2006-03-05, 15:33
everything on your ideas list can be incorporated into the library, now playing, and visualisation windows. i see no driver for a new window. all we need is a new visbility condition of "musicplayer.partymode".
i've always thought that the options to restrict where party mode gets is songs from should be somehow added into the library window. i'm not sure how yet though. this is the hard part. for the first iteration, i was thinking about a simple genre restrictions using the context menu "restrict partymode to this genre". you can pick more than one. then you start party mode. and once partymode is disabled, the restrictions are lost.
i like the freshen idea. that's easy accomodated in the now playing window context menu.
hmmm. i kind of like the idea of allowing a "mostly" or "relax restrictions" option which would keep the song choices to the restriction 90% of the time or something around there. that, however, makes it more complex to compute the number of unique songs left to play. there's the number of unique songs which meet the criteria, and there's the total number of unique songs. the history would need to be able to distinguish between the two types.
while i'm on the topic of song restrictions, if we want the ability to keep track of the number of unique songs left in the database, then the restictions absolutely must be be defined before party mode starts. they cannot be changed dynamicly. or they can be changed dynamically, but party mode is "reset" at that time which means you may get some repeats right afterwards.
speaking of history, this needs to be tweaked. i was about to change the history so that its a function of the number of songs. this is what i was considering: if the db has atleast 50 songs, the history size is 1/2 the number of songs, up to some maximum value, 100, even as high as 500. if there's less than 50 songs, there is no history at all. today, with less than 50 songs, partymode cant be enabled. (that reminds me, all errors are logged, but there's no popup indicator. i need to get that into the system now.)
** edit **
jmarshall may have some idea on how to make the now playing window "dual purpose". there's already a few windows which are multi-id'ed. this could potentially work for party mode to allow the now playing window to be sufficiently altered and reskinned when party mode is active.
i've always thought that the options to restrict where party mode gets is songs from should be somehow added into the library window. i'm not sure how yet though. this is the hard part. for the first iteration, i was thinking about a simple genre restrictions using the context menu "restrict partymode to this genre". you can pick more than one. then you start party mode. and once partymode is disabled, the restrictions are lost.
i like the freshen idea. that's easy accomodated in the now playing window context menu.
hmmm. i kind of like the idea of allowing a "mostly" or "relax restrictions" option which would keep the song choices to the restriction 90% of the time or something around there. that, however, makes it more complex to compute the number of unique songs left to play. there's the number of unique songs which meet the criteria, and there's the total number of unique songs. the history would need to be able to distinguish between the two types.
while i'm on the topic of song restrictions, if we want the ability to keep track of the number of unique songs left in the database, then the restictions absolutely must be be defined before party mode starts. they cannot be changed dynamicly. or they can be changed dynamically, but party mode is "reset" at that time which means you may get some repeats right afterwards.
speaking of history, this needs to be tweaked. i was about to change the history so that its a function of the number of songs. this is what i was considering: if the db has atleast 50 songs, the history size is 1/2 the number of songs, up to some maximum value, 100, even as high as 500. if there's less than 50 songs, there is no history at all. today, with less than 50 songs, partymode cant be enabled. (that reminds me, all errors are logged, but there's no popup indicator. i need to get that into the system now.)
** edit **
jmarshall may have some idea on how to make the now playing window "dual purpose". there's already a few windows which are multi-id'ed. this could potentially work for party mode to allow the now playing window to be sufficiently altered and reskinned when party mode is active.
