Description: This is an improved version of NowPlaying.
NOTE: The best way to read this is by opening the README and/or ChangeLog files provided with the screenlet. Here the text looks bad because the website doesn't show 2 consecutive space characters.
DOWNLOA From this page as .tar.gz archive or from the PPA for the debian based systems: https://launchpad.net/~screenlets-dev/+archive/ppa Terminal commands for installation from PPA: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:screenlets-dev/ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install nowplaying-screenlet
New Features Summary: + General: Easy translations through launchpad + General: Wallpaper changer (Sets wallpaper according to the current artist or album) (requires gconftool-2) + General: Cover Copy (Copies the current cover to the song folder) (requires imagemagick) + General: History logging of the played tracks + General: Right click menu: 'Open cover with viewer' and 'Open cover location' + General: Sleep fade (Fade out volume, Quit player and Shutdown computer) + Skinning: Ability to edit the cover image right before showing it (so you can make more flexible skins) + Skinning: Rewritten the PlayerControls tag. (now supports transparency and don't have to be an actual visual group) + Skinning: Added the transparency option for images + Eyecandy: Fade effect for the following actions: screenlet startup, cover change, theme change, mouse hover, player start/quit, player play/stop, manual show/hide + API: Volume control (with mouse scroll wheel up/down/click) + API: Rating control + API: Updated/Improved most of them and added some more
Note for the Screenlets engine developers: > The fade effect should be implemented directly into the screenlets engine so that all the screenlets can use it. I do belive that it would look way better.
Supported players: - last tested with v0.3.4.2 - Abraca (XMMS2 GUI) - last tested with v0.3.4.2 - Amarok 1 - last tested with v0.3.3.9 - Amarok 2 - last tested with v0.3.4.2 - Audacious - last tested with v0.3.4.2 - Banshee - last tested with v0.3.4.2 - Decibel-Audio-Player (v1.05 or greater) - last tested with v0.3.4.2 - Esperanza (XMMS2 GUI) - last tested with v0.3.4.2 - Exaile (with MPRIS Plugin enabled) - last tested with v0.3.4.2 - gXMMS2 (XMMS2 GUI) - last tested with v0.3.4.2 - Jajuk - last tested with v0.3.4.2 - Juk - last tested with v0.3.4.2 - Listen - last tested with v0.3.4.2 - LXMusic (XMMS2 GUI) - last tested with v0.3.3.0 - MPD - last tested with v0.3.4.2 - Muine - last tested with v0.3.4.2 - qmmp (with MPRIS Plugin enabled) - last tested with v0.3.4.2 - QuodLibet (with Picture Saver plugin enabled) - last tested with v0.3.4.2 - Rhythmbox - last tested with v0.3.4.2 - Songbird (needs MPRIS Addon) - last tested with v0.3.4.2 - XMMS2 (with/without GUI.. doesn't matter) - Maybe other players with MPRIS support - Definitely other XMMS2 clients
Known Bugs: > Listen: Next/Previous buttons don't work (The dbus call is correct but from that to the player something is not working fine.) > Songbird: It works but the screenlet lags a lot. Although it uses MPRIS just like Exaile or qmmp which run fine.
If there are any problems please report them so that we can make this screenlet even better. The screenlet contains only a few themes because of the uploading limit.
Something I'd like to see in this screenlet is the ability to run multiple instances. Unfortunately I still didn't figure out how to do that.
