Test Display is a UI Element for use with the Default User Interface version 0.9.5 or compatible. It displays text that is generated through title formatting from the playing track or the selected track. The component defaults to the font and colors that are configured in the Default User Interface but allows the user to override them when desired.

The number of options has been kept small for several reasons. Most importantly, it makes it easy even for new users to modify the settings, instead of being limited to copying other users' settings without really understanding how they work.

Documentation

Please refer to the help file that is included with the component.

Screenshots

Displaying title, album, and artist:


Displaying artist, title, and lyrics:


Download

foo_textdisplay can be downloaded from my components page.

That's really great. Seems to work perfect.

Thank you foosion.

It works almost perfect!

An usability issue: If you use text display for selected track you are not able to click inside of text display without loosing selection (in selection properties the selection is not lost) - so you can't use f.e. the "copy text" function.

Thanks for the component!


EDIT:

Another issue:

Go to layout tab of settings, check box for custom colour, change the colour: you will see in the UiElement the new custom colour. Then uncheck the box: you will see in UiElement the default colour. So far so good! But if you then check the box again the text display will keep the default colour although in the layout tab the custom color is choosen.

thank you foosion... missing lyrics panel is NO MORE... thanks so much

Neat, thanks for this. Lyrics finally!

A little bug though, when i disable "Prefer playing track" it would only show "Nothing selected" even if there was actually a track selected. Restarting foobar fixed it though.

Thank you for this work. When I first started to attempt to organize my music it was overwhelming - tags here, tags there, where are my tags, why is that in my tag....omg, my tags are missing!!!

This might not of been your reason for development, but I see this as a major assistant to troubleshoot tagging problems. A user can add a "troubleshooting" instance of this component in a tab for example. Then add a list of fields in a definition type of format - by escaping the field name. A couple of fields all the way to every one.

'%fieldname%' = %fieldname% produces something like this


%title% = The Race Is On
%artist% = Grateful Dead
%album% = 1973-06-10 R.F.K. Stadium
%venue% = Washington, DC
%DeadBase% = : 021
%length% = 3:12
%path% = F:\@Music\Dead\1973-06-10 R.F.K. Stadium\109-The Race Is On.mp3

Might not be for everyone, but I find it a handy way to see just what values are held in a tag without having to change other portions of my setup that I would prefer not to fool with. It also is an easy way to test in real time titleformating syntax.


ymmv

terry

Thank you foosion! Very nice plugin. I needed it sooo much.
Small bug detected: Sometimes when I change song in playlist, foo_textdisplay is'nt updated with new song.

I was missing lyrics in the default UI and this plugin works great with "foo_lyricsgrabber". Thanks!!!


I also noticed this...

I'll look into it.

Thanks for reporting.

Are you sure that this isn't the same thing that g-stankovic reported? Does it display the correct track if you click in the playlist after disabling that option?

Is the selection properties element updated when that happens? Note that when you select multiple tracks, the text display element will only display the first one, no matter which one has the focus in the playlist.

1.The selection properties element is updated!!
2.Only one track is selected

EDIT: foo_textdisplay is again updated by clicking "prefer playing track" twice.

foo_textdisplay 1.0 RC 2

It should now behave like the selection properties element with regards to preserving the selection when it gets the focus.

Fixed.


I haven't been able to reproduce the other reported defects so far.

this works for me:
got "prefer playing" checked from foobar start
click song without lyrics: text panel shows corect output
grab lyrcis -> text panel failed to update itself on tag change
and then its just chaotic clicking and hardly getting panel to show the correct output

after foobar restart everything is correct... seems to me like tha update tags during playback somehow did this

It seems to be different from what g-stankovic reported since there is no selection display i could lose to begin with.
I can reproduce it now though. I have textdisplay in a tab in the upper left corner together with album art display.
If i start foobar with the textdisplay tab being selected it will work just fine, but if the album art tab was selected at startup then textdisplay wont display anything except "Nothing selected".

After enabling "Prefer playing track" it will display the lyrics for the playing track but still not for the selected track if i disable it again. Only restarting foobar seems to fix it.


btw:
Any chance to make the line distance a bigger or give users control of it? It really is hard to read.

Thanks foosion for this great plugin.

Still not tested RC2 (I can't open the archive, downloaded with FF3 and IE7), but with RC1 if you have more than 1 Text Display in your layout, they don't seem to refresh correctly on track change.

Very nice, I am enjoying this a great deal!

Something is definitely weird with that archive. I managed to open it with Tugzip.

foo_textdisplay 1.0 RC 3

Fixed a bug where the text display element would get stuck with the selected track - or no track, resulting in it displaying "Nothing selected". The bug was triggered when the element was hidden after it had been shown for the first time.

