Hi musicmusic

the new columnUI alpha rocks. I have a couple of suggestions:

1. is it possible to use a different font for the "heading" in the grouped view?

2. Is it possible to add a setting that allows us to use grouped view when playlist name satifies a certain criteria?

3. Is it possible for you to make the default UI elements usable in column UI? I ask because if there isn't interoperability, we'd be in a pretty crappy situation where panels made for columns don't work in default and vice versa, leading to fragmentation of the available components, and unnecessary duplication of effort (a panel developer needs to make a seperate plugin for default UI and for column UI). Frank Bicking has also mentioned that his Facets component will be a default UI only release, which sucks because its a really good plugin and i'd love to use it with column UI.

thanks for all your work on column ui and foo_dop.

kanak, to the best of my knowledge, the SDK for the UI Elements has not yet been released. Until it is released, there cannot be interoperability between the two, as they are fundamentally architecturally different.

Hello

Not ATM though it is being considered.

I did think someone would want that, so I am considering playlist filters for the groups just like the columns.

I don't like the situation as much as you. However I don't think I created this situation.

I doubt I could realistically add support for them on my side. I think some kind of helper that wraps both APIs for panel/element developers is the only possible way forward, but I don't know how feasible that is either. There's only one person I know that would currently be able to make a good judgement there...

What features of it do you prefer over foo_browser? (aside from any general suckyness of the latter )

Welcome

I could imagine there are some users more than only me, using foobar since years, using ColumnsUI since years, keeping an eye at the development, valueing your efforts and investigations, in creating THE superb UI, who cannot understand why there's one man missing in the boat/cruiser/ultra-outtaspace-glider..

Is it possible to have a different style for a selected and playing track? For example:

Selected: Blue
Playing: Purple
Selected & Playing: Pink

If it isn't would you (musicmusic) beable to create a command (such as %selected%) so that this would be possible? Then I can just use $if($and(%selected%,%_isplaying%),$rgb(),$rgb()) to change the color of a selected and playing track.

Thanks .

musicmusic in regards to foo_browser, other then the fact that it simply sucks performance wise with my 60,000 music collection, it is also no longer actively developed.

below are the screenshots of the issues I was having with NG Playlist within the latest alpha, please let me know if you need any other shots or details. ng playlist was working fine in v2 final with 0.4 of ng playlist

Hi musicmusic

thank you very much for your prompt reply .



Yes! Thank YOU!
I was also wondering if it would be possible to have different grouping styles (group by album, by genre etc) that we could use per playlist. I know it's a bit far fetched, but it'd be seriously awesome if this could be implemented; we could have certain playlists grouped by albums, others by artists etc.



Speed is the main reason i'm using facets- Browser was just unusable on my collection... excessive startup times, unbelievable memory usage. That being said, i'm really hooked on the new albumlist panel (with filter- THANK you for the filter!), so i don't think i'd really lose a lot if facets couldn't be made to work with columns UI.



Please please consider it . Having the header stand out would make it much more "useful".

I also have a couple of requests regarding the playlist switcher panel:
1. The ability to sort a playlist by clicking on some 'header' column or through context menu would be really awesome.
2. Ability to include info like "playlist length", "items" and "size" (like in the default UI), would be very nice too.

Once again, thank you for all your work, i may bug you with some foo_dop requests soon too .

Yes you can. See:
-Colours and Fonts prefs page
-Style string
-$rgb documentation

OK thank you for the information That's a lot of music..

You can try the new Filter Panels in 0.2.1 alpha 2. BTW: if you have SpeedStep, Cool'n'Quiet etc. enabled you may get a noticeable improvement in speed if you disable them (change power profile in Control Panel). That's not a suggestion, of course there are good reasons for using them, so it is entirely your choice. It may not be noticeable since your library is quite large anyway, but it makes a good difference on my two computers (~3000 tracks in library).

Please try alpha 2.

How does that differ from what playlist filters would let you do? Or would you prefer some other implementation of this rather than playlist filters?

BTW: I made a section on my wiki to track these things (the stuff on the rest of the page is out of date though). Please feel free to edit if I missed anything, but please don't make requests there.

