As mentioned elsewhere, I’ve only now had a chance to try out 2.1.40 and I have several bugs/issues apart from the File Tagging ones I posted elsewhere in reply to Torben’s posting about multiple cue points.
Here we go!
The ramp countdown in a Player no longer includes a minus sign (e.g. R 6.0 instead of R-6.0). Is this intentional, and if so, why? The remain time display has a minus sign (e.g. -3:42.7) so it would be more consistent to have a minus sign in the ramp countdown as well, yes?
The new buttons clash badly with my layout (blue is a REALLY bad colour). Is it still possible to replace the buttons with other designs, and can you please remind me which directory the designs go into, and the file names to use? Are there any other new buttons apart from Hook and Loop?
Is it possible to replace the LINK icon in a Playlist with a custom graphic, and if so, how? (Again, a blue arrow looks REALLY bad in my layout.)
My ToolbarFont setting in skin.ini is ignored. I specified Arial Narrow and the Playlist Toolbar is using the default font (Arial).
All my Font colour settings for Playlist items in skin.ini are ignored. All text in the Playlist is shown in grey (#808080), including everything in the State column (!). Previously, the default font colour was black, but even if I add a FontColor=#000000 line, it makes no difference. Has there been soeme kind of Big Change to skin.ini which I have not noticed?!!
This was a request by some members from the German forums. Starting with mAirList 2.1.41, the prefix will be customizable through skin.ini (“RampPrefix”).
2) The new buttons clash badly with my layout (blue is a REALLY bad colour). Is it still possible to replace the buttons with other designs, and can you please remind me which directory the designs go into, and the file names to use? Are there any other new buttons apart from Hook and Loop?
The new buttons are in PNG format, and can be replaced using the same mechanisms as for the other PNGs (most important, the playlist icons). Just create a new folder “images” inside the mAirList folder and place the following files inside:
The original files are 48x48, but all buttons are resized properly before drawing, so you can also use larger or (to some extend) smaller images. The buttons need to be transparent, the background color for the inactive/active state can be set through skin.ini (in the “Player” and - for the playlist toolbar - “Playlist” sections):
As I have just noticed, there is a typo in the source code of v.40. I forgot the “Button” part of the keys, so you need to write “StartColor” instead of “StartButtonColor” etc., and some settings clash with the general color settings for the player. Sorry for that. I will upload a snapshot which fixes this problem soon.
3) Is it possible to replace the LINK icon in a Playlist with a custom graphic, and if so, how? (Again, a blue arrow looks REALLY bad in my layout.)
Yes, same mechanism as described above, the files need to be named “icon_linked.png” and “icon_notlinked.png” (the latter is only a 1x1 pixel transparent graphic by default).
4) My ToolbarFont setting in skin.ini is ignored. I specified Arial Narrow and the Playlist Toolbar is using the default font (Arial).
It’s a bug (I accidently deleted one line of source code when implementing the new buttons and their skin.ini settings). Will be fixed in v.41 and the forthcoming snapshot.
5) All my Font colour settings for Playlist items in skin.ini are ignored. All text in the Playlist is shown in grey (#808080), including everything in the State column (!). Previously, the default font colour was black, but even if I add a FontColor=#000000 line, it makes no difference. :( Has there been soeme kind of Big Change to skin.ini which I have not noticed?!!
Starting with v.38, skin.ini is processed in a slightly different way. The order of the items is now important. It’s explained in the Wiki: start [mAirList Wiki]
You should first move the “FontColor” setting to the very end of the “Playlist” section and see whether it is activated this way. If in doubt, please post or mail your skin.ini, and I will investigate it.
Thanks to Torben’s reply, I’ve managed to sort out everything except having different font colours for the State column etc.
(Torben, I’ll attach my INI files—trying to solve this is driving me crazy! :’().
To be clear: the only column I am trying to change is what I call the State column, the one that contains (for example) the player name, player state, and backtimings. I want that column in a different font and colour from the others, which I managed to do successfully in V2.1.38 and earlier.
If I understand the Wiki page correctly, changing PlayingFontColor will affect every column in the Playlist: I don’t want to do that!
It sounds like I have misunderstood the Wiki documentation. It states there that the third part of the INI key name (if used) should be Name, Title, State, or Time. Title seems to refer to the track title (but not the artist), and I had thought State meant the first Playlist column, but it seems not, so can you please tell me precisely which Playlist elements you mean by Name, State, and Time? I’m guessing that Name means what I would call Artist: is that correct or not? I tried specifying Time but like State, nothing appeared to change :(.
(As you may have guessed, I’m trying to understand what these keys do in practice, by trying various combinations of them, a few at a time.)
Ah HA! I knew there had to be a simple, rational explanation! I will go and try those to restore my previous setup under 2.1.40; and it has given me some ideas for further improvements.
Well, it still isn’t working as I expect, so I attach a ZIPfile containing a couple of screen shots from my v2.0 setup and my v2.1 setup, and my SKIN.INI. Am I still getting something wrong, or is there a bug in the SKIN.INI handling?
Mind the order of the entries in the Playlist section! Basically, the playlist GUI object scans the relevant skin.ini entries from top to bottom and the bottom-most entry which matches the item/category under consideration will have precedence. In your skin.ini, the last few lines are
As these lines do not refer to any specific font category or state, they will match all items and override any settings above. As a thumb rule, put the more general settings at the top of the section, and the more specific settings at the bottom.
Here’s another example. Imagine a “Stream” item loaded into a player which is currently paused. The two lines
StreamFontName=Times New Roman
PausedFontName=Tahoma
do both match this item. The latter will have precedence. When you switch the position of the two lines, the font will rather be Times New Roman.
This might appear a little complicated at first glance, but it’s the ultimate solution to the “should item types or states be more important?” discussion.
So … it’s the last matching entry which takes precedence, not the first one? Oh. :-[ Oops! Obviously I didn’t read the Wiki page properly! All I can say in my defence is that in other (non-radio) software I work with, the first matching item in its configuration takes precedence and I obviously got confused. ;D
I’m sorry to have wasted your time with that, but referring again to my screen shots: in ‘not Extended’ mode, the Playlist does not seem to have an Artist column any more, is that correct?
In extended mode, there is no Artist column, but Artist and Title are displayed as two lines within the same column (but you can still have distinct fonts). In non-extended mode, there’s distinct columns for both Artist and Title.
I have tried AutoSizeColumn=-1 and it is not working: my Playlist columns are still expanding to fill all of the available width :(.
The extended/non-extended question is getting strange …
I have two Playlists (one for music, and one for ad. breaks). I just realised that Playlist 1 does not show an Artist column in non-extended mode, but Playlist 2 does show an Artist column in non-extended mode!
My SKIN.INI has not changed significantly from the one I posted along with the screen shots (all I have changed are some colours, plus re-ordering some lines ;)), so you can use that as a reference.
Has there been soeme kind of Big Change to skin.ini which I have not noticed?!!
I will go and try those to restore my previous setup under 2.1.40; and it has given me some ideas for further improvements.