Amarok Weekly News Issue 5 Released

The next issue of the weekly Amarok newsletter is out. This issue covers the fine tuning of the scoring algorithm, new fadeout options, configurable playlist color, as well as new handy tool for editing filters. Traditionally, with tips included.

Dot Categories: 

Comments

by nidi (not verified)

yay - filters are really cool!!

by Mogger (not verified)

Hey, this is similar to something I suggested a while ago.

I wonder if the devs say my pray, or if two geniuses has come up with the same idea. ;)
Would imho be nice if the [...] is replaced with a nice icon. Maybe the filter icon (in e.g. Konqueror).

by Ljubomir (not verified)

I recall similar idea on the forums, and as soon as I saw the editor I though about that post. That said, I couldn't dig it up, so if you provide me a link to forum, I'll give you a credit. Anyways, filter editor is nice, but I'm thinking about some usability improvements.

PS. Feature request are best when posted on bugs.kde.org. It's easy to track them down and maintain.

by Mogger (not verified)

No credits needed, I just wondered if it was a coincide that this feature were implanted.

Well, I'm happy with this feature, and I enjoyed reading the Amarok Weekly News. Thanks.

by Aaron Seigo (not verified)

in the article it says:

"One of the harder ones to spot is a call for quitting application. To quit Amarok, call:

dcop amarok MainApplication-Interface quit"

actually, it's not that hard to find ...if you know about the dcopquit command. you can do "dcopquit " of just about any kde app and it'll quit for you. so "dcopquit amarok" is good enough.

in kde4 the name of the command has been changed due to the dcop->dbus change. it's now the slightly more generically named "kquitapp".

by Ljubomir (not verified)

One learns all the time. :)

by Kevin Krammer (not verified)

Indeed!

I consider myself an expert on KDE commandline tools, but I didn't know that one.

by Aaron Seigo (not verified)

indeed; all these weekly articles help keep me up to date with all kinds of things. really helps keep my reading load down. so a big thanks to you and the others authoring similar periodicals.

by Patcito (not verified)

I never use the CLI to quit amarok, only when it freeze I do so and generely the only thing that works in that case is good old 'pkill -9 amarokapp' and variants.

by Greg (not verified)

What is that style featured in the screenshots? Perhaps qtcurve or polyester? It looks really nice.

by Ljubomir (not verified)

It's QtCurve 0.35

by Erik (not verified)

I think it would be pretty cool if future versions of Amarok would be able to use the fine grained output speed modifiers, which at least the xine engine seems to provide via XINE_PARAM_FINE_SPEED. Together with a nice and little plugin, one could adapt the output speed of Amarok to use it for DJing and mixing purposes.

lg
Erik

by cm (not verified)

Have you already taken a look at Mixxx?
http://mixxx.sourceforge.net/
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=17238

It has an interface to prokyon3 for music management. Not to Amarok though ...
http://prokyon3.sourceforge.net/
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=10010

It's a plain-Qt combo.

by Mark Kretschmann (not verified)

It won't happen, sorry. It's way beyond the scope of the application.

by Erik (not verified)

Why? Supporting these fine grained speed control _actually present_ in libxine and others and adapting Amaroks API to it, so a simple plugin could take control of Amaroks output speed, isn't that mixing special. :)

Note: I didn't request for mixing stuff, bassline editing or whatever, I would just need a possibility to control Amaroks output speed in a more or less stepless manner. Is that way beyond Amaroks scope?

by Mark Kretschmann (not verified)

Because Amarok isn't a DJ application. It's a music player, and we try hard keep its focus there.

You see, it may appear that Amarok has a lot of features, but we also reject many ideas that don't seem appropriate. And we're especially anal about adding new options. Any new option adds bloat to the interface, and it actually means that we have to constantly test and maintain it.

Before we add a new feature, we ask ourselves: "Is this useful to the majority of our users, in a common use case?" For example, we sometimes have been asked to add "Guitar Tabs" support to Amarok. How many of our users are guitar players? Probably less than 10%, I would estimate. Maybe a lot less. For everyone else this would just make GUI more complex, and it would make the program code more complex. The same is true for DJing capabilities.

There are programs that strive to be ultra flexible. I hear Foobar2000 is such a program; you can do virtually anything with it. Amarok has a different design philosophy: It's not intended to be extremely flexible, but rather work as well as possible for the use case that we define.

Hope this helped to explain our design philosophy a bit :)

by Erik (not verified)

That's exactly hitting the point of my last posting: I don't want a DJing tool or DJing capabilities, I would just need the possibility to adjust the output speed. Since I actually own a set of turntables and mixers there is no need for any further.

I can neither believe that there is no other use for a somewhat stepless speed adjustment, nor I think it is not typical for a music player application to adjust the output speed of the currently playing song or to just give an interface to the speed adjustments. :)

Following your explanations, one could say "Oh, we don't need any volume adjustments, just turn the knob on your amplifier". :)

lg
Erik

by Ian Monroe (not verified)

Its called the 90% rule (a feature probably shouldn't be implemented if its only interesting to 10%). Volume adjustment clearly qualifies under the 90% rule... making music go fast does not.

I suppose that feature of xine libs would be handy if we wanted to implement a "fast forward" button. I can't imagine why we would though. :)

by Erik (not verified)

So you're telling me that wikipedia integration, k3b support, cover management and iTunes-support are in 90% of users' wishes? I totally agree that every feature of these is useful, but I don't see the point of this 90% rule and why these features fulfil it.

It's no problem to me if anyone thinks that fine regulation of output speed is not useful for her and many others and it's absolutely no problem to me, too, if there's noone begging me for implementing it, but an "explanation" like this mysterious 90% rule is quite disappointing, I'm sorry. :(

lg
Erik

by grefabu (not verified)

But why I need in amarok a volume button?

Every desktop brings a volume-button byself, but not a pitch-contol?

This will a very good feature for amarok!
It is the only additional I need.

But it is your choice...

Gregor

by Dan haworth (not verified)

I have to admit, a pitch control would be especially useful to me. I do love Amarok but I tend to DJ a lot, and whilst i don't use the laptop for actual performance its handy hearing how a song will sound pitched up on the deck when im planning my sets.

So many friends of mine do like their music that little bit faster too.. Practically anyone who's into any dance music scene will find this a nice feature.

by fish (not verified)

Will this ever be a default feature of Amarok? Or is it "beyond the scope of the application" as well?! Uhh...

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=122223
http://amarok.kde.org/forum/index.php/topic,13538.msg17039.html#msg17039

Lots of players have this as a default *option* - why do you refuse to add this?

It wouldn't even clutter the GUI...

by Mark Kretschmann (not verified)

It should be handled by a script.

by fish (not verified)

Why?

by AC (not verified)

why not?
it works fine with the available script, so why do you need this implemented as default in amarok?
Just put the script on and it is default on your computer ;)

by fish (not verified)

which one of the 3 scripts do you use?

I'm not happy with any of them...

by Alexandre (not verified)

Report the bugs/wishs to their authors then. Help them improve.

by Bert (not verified)

Do you know whether there is a tool as Streamtuner for KDE/amarok to find appropriate radio streams?
http://www.nongnu.org/streamtuner/

It's wonderful but a Gnome app.

I feel that the Radio-Stream access of Amarok is not very convenient. In my Mandriva version of Amarok the French Radio ogg streams died from the server side. I thought it was a codec or library issue but the server was put down and no ogg streams are offered any more.

by Mark Kretschmann (not verified)

No longer needed. Amarok 1.4.5 has a built-in Shoutcast stream browser.