OK well you can try filter panels in 0.2.1 alpha 2

Yes I would like to move the playlist switcher to the new list control (same as NG Playlist and Filter Panel). That would relate to this because you'd have columns to use for sorting then But it's low priority ATM. But these sorts would be permanent. Date created would be a nice sort actually, but not exactly possible

You can do this through the title formatting. Documentation

0.2.1 alpha 2 released

• NG Playlist improvements
  Added support for globals, playlist filters to columns in NG Playlist
• Added pressed state for live editing command in buttons toolbar
• Added Filter panel
  Similar to foo_browser et al.
  To configure, enter the names of the fields you which to filter by in the prefs page. Note: these are field names and not title formatting! The filtering is progressive and the order of the fields in prefs is the order the filters are applied. Changes to the field list are applied when you close the prefs page.
  To use, insert multiple panels into your layout. To choose the field for a panel, right click the column header.
  Note: it does not refresh on media library changes ATM and there is no direct way to refresh them.

Yeah, I know I have to use that stuff, but I don't know how to lay it out. I see no variables to make the selected tracks background a different color. I can make the text a different color, but I am given that option in the colors and fonts page.

Would you mind supplying some example code on how to make a background of a selected track a different color?

awesome news music music, ng playlist is now looking pimp and even uses my globals from my playlist which blew me away, it looks much more polished now, I will be using this instead of playlist from now on.

one this I would like to be able to click on the group header and have it select the album below.. this is done in the new default ui and think its a great addition... see what you think...

as for the filter component damn you work fast, what you have so far runs like a bat out of hell...

its a given we will requets more features for it to be like facets but its definately a step in the right direction.

some requests for filter, allow columns in the panels, ie total number, file size, rating etc...

the ability to look at the musics preferences from the filter itself, so if I make a sertain filter down to an album I want to just right click on the 3rd pane and choose properties, with facets and foo_browser i believe this is possible...

also once I do change some properties and I have an existing selection, it is not dynamically removed from the list until I make a new selection and then revisit my previous filter selection once more... further to that I can only refresh the list if its not the first panel, ie if I reselct a genre then the list displayed is the new list of artists with my changes.. but if I modify a genre then I cannot see the change in the first pane.. I hope this makes sense..

i think this is done in the new album list and also for sure in facets...

excellent job so far - great performance

This might be a stupid question, but what's the best way to change colors of things in NG Playlist? (background color, for instance)

Concerning the NG Playlist.
* Globals Style support?
* Auto-size columns?

Good job with the Filter panel. Very cool.

If you are using the default config, you can change from the colours and fonts page.

Otherwise there is an example of the style string at the bottom of this page. You can set the style string on a item level (global style string) or subitem/cell level (column style string).

Note: this is for the Columns Playlist only.

Yeh, that is planned.



You mean multiple fields per panel? Or just some extra info (# tracks in entry, total length of tracks in entry etc. - i.e. artist a, xx tracks).

Yes I'll definitely add proper context menu.

I think you are saying it does not refresh on media library modifications. Yes, that is known. For now you can restart foobar or switch layout presets and back.

Thanks

It just uses system settings at the moment.

Yes, forthcoming..

Thanks

in regards to

QUOTE(4nt1 @ Oct 25 2007, 02:37) *
some requests for filter, allow columns in the panels, ie total number, file size, rating etc...

You mean multiple fields per panel? Or just some extra info (# tracks in entry, total length of tracks in entry etc. - i.e. artist a, xx tracks).

Just some extra info will be fine, once again I dont like to keep referring to facets but it has the right options to add extra columns, having said that it also lets me put colums like date as well as file size type info...

otherwise so far so good, thanks for replying to all my points nice to know you listen to your users

I don't either, it sounds like faeces

So, I added a list of requested info fields here, if there's any others feel free to add them.

It's easy when there's a couple posts per day

You must have a weird dialect.

From askoxford.com:
faeces: /feeseez/
facet: /fassit/

LOL I didn't expect you to take that seriously

As you're reading here, the last sentence here doesn't make any sense

suggestions added, nothing to over the top just a new 3d engine with a flight simulator option when you hit F7, no only joking just a couple additions

Hey thanks for the update. Haven't had and won't have much time for fb2k - I see problems arising, maybe they are already here? Component developers will have to decide which world (default panel/columns) they serve. And users have to take into account what panels they want to use.
I didn't read the forum lately... Will we be able to use both worlds? As far as I know the project my assumption is "no". So: ColumnsUI outsiders?

There's still a chance that Columns UI will support official UI Elements.

Hi musicmusic

I have a couple of questions (and suggestions) regarding columns_ui and the new filter panel:

1. What does the "linked metafield" textbox in the "Edit Column" dialog do?

2. Regarding the filter panel, would it be possible to:
a. have it print to console the amount of time it took to populate the fields?

b. Use stuff like %genre% instead of Genre? (i was trying to get a %date% %album% type field, but i just can't figure out how i'd put it in)

c. add "average play count", "first played", "last played" among the list of proposed "info columns"?