For more details please read the changelog...Last changelog:
Changelog containing all the modifications done since the Alexibaba mod v.0.3.3.0:
v.0.3.4.3 (2011-02-27)
+ Added gettext support for launchpad translation (thanks to boamaod) + Fixed sleepfade issues with low duration values --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
v.0.3.4.2 (2011-02-21)
+ Improved APIs: > General: Added set_vol(), stop() and quit() functions (only to those that could provide the functionality) > Banshee: First searches for cover in the song directory and then tries other places > Banshee: Fixed play button bug reported by EcstasyGold > Listen: Made a workaround to get the volume manipulation work (not very elegant but works)
+ Added sleep fade in the right click menu: > During a determined period of time the volume slowly fades out and at the end of the process the player and/or the computer can be shutted down > When you first click it, it starts. When clicked again it stops the process. > It has a new group in the options called 'Sleep' > Slow volume fading is not supported by: Amarok 2, Banshee, Jajuk, MPD, QuodLibet > Player quit option is not supported by: Amarok 2, MPD > The shutdown feature requires zenity to get the user password. >> The password is not stored. When the sleep fade process ends or is stopped the password is removed from memory. Safer this way. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
v.0.3.4.1 (2011-02-14)
+ Fixed right click menu options 'Open cover with viewer' and 'Open cover location' for skins using cover_manip.sh
+ Added API support for: Decibel-Audio-Player, Jajuk, Juk, Muine, qmmp >> For Jajuk to work you shouldn't modify the 'Frame title' pattern: ~%title (%artist)~ + Players using Mpris or Xmms2 got their own API's extended from MprisAPI and XMMS2API + Cover copy support for Banshee + For player APIs supporting cover search in the song directory: (You may thank Passaralho for pointing this out) > You can set a preferred cover name in options under the 'Cover' tab (will first search for this one - case insensitive) > Default preferred cover names: cover, folder, front (in this order - case insensitive) > Accepted extensions: jpg, jpeg, png, bmp + Added Rating control: > Updated the default and default-old skins with this feature > Player APIs providing support: Amarok 1, Banshee (Only show rating, can't manipulate it), Exaile >> The Exaile API uses the "qdbus" binary to work with ratings. For some reason the python dbus module doesn't work with it. > Made 2 methods for theme creators: >> First: The "ratinggroup" tag which adds the 5 stars with only 1 line >> Second: The "rating" tag which requires star* sub-tags (this one can use independent x, y, width, height, transparency and basename) >> To see examples go to the default skin xml file + Added Volume control: > Vol up/down by scrolling up/down over the screenlet > Mute/Unmute with middle click on the screenlet > Currently supported by the following API's: >> Abraca, Amarok 1, Amarok 1 no pydcop, Audacious, Decibel-Audio-Player, Esperanza, Exaile, gXMMS2, Jajuk, Listen (only mute/unmute), LXMusic, Muine, qmmp, Rhythmbox, Songbird, XMMS2 >> Amarok 2 got no volume control because I can't install it along with Amarok 1. I'm quite sure it has the ability to do this. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
v.0.3.4.0 (2010-02-10)
+ Right click on the screenlet and you'll see 2 new options: 'Open cover with viewer' and 'Open cover location' (the use of them is quite obvious) > The image viewer and file browser can be changed in the options under the 'General' tab which replaced the 'Scrolling' tab. >> By default the binaries are the defaults for ubuntu: eog and nautilus + Debugging can be turned on from the 'General' tab of the options > You'll get more terminal output if you activate this + Skinning: transparency option for images > Supported types: image, albumcover, buttons >> Text types already have the alpha value so there's no need to add this option to them > Here's a usage example: >> The transparency value goes from 0 (fully visible) to 1 (invisible) + Skinning: rewritten player controls > The 'playercontrols' tag is rewritten into the 'buttons' tag > The buttons are now on the same surface as the rest of the elements > It can now use transparent png images and the transparency option newly included > Each button has it's own coordinates and dimensions so you can place them wherever you want > If you want you can still use the 'playercontrols' tag as I made it backwards compatible (so the old themes still work ) > however if you use 'playercontrols' you'll have the old limitations + Fade effect: (This should be implemented directly in the screenlets engine so that all the screenlets can use it; hopefully the developers will do) > This fade feature was not tested very good and so it might still contain bugs > The screenlet checks if compiz is running. If it's not running, the fade effect is disabled. >> You can manually enable/disable it from options. > Fade in when screenlet is started > Cover changing: Fade