About the RC 2 Zip archive: I have no problem opening the archive with the Zip viewer in Windows XP, WinRAR or 7-Zip. Also, it was created exactly the same way as the one for RC 1. If you cannot open, please tell me which program you use.

Thx foosion. Great plugin. I use it for lyrics and it's working great.

It was with 7-Zip, but the archive was correct after redownloading some hours later. Maybe a temporary server problem.

Anyway, RC3 fix the bug I noticed, so it's all perfect now. Thanks.

Incredible. Finally makes default ui completely usable.

After years of experimenting with coloumns and panels, i have never loved my ui this much.



Moderation: Replaced large image by thumbnail.

thank you for this text display, i have been wishing for something like this for a while now. good work.

Hello foosion!

All the three selection viewers for the Defaul tUi are using a "fall back": the playing track is displayed if nothing is selected - in trackdisplay's "prefer playing track" mode the selection is displayed if there is no playback. On one side i experienced in the beginning usage of the new Default ui the first type of fallback as confusing and somehow it breaks the logic of showing what is selected as it also can show a non-selected track. On the other side keeping consistent behaviour of the same type of UiElements is a good reason for textdisplay to do the same like albumart viewer and selection Properties.

With this new component as the only one wich uses so far a mode for displaying the playing instead of the selected track the danger of confusion even increases. I mean: I am now experementing with two different layouts to see wich fits at best to my needs. One layout uses a tabstack with two tabs whereby one uses a textdisplay in "prefer playing track" mode in a tab called "now playing" and the other tab called "selection" should display the information/lyrics/whatever about selected track. In the other layout i put one trackdisplay leftscreened and the other one rightscreened. In both cases i can't use the trackdisplay by just trusting my eyes - i always have to keep in mind the existence of the "fall back" logic and also the state of the player (is there playback/is there something selected or not?). In bothmodes(EDIT: If there is playback or not) these two displays can show the same in certain situations.It may seem that i am a little bit pedantic but it is really irritating me sometimes and i can imagine that new users will also be irritated.

The solution i found for me to avoid fall back in the "prefer playing track" mode is to use an if-condition: $if(%isplaying%,<text>,no playback). But if you are a user who likes to use just one textdisplay and who likes to switch between the two modes by context menu (unlike me) but also wishes a clear results (like me) you are forced to use as format: $if(%isplaying%,<text>,<same text again>) wich is unnecessaraly complicated.

Lyx's fear that a now playing mode could cause confusion seems to be justified. But i think that it also could be reduced to a minimum by dispensing the fall-back-method or respectively having a special mode for that: If you take a look in musicmusic's implementation of the tracking modes for ColumnsUi's album art viewer and item properties you will find a solution that is able to satisfy all needs of all users with different layouts and wich seems to be more userfriendly: the now playing mode just displays playing track, the selection mode just shows the selection and the automatic mode wich displays playing track/selected track if no playback.

I hope that somedays Peter will introduce also a "now playing" mode for his two selection viewers. I also hope that you will find an agreement with him to let all selection viewer components act the same way for reasons of consistency/simplicity and at same time to avoid the potential confusion i described above.

Bug fixed in RC3. Thanks

EDIT: Scrollbar speed too slow!?

Indeed, clicking the arrows on the scrollbar scrolls only by one pixel. I'll change that to an entire line for the next version.


When I released the component, I was aware that the fallback that is used with "Prefer playing track" was bound to lead to some confusion. Furthermore I decided not to follow the behavior of the existing selection viewers exactly to make it possible to view information about the playing track instead of the selection.

I quite like the idea to use three source modes, so I'll definitely consider that for a future version. It still does not solve the problem completely. It would be good to have a visual indication of the current source that does not require the user to write more title formatting code.* Of course, this would be optional but enabled by default. The big question is then how this indicator should look like. Not only should it be easy to recognize while not distracting the user too much from the actual content, it should also work with all color schemes.

If you have an idea for that, feel free to post it here. Please create a mockup image to demonstrate your idea if possible.

*: Right now, you could use "$if(%isplaying%,Playing track,Selected track)".

god bless you, your ancestors back to the begining of time and futhermore to its end for this most logic decission :DDD realy realy thank you that i dont have to click like retarded imbecile on playing song to see its lyrics like i have to with album art. GOD BLESS you once more... (or any other supernatural entity you tend to believe in)

thanks for this component... btw bug reported by me seems fixed in rc3

Sounds wonderful - but I can't seem to download the file? Maybe it's my computer, but could someone test if it should work?

As the fall back in "prefer playing track" is similar to the automatic mode of columnsUi's viewers the confusion is existent but not so big like the other fall back in selection mode because the first one can offer a desirable behavior whereas the first one just irritates. Especially when using two displays in two different modes that can drive you crazy. Can you estimate how are the chances that Peter will add a "now playing" mode for his viewers and if he then would favorize the three-source-mode as well? In my eyes consistency should be an important aim.