Once again, thanks for your components... the new filter panel looks very promising .

Hi musicmusic, ColumnsUI is making incredible progress

I've got two feature requests I'd like you to consider.

The first one is explained most easily. Which is the ability to set a certain amount of padding around each element/panel, preferably horizontal and vertical seperately.

The second one is more difficult to explain and to code I suspect.
What I would love to have is the ability to set a "variable panel". What I mean by this is a panel which can be set to another panel by the push of a button.
For instance there would be a panel on the left of the window (or right, doesn't matter) which has buttons that "link" to a certain panel (like a lyrics panel, a playlists panel or a queue manager panel. When clicked it loads this panel into a dedicated panel elsewhere in the window.

Maybe a picture offers a better explanation: http://img9.imagepile.net/img9/32939columnsui.jpg
So, a bit like a tabbed panel stack, but different and IMO providing a cleaner look
A picture of the Rythmbox music player for Gnome which I would really like to mimic with this feature: http://www.gnome.org/projects/rhythmbox/sc...thmbox-main.png

Perhaps a more simple way to achieve this would be to create a list of buttons in the left panel which are able to switch to a different layout (like in view->layout->preset). Then I would be able to achieve pretty much the same thing.

Anyway, I know this is quite elaborate and probably complicated but I hope you understand what I mean and that you could please consider this (if possible at all)

Hehe, actually personally I wouldn't mind tagging directly from the filter panel, it would be pretty easy to locate and clear up bad metadata.

I guess so..

It is for the inline meta data editing. That setting used to have a different title ("Meta field to edit" or something), I just changed it.

I generally don't put those in components for release since it can give misleading impressions (it's not always clear what precisely is measured). I guess it can affect startup time though so I'll add something that measures initialisation time.

I don't really want to add title formatting, I don't feel it is necessary, it will impact performance and plus it will require too many hacks (on my side) to get multiple values per field working with it.

For date, info columns would deal with that when/if implemented.

I realise there's a problem with Album Artist, for that I can see two solutions:
-Fixed remapping for that field to fallback to Artist
-Custom remappings through extended syntax - e.g.

Feel free to add them to the list in the wiki.

I copied the dll over a Windows2000 fb2k installation. At startup fb2k told me the module has been uninstalled; then the "failed to load dll" in the console appeared.
No more w2k also@ columnsUI?

http://yuo.be/columns.php

notice the requirements pane.

I think that is a better idea for sure, set it up if you got time and I look forward to testing it out

0.2.1 alpha 3 released, some enhancements to the filter panel. Please give the auto-refresh a good trashing

Holy crap! that would be awesome!



That makes sense... performance is priority no 1 . What about browsing by directory structure? Suppose we have a path as follows:


It'd be awesome if we could access the directory marked in bold it using something like PATH(1) (where path(0) = root directory, etc) or something.

Actually any implementation of directory browsing would work for me .

Sad, I love similar Facets functionality. Though I still hope that either there will be a way to use Default UI elements into Columns UI layout or new SDK will provide an easy way to implement similar functionality.

Anyway, I'm switching back to Columns UI. Great work musicmusic, thank you for the great UI.

upd: Hell yeah, Globals functionality is just what the doctor ordered

Thx musicmusic for the nice enhancements

Could you implement keyboard-A-Z-navigation in the filter-listview, e.g. pressing 'p' selects the first entry beginning with p.

edit: typo

It's not so difficult for fb2k developers to do smomething like that. When foosion said:

I think they already consider about it seriously.
By the way, great job and great character, musicmusic.

Feature request. Globals usage in NG playlist grouping strings.

Hi, I have a quick question: how to return selection borders in version 0.2+? they are shown when i press 'Ctrl' but disappear after foobar losts focus.
Here is screenshot if I'm being unclear:


Thanks in advance.

It seems my quicksearch toolbar does not work with the latest version of column_ui, under 0.9.5. Am I wrong ?

It works for me with foobar2000 0.9.5 beta 1, Columns UI 0.2.1 aplha 3 and Quicksearch toolbar 2.8l

ok ... , i've probably missed something - thanks.

Works for me too. I only wish the search window would close when I press enter.

Another feature request. Alignment into grouping strings. I.e. I want to place green highlight onto the red highlight.

medialibrary auto update is working really well...

another request for ngplaylist is to select an album by the group name, so I dont have to highlight every song, I just click on the group name..

also in ng playlist is I select a song, hold shift and click the end of an album it does not select the whole album either it just highlights the bottom song... to me this is standard windows behavior that should be implemented... what do you think?

tagging from filter is also very sweet saves me lots of time and makes tagging a breeze, especially for finding badly tagged stuff... what are the future plans... so for filter what about inline tagging in the filter window itself... could be an interesting idea...