out previous cover, fade in new cover > Theme changing: Fade out previous theme, fade in new theme > Fade in when player found / Fade out if no player found > Fade in if playing / Fade out if not playing > Fade in/out on mouse hover > Right-click menu option: 'Show/Hide' >> Hide the screenlet (it's still there but with 100% transparency, right click again and click on the 'Show/Hide' option to make it visible) > Almost all the presented fade actions can be enabled/disabled from the 'Fade' tab from options + New Default Skin: (The old one is still there also) > This theme is ment to be released and updated with the screenlet and represents an example of all the skinning possibilities available > It can be used as a tutorial as it has a list with everything you can use > Looks good with the Darkness (rgba true) gtk2 theme + Changed cover fetching order: LastFM, Amazon, Discogs + Fixed bug reported by danino73: > After the cover was fetched it was not painted on the screen --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
v.0.3.3.9 (2011-01-20)
+ MP python-mpd is included so you don't have to install it. + MPRIS: You can add a third mpris player in options now. + All API: Added get_url() and get_url_dir() to be able to fetch the current song path + New Feature: Cover Copy (requires imagemagick to get image dimensions and to change the image format) > Copy the cover to the songs folder. > Added in the 'Cover' tab in options. > It replaces the existing cover only if the new one is bigger (resolution not size in bytes) (can be activated/deactivated) > It can also remove any other image present in the directory except for the cover (can be activated/deactivated) > It doesn't work with all the players because some of them don't provide the file location. >> Supported: Abraca, Amarok 1, Audacious, Esperanza, gXMMS2, Listen, LXMusic, MPD, MPRIS based, Rhythmbox, XMMS2
+ Performance optimizations > The skinning feature introduced in v.0.3.3.3 was quite a load for the CPU because the cover_manip.sh script was called each time the screenlet was getting data from the player. > The cover was also fetched each second. Now it gets the cover only when changing the track. > Wallpaper feature had the same situation as the cover. > The screenlet was basically doing an unnecessary full update each second. Now it's only comparing the last known necessary values with the current ones before deciding on updating or not. + History logging improved. + Fixed the launch/kill player feature for all the tested players.
+ Amarok1_no_pydcop: API fixes.. + QuodLibet: Fixed cover showing. > Requires "Picture Saver" plugin to be enabled. + Audacious: Added support (API) + Songbird: Added support + Xmms2: Added support (API) > It works with or without a GUI. All it needs is the xmms2d (daemon) and the nyxmms2 binary to control it. > However I've tested the following GUIs and all worked fine: gxmms2 abraca lxmusic esperanza + Mpris: Cover path corrected for paths containing: ( ) [ ] ' ! @ & + Wallpaper: Corrected bug.. > The dot in the artist/album name was acting like a wild card character when searching image
+ Banshee: Fixed API problems > Fixed the null artist/title/album returns which blocked the screenlet > Added the current Banshee cover path: [ ~/.cache/media-art/ ] but the old one works too: [ ~/.cache/album-art/ ] + Listen: Improved API > Added the current Listen cover path: [ ~/.cache/listen/cover/ ] the old one works too: [ ~/.listen/cover/ ] > Added the current cached cover naming method: [ album.jpg ] but the old one works too: [ artist+album.jpg ] + MPRIS: Improved API > Fixed the null artist/title/album returns which blocked the screenlet > Improved cover get method: Implemented the same method applied for the Amarok 1 API
+ Amarok 1: Cover quality increase (moved the implementation into the APIs) + Amarok 1: Removed the no cover image which looks bad on many skins + Cleaned the code a bit and increased a small amount of performance.
+ Wallpaper changer fixes: > Artists name like: AC/DC or Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley weren't working so in the image name the following characters must be written as _ (underline): \ / ' " [ ] > Other players than amarok weren't working because of a small error that occurred in a check performed. (thanks to BOAMAOD for pointing out the Rhythmbox problem) + Rhythmbox API improvement: > Improved the get_cover_path function: >> Mixed the original API made by vrunner with the custom one made by Alexibaba >> Added the new rhythmbox covers path [ ~/.cache/rhythmbox/covers ] but the old one [ ~/.gnome2/rhythmbox/covers ] is still working too.
+ Wallpaper changer improvement: > While playing, it checks for album/artist wallpaper and if there's none it can log the artist name. (This way it makes a sorted list of artist wallpapers you need to get.) + New feature: History logging of songs played > There's a new tab in options called History > It logs the current time and the current playing track. >> Note: If you loop a single track, the track is logged only the first time it's played.