Sorry, i am not sure what you mean! If you mean an indication in display without using conditional syntax (please correct me if that is wrong) the simplest would be an checkbox-option "Show Caption for Source mode". If enabled the first line would show depending of state 1)"Now Playing" or 2)"Selection" or 3)"Automatic (Now playing)" resp. "Automatic (Selection)". Such headings may be helpful for users that likes to use just one display and control the source by context menu. In my case such indications wouldn't be necessary as i like to use more dislays so that would orientate myself on the position or tabs of the textdisplays. But as already said, i am not sure if you really meant that at all.

Whit this plugin there is a way to display what is inside *.nfo also?

You actually have confused me here. Which fallback behavior is the one you find confusing? And what do you mean by "selection mode"?

Between 0% and 100%, read: I don't know. He is currently focusing on other parts of the player for 0.9.6.

No, I was actually thinking about a non-textual indicator, which among other things has the disadvantage that it could be scrolled out of view. I was thinking more along the lines of watermark like in the image below. (Disclaimer: The image is purely for demonstration purposes. It is undecided if the watermark feature will be included in a future version of the component or which watermark images would be used.)

The first row shows two indicators that could be used to display that the information is taken from the playing track. The paused indicator on the right might be useful, but I'm not fully convinced about it, since this would mean the watermark would show two different things: the source of the information and the playback state. The second row shows two ideas for a selection indicator (my preference is for the one on the left).

The example uses different colors although it would be hard to chose those automatically to match the users color scheme (read: prevent them from being invisible against the background color). The benefit is that both the text and the watermark are easier to read. Using different colors for different watermarks adds another way to distinguish them except for their shape. This means it is easier to recognize the watermark at a glance. For comparison, here is the same image converted to grayscale:


No, this is not possible.

I'm using this component to show lyrics now. Very nice. One thing that bothers me a bit: when a new song starts playing, the scroll position of the text display stays at whatever it was for the previous song. I'd like it better if the text view scrolls back to top when the contents change.

Sorry for confusion! I find both fallbacks confusing - what i meant was that the fall back in "prefer playing track" may represent a behavior many users like so that the irritation for them is not so high because they want it that way and they are aware of it. Whereas the fall back in selection mode (i mean: prefer playing track is unchecked, there is nothing selected and there is playback -> playing track is displayed) at least for me doesn't seem to have any senseful usage. Using two trackdisplays, one for playing track and the other one for selected track and both have fallbacks - that is the highest degree of irritation.



Now i know what you mean! I think a better idea than using central placed watermarks would a sign/symbol in the upper-left corner. I am not a psychologist of perception but i assume that most people when they start regarding a window they put their focus firstly to the corner on left side of the top - just alone because there the text starts. It would be enough to use visual indications just for "prefer playing track" mode so that the existence of an indicator represents the state as "now playing track". In that case an additional pause-sign would be a good idea as then the both signs represents the playback state.

its not loading im my foobar???

Maybe you got a bad download. In case if helps, my file size for component is 235
K

terry

thanks... I reinstalled foobar and its working now

Wow, look what I missed when on vacation.

Thank you, foosion.

is it possibly 2 make is scroll down by itself; sorda like timestamp?

great tool foosion!

another question: is it possible to hide the timestamps for displaying lyrics?

e.g.

Totaly missed that! Thanks so much for this plugin!

Thank you for this plugin. Is it possible to add some space between the informations displayed?

I want to have:

but in the view i have no space between the track information and the lyrics


Is it possible to add for a futur version possibility to specify different font for the display (like track info in 10 font size and lyrics to 8 font size)?

Add $crlf() for each blank line.

I have one request:

the text display shows the first track of a selection with multiple items. Would love to have the opportunity to display the info of all selected tracks (with usage of %list_index%).

Thank you it work great

Some of my tracks have year and date metadata in both TYER and TDRC frames. This means that the year is displayed twice.

Is there a way to get it to display Year/Date only once?

i doubt it... try to read help included inside the zip file. FAQ part in preference.

foosion when calculating the center point (horizontally) can you use the whole width of the panel instead of panel - scrollbar width. I think it would look much better IMO. Right now with a scrollbar the alignment looks weird.

...wouldn't text be covered up by the scroll bar then...

not if its padded correctly. but that isn't the solution either. I am getting alignment issues whenever the scrollbar shows up

Hi,
I wish to display an information text, such as the info I can get from the Allmusic website for instance, everytime I listen to an album. Can I save a text file in my album folder and display it using this component ? Does it work that way ? Or can you suggest another way ?
Thanks