Two Three more feature request if I may

1. The ability to put a button on the toolbar which envokes a drop down menu, like the ones already available for navigating backwards and forwards through tracks.
But with the ability to put the other button commands in the menu. This would allow for a less cluttered toolbar while also having a lot of functions available fast and it would allow to group related functions.

2. Having an entry in the View -> Layout menu to switch back to the previously chosen layout.

3. Overriding the font-type for specific columns. For instance I would like to use Wingdings in my ratings column so I can use star symbols to display my ratings.

hello !
first, thanks for this great plugin.

it seems to have a problem with columns_ui and foobar 0.9.5 beta (1 and 2) : when I press "del" it does not remove the track of the playlist. if I switch to the default interface, no problem it works.

I use the last alpha version, same behaviour appends with the stable one. I use the navigator suite configuration.
list of my other components :

Hi,
Well I don't really want to invent a new scripting language (!) To be honest I'm not really convinced on directory browsing. However there are some tricks that can be used to mix in title formatting with current implementation (some version of album list did that). I didn't make any decision on that yet.

Hi,
I don't really have any issues with that. But, implementing it in that way will interfere with any single letter keyboard shortcuts. There is an alternative implementation if you don't like that..


Thanks

I guess there's no point fighting the inevitable... But you should keep the grouping scripts as simple as possible for performance reasons. Globals are only going to slow things down as there are no columns here.

In one of the next builds it will be displayed always when 'Playback follows cursor' is enabled. Otherwise, you can make it display always when the playlist is focused by changing some system setting, it is covered elsewhere in this thread.

Added to requests list.


Good

Yes, will be added.

Hmm.. That would be a bug Thanks for the report, I'll get that fixed.

Yes, inline was the idea

I agree it would be nice, but I'm not planning on making changes to the buttons toolbar a the moment. I noted it on the feature request page anyway. Though note it is possible for a component to provide a drop down button for the buttons toolbar.

Sorry I doubt I'll add that.


Well, I don't have anything against a rating column, maybe not your solution though. I noted it in requests list.

It seems like 0.9.5 removes those keyboard shortcuts, I can understand why anyway. It will be fixed at some point when I work on these 0.9.5 issues.


Too many quotes issues in forum gives me a headache

Namely because if I edit this post it will blow up, this is several post merged into one by forum..

ok thanks
I just create a keyboard shortcut in the preferences and it works.
Like you said it is weird the developer remove it...

Thanks for considering those musicmusic

Just a (possibly unneeded) clarification about my suggestion for a rating column. I'm using the "classic" columns playlist view and I added a rating column myself. Now I use $repeat(*,%rating%) in there. But of course some nice symbols would look much better there. So please consider making something like that possible in both playlist views.

Thanks for listening, and keep up the great work

thanks for Filter panel, musicmusic! Works really fast with 9000 tracks collection. I have few issues with it. Single clicking on other than now playing Filter item replaces whole playback queue and "Activate now playing" feature loses it's functionality. is it possible to do something about it?

I like your style, musicmusic.
You are maintaining your userbase very well :-)

Can we have tagz expressions instead of fields in the filter?

This was discussed two or three pages ago. At least for a while the answer is no.

Hi there,

One of my first post, if not the first. I've been reading this forum for months now but can't really remember if I have participated...

First of all, I would like to congratulate musicmusic for his incredible work in developping ColumnsUI and having released a major component for this excellent program fb2k. (that's a bit too much... but it's just because of the way I turned it )
Then, thanks musicmusic for the implementation of the two new great features Filter and NG Playlist (I haven't had internet for the past 2 months... so they seam new to me) .

Nevertheless, there are two little requests I'd like you (musicmusic) to take into account.

- NG Playlist: ticker to hide columns title (as we used to be able to in playlist view)
- Filter: whenever I "browse" the filter panel, it brings up (focuses on) the Filter playlist... Ticker to enable/disable focus on filter playlist ?

Thanks in advance.
Sorry for the possible english mistakes, my written english is usually pretty poor.

Edit@4h10 (Paris Time): Just thought that, in NG Playlist, it would be very handy to be able to collapse/expand the different groups we created. I mean, I created two groups, one for the artist, and one for the album title. It would be great to navigate through our library like that, just open an artist, an album, choose your song...and that's it !
I guess that's VERY complicated to implement... but hey, never know.

thank you musicmusic