+ New skin: Broken_Glass (needs NowPlayer v.0.3.3.3 or later) + New feature: Cover can be processed through a bash script right before updating the screen. (all supported players) > The Steps: >> 1. When changing the cover the screenlet searches for a [ cover_manip.sh ] script in the theme folder >> 2. If it exists then the cover is copied in the theme folder with the name: cover.png >> 3. Now the script is executed (the returned image must replace cover.png) >> 4. The path to the new cover.png is passed to the skin engine and it get's shown. > Broken_Glass is the best example (it's actually the reason I added the feature... I really wanted such theme) > I hope this feature will bring up many new and great themes as skinning is much more flexible now. > Dependencies: sudo apt-get install imagemagick >> The dependency isn't required by the screenlet but by the Broken_Glass theme to manipulate the cover image.
+ New Feature: Wallpaper changer (all supported players) (gnome only - uses gconftool-2) Details: > Sets wallpaper according to the current album or the current artist (in this order - in case both are present) > You can activate it from the new [ Wallpaper ] tab created in options > You should set the path to the wallpaper applied when not having a cover or not playing (by default it sets your current one) > You have to set the album and artist folder paths in the options >> The paths must be absolute. Don't use ~/Pictures instead of /home/YourUsername/Pictures >> The folders should contain images with the album/artist name as it is written in the player tag (case insensitive) >> The image extension doesn't matter as long as it is there. >>> For example: If the artist is Eminem the image Eminem.jpg will work fine while Eminem won't
+ Fixed the & character which appeared as & for the album text (all supported players) + The screenlet is now locally searching for a better image than the thumbnail provided by dcop which is quite small (amarok only) Search places (in this exact order): > ~/.kde/share/apps/amarok/albumcovers/large > ~/.kde/share/apps/amarok/albumcovers/tagcover > song path: *.png *.jpg *.jpeg (selects the first image found) + The image shown when not having a cover can be changed by replacing [ UI/no-cover.png ] with a custom one. (amarok only) > To restore the default one just remove [ UI/no-cover.png ] from the screenlet folder
Little tricky to find out how this with coverart works. I had a folder with a music mix on my computer. in that folder ther were servral cover art. the cover art looks fine in the player but now playing always shows wrong coverart. but i dicovered that the music must be in album sort (folders) on the HD. and the music mix must be done in in playlist. I just telling this if someone have the same problem as i'm had to show the correct cover art. I believe that many people have a music mix and sevral coverarts in the same folder on the computer, but that will not work with now playing, so the only way is to make the music mix in the musicplayer! ....correct me if i'm wrong! :-)
....Love this screenlet now when i understand how it's work!
I'm quite lost in your theory but here's how the things are.
Cover grabbing depends on the player you use.
Some player APIs provide the path to the cover image to NowPlaying and so the cover is the same in both apps.
Some player APIs don't provide that path and so NowPlaying searches for cover image in the same folder as the audio file is located. In this case covers might be different.
There is also the possibility of not finding any cover image. Here's when the cover is looked up on the internet. Covers might be different in this case too.
Thanx!
My Now Playing did show wrong coverart, and by sorting them in Artist/Album folder on the HD solved the problem for me. But when i read youre answer i understand that the solution isn't that easy. You are doing a hard work to make the screenlet to work with so many player! I was just so happy when it works on my computer so i feelt to share that! :) ....You are doing a great work and i hope you feel that you getting good response from people! ....i mean it's a cool screenlet and that is great! :-)
Hello
I filed a bug on Launchpad for NowPlaying. There is an issue with unspecified licenses in headers of source files and in order to maintain the NowPlaying in basic-pack, this must be corrected. Only you can do it, because only you know where did you take the snippets you are using. Do you have time to fix these formal issues?
For details, see: https://bugs.launchpad.net/indiv-screenlets/+bug/825696.
Hello! Great work!
...But i have an issue! I use Rhythmbox and having trouble with Now Playing to show correct cover art. In rhythmbox i can see the cover art but now playing isn't showing the same cover art as Rhythmbox! ...strange!! This is when i play music on my lokal files. I only use rhythmbox to that! Now some music song shown is now playing correct cover art. I have had this trouble in sevral installation of my Linux dist (currently Linux Mint 10) Rhythmbox that i use have version number 0.13.1 and now playing is in version 0.3.4.3
....Really hope you can help me with this! ...the Now Playing screenlet is so Cool when it work's correct!! :-)
Thank you for the almost perfect improvement of Now Playing.
It work very well with MPD.
But I would love to see a option, in the left click, where it was possible to re-fetch the cover. Because it is not always the fetching ends up in a cover.
