. Then, in the column-preferences allow to enter more than one fieldname for metadata-editing - by seperating them with a semicolon. Then, when clicking a cell two times, the dialogbox should be able to allow editing of multiple fields, like this:

ARTIST:
[editable fieldcontents here]
ALBUM:
[editable fieldcontents here]

This could make in-playlist metadata editing quite powerful, even in hybridmode-displays.

- Lyx

Actually, Im pretty sure the last thing I said in regard to making the globals available to other components was "I'll do it". Since I am a man of my word, I'll add it to beta 1.

FCS files don't contain the layout. So I don't know exactly what you are asking. But yes it should be possible. But generally auto-hide/hiding panels should work better in beta 1.

In beta 2, there hopefully will be. There is presets in beta 1 but those only define completely different/independent layouts and so isn't suitable for this.

Megadeus: Thanks for civiliy answering my question.

Lyx: The question was not about an FCS. It was a general question about Columns UI. Thank you so much for proving you are incapable of decent human interaction. So good to know civility is alive an well here.

You mean, you failed to read the UI Columns manual AND the manual of the FCS (which BOTH answered your question), and when the author of the FCS which you just downloaded tells you to RTFM, you call him an asshole? Please go away and stop abusing peoples time luser, thank you.

- Lyx

Allright, now tune down everyone and lets get on with this thread please.

Oy, I just realized that there was an arguement going on about my fcs.

A: SROL, or anyone else, you should have just PM'd me. That's fine with me, and also probably good nettiquete in relation to the people you asked here. After all, they don't know what crazy stuff I've been doing...

B: Yeah, my fcs is pretty much still all .8.3 stuff. I haven't had time to sit down to read the new docs, so I haven't been able to update it. It still uses |colors| and all that old junk, and could use a general clean-up of the code. However, it seems to work perfectly fine to me. It isn't incompatible, just old.

C: To settle the question, I still use TRACKNUMBER = TN/TT. I realize that foobar now seems to prefer the totaltracks tag, but f me if I'm going to retag everything. I also do totally non-standard stuff like a custom tag called "CJW" which I use on some of my music to segregate it into a different album list panel (or at least I did when I still had uie_tabs for multiple panels). Why? Because I want all of my classical on the seperate tab, but only some of my jazz and world genres.

I mentioned in my post that it had a ton of customized stuff for my tag patterns, and I wasn't kidding.

It's good that foobar has a set of styles for tags and other stuff that it uses by default, but it's also good that a user can tell it to do something different. (Though it would a help if there wan't a new default system every version increment. ) The day that foobar becomes a perscriptivist system that only lets you do things one way will be the day I stop using it.

Thanks a bunch man!

Hello all, I got another question to ask . Under the tab "Global", there's a tab "Variables", what is the use of it, and how to use it?

hurray! you're my hero . ot: now only if i could get to %playlist_name% outside from playlist, like in track info panel ...

Thats far too complex to fully explain here - a better idea would be to check the Columns UI manual.

The short version is: global-vars are *trackspecific* and its exported vars can be used in all columns. Column-vars are *column-specific* and only apply to that single column.


Maybe just EXPORT it in from the global-vars? BTW, if i understood musicmusic correctly, then all the panels etc. will have to be updated so that the exported global-vars are available in their formatting.

OK, I'll check the manual Thank you very much for answering

moderation: Removed unnecessary full quote of previous post.

Thank musicmusic for this wonderful plugin!

Heh, normally I would have just sent a Pm. Except, for some reason, I couldn't get an underline from ANYbodys fcs code to work. I only used yours as an example because it was the one I pulled up first to steal the code That and I couldn't find a good screenshot displaying a playlist that had single tracks as well as albums showing the underline.

But that was the only thing that didn't move over from .8.3 to .9 from what I can see

Hi, I hate to ask really dumb questions here, but that is not going to stop me, unfortunately...

In 0.9, using the latest pre-alpha, my columns UI (unmodified) shows no track numbers column, no option to add it, and only about half the tabs on the preferences page compared to what I see in the wiki.

Am I doing something wrong? I just installed 0.9 and the various components as I always did with 0.8.3...

EDIT: and the configure button is greyed out in the layout tab, so I'm really quite stuck.

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before, but why doesn't the export settings feature work with the layout? It sure would save a bunch of time and effort if exporting included that info, since upgrading the software = redoing the whole layout. Is this something that's being planned on implementing?

You don't configure the layout from the configuration button; rather, the button is for configurating individual things in your layout. Right click on the base entry in the layout window to start modifying the layout.

I'm on a 1600x1200 display.
Every time I want to resize a panel I find it a bit difficult to make the resize arrows appear: is it possible to make them appear on a wider area beside the separator I want to drag?

Thanks

Is it also possible to drag files from a playlist to another without using additional keys (only with the mouse)?

Guys if I want to show the TOTAL play time of all the songs in a playlist at the status bar what should I do?

select them all?

Seems easy enough to me, but maybe I missed something in your question.. anyway what I would do is: Left click to select files, then right click and either use "Edit>Cut/Copy tracks" then paste in other playlist, or "Edit Other>Add to playlist>?" or even "Utils>Send to playlist..." Now if you don't have any of these, try to get foo_utils from foosion's page (I'm not sure which menu buttons are part of it).

What you're missing (because I didn't mention it) is that I would do it using the mouse pad of a remote control in a remote room and some meters away from the TV screen so I can't hope to read the menu items.

Well you can access all these menu items through keyboards shortcuts under [context], and then you can call these keyboards shortcuts with the remote using Girder or anything else that you may have. Note that Girder allow you to script a key so you could do select all + send to playlist in one button and even switch to the new playlist maybe and start playing it.. I don't know what you need exactly.

I would just need a drag and drop with mouse only.

I'm using Girder with my remote wonder RF remote and I'm well aware of the power this setup gives me in controlling FB from around the house. I can even tag my files while listening to them... but this is not the subject of my request.
I have many keyboard shorcuts mapped to the remote buttons - I even have a couple of home made shift keys - but the wife feel more at home with the good old mouse behaviour as in other windows apps where after selecting something you can drag it everywhere just holding down the left button.
Just that.
And now, if you don't mind, let's turn our attention to something else.

Try drag and drop with the right mouse button. A you'll see, the difference from using the left with a modifier, is that a small menu will pop up when you release, asking you what to do.