I don't think I'll be able to do this or any other improvement too soon. My laptop's video card is failing and I get ugly display problem. I can only boot with a live CD running in low graphics mode (still having plenty of graphic artifacts and enough errors at boot)
So until I can do something about that I'm stuck with mobile internet.
Sorry.
Wow.. Damn it sounds crappy.
Take all the time you need.
After all, it is not as necessary as I thought. After some thinking, I can't even figure out a scenario where I would need to re-fetch. :)
Hi Brucelee,
your improved version of this screenlet is fabulous. Especially the broken glass theme.
Thank you for paying attention to this app and kicking this screenlet off a bit more.
I will add a notice to my page (http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=113532) that there is a newer version available.
The Screenlet, theming and the mpd module is working fine for me.
Thanks for the fix brucelee. The play/ pause works as expected now.
I'm still having some anomalies that happen sporadically. I'm having trouble putting my finger on a couple of 'em. So, the problem may be with my setup as opposed to the Now Playing screenlet.
Using Ubuntu 10.10, Banshee, Reflective-black theme. When I click the next button sometimes the next song's info won't display in the Now Playing screenlet (No song title, no artist name, no album name, and no cover art). In order to get it to show song info again, I click on a different song in Banshee (from playlist). Also does this using other themes.
In the Default theme, I have 3 of them in my themes list (default, default-old, and default listed again further down the list). This is as I'm right-clicking the screenlet, then click Themes in the drop-down menu as opposed to clicking Properties then the Themes tab. So, I may have obsolete themes from previous installs.
I clicked the 'default' from the Themes tab and the mouse-over buttons work, kinda. I can pause it, but it isn't always responsive thereafter (prev, play/ pause, next). Clicking any of the buttons is hit & miss. Sometimes I have to double-click to get some kind of reaction.
I'm getting some album covers that are showing incorrectly for some reason. Example, Don Henley's 'Boys of Summer' song shows the album cover for 'Legends of Rock - Steppenwolf'. The album cover is correct in Banshee, though. I've seen where the Steppenwolf cover has shown on several other songs as well. I'm still trying to figure out why. Another example is Van Halen's 'Humans Being' song. The album cover shows as a tribute album to Van Halen (wrong album). It shows correctly in Banshee.
Is there a way to have the album covers be consistent with the music player (Banshee)? For instance, I play several different Rob Zombie songs from their respective albums. The albums are correct in Banshee, but in the Now Playing screenlet the album cover is from a greatest hits album (Not necessarily wrong). Another example, is an album cover will show in Banshee, but a soundtrack cover will show in Now Playing. Not a biggy, but I'd prefer the original album cover as opposed to a greatest hits album or movie soundtrack.
If it matters, I have most of my music on a networked Windows computer (SAMBA mounted drive linked to a local folder). I also have a local music folder with a few songs in it. Both folders make up my music library in Banshee.
We are planning to add NowPlaying to default screenlets pack.
But it would be much more convenient for the project if you put your updates in Individual Screenlets Bazaar repository and keep it refreshed there. It is not useful to keep two sources, especially since we host translations on Launchpad now and we need to manually update gettext decorated translation strings in the code every time you make a new version.
So please, give it a thought! It gives you proper bug tracking etc. See also http://screenlets.org/index.php/Documentation#Why_should_I_add_my_Screenlet_to_individual_Screenlets_project.
About...
ImportError: No module named pydcop
And I don't know, if you have noticed, but you can use __requires__ field for extra modules, if they are needed for basic functionality. See http://screenlets.org/index.php/Documentation#Lets_set_some_global_vars. It currently works only under Debian/Ubuntu.
Although I have no experience with launchpad I'll go for it as it will be way more accessible. Thanks for this. I'll join the inidv-screenlets-dev team.
I'll check out your links as soon as the screenlets website is online. (maybe it's just me but right now I can't access the site)
And thanks for the ImportError tip. I must say this is my first time scripting in python and I didn't even read the screenlets documentation. So I still consider myself quite a beginner.
Thanks for including me in the team.
Unfortunately I've screwed up the 833 revision as I was learning to use bzr but r834 should be fine now.. I hope that's not a big problem. Sorry for the inconvenient event.
Further on I'd like to know 2 things:
1. How are the translations generated
2. How is the project packed as deb. Automatically or do I have to do something about it to update it in the repository.
Thanks
You can see how the NowPlaying screenlet was made translatable from previous revision on project: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~indiv-screenlets-dev/indiv-screenlets/trunk/view/832/src/NowPlaying/NowPlayingScreenlet.py. Although I think the row #113 with "# The Screenlet" should be removed, in order to make docstring translatable. Notice the _("String") patterns around UI strings (and not internally used strings). You should incorporate these to the .py files of your screenlet. By now ./potfiles.sh doesn't search *.py in project subdirectories, so I if that's needed I can modify the process (if you don't dare to do it yourself).
If you make your screenlet work with gettext in next few days, we can include the latest version in 0.1.3 of Screenlets.
You didn't have to do that.. You've lost so much time with this while I already had it done. Sorry for that.
Unfortunately during the last 3 days I didn't have an internet connection to upload the gettexted version which also includes a fix for the sleep fade feature.
I'll upload right now.
First, I use your Now Playing screenlet all the time. Very handy. Thanks a bunch for makin' it. :-)
I'm using Ubuntu 10.10 OS & Banshee music player.
I typically use the Reflective-Black theme in the Now Playing screenlet. Big improvement since v0.3.3. Had trouble with some covers showing (ie. AC/DC). v0.3.4+ is much better.
What I've noticed so far just upgrading to v0.3.4.1. Using Reflective-Black theme, I click to pause and the pause button shows as paused. Then I click again to play, play button shows. I click to pause again, music stops, but button stays showing as playing. It stays as the play button no matter how many times I toggle pause/ play. The music stops/ starts correctly, but the button stays as playing.
No biggy, it works, but can be misleading if I have the volume turned down, muted, or my stereo is switched on a different setting (ie. Tuner, Aux). I use an FM transmitter for my music on the Tuner and Aux for Television, DVD, etc...
On the Default theme, the mouse-over controls don't work. They show, but clicking on them doesn't do anything. I have to right-click the screenlet then chose previous, next, pause, etc...
The play button issue should be solved. As for the other problem with the buttons which didn't work at all.. I didn't encounter such problem.
Check out v.0.3.4.2.
Hi! It's me again... :)
I use Rhythmbox, as I already stated.
Everything is ok, except one little strange thing...
I have a couple of albums in a large flac file. The folder of that albuns contain only the big flac with all the musics, the folder.jpg for cover and the cue file.
With Rhythmbox, no cover is displayed or fetched.
I tried other players and cover was displayed with all I tried.
Any idea?
BTW, any tips on how to read the cue file with rhythmbox?
Or a player like rhythmbox that reads cue files?
Thanks in advance,
Keep up the great work!
Best regards
Well, that's strange...
Could you post the path to the folder and the contents of it (exact names)?
I'd like to try and reproduce the situation and see if I can figure out the problem.
Also mention one or more players that worked.
Thanks.
As for the cue player.. I don't know any. I keep everything mp3.
)
Ratings & Comments
50 Comments
Little tricky to find out how this with coverart works. I had a folder with a music mix on my computer. in that folder ther were servral cover art. the cover art looks fine in the player but now playing always shows wrong coverart. but i dicovered that the music must be in album sort (folders) on the HD. and the music mix must be done in in playlist. I just telling this if someone have the same problem as i'm had to show the correct cover art. I believe that many people have a music mix and sevral coverarts in the same folder on the computer, but that will not work with now playing, so the only way is to make the music mix in the musicplayer! ....correct me if i'm wrong! :-) ....Love this screenlet now when i understand how it's work!
I'm quite lost in your theory but here's how the things are. Cover grabbing depends on the player you use. Some player APIs provide the path to the cover image to NowPlaying and so the cover is the same in both apps. Some player APIs don't provide that path and so NowPlaying searches for cover image in the same folder as the audio file is located. In this case covers might be different. There is also the possibility of not finding any cover image. Here's when the cover is looked up on the internet. Covers might be different in this case too.
Thanx! My Now Playing did show wrong coverart, and by sorting them in Artist/Album folder on the HD solved the problem for me. But when i read youre answer i understand that the solution isn't that easy. You are doing a hard work to make the screenlet to work with so many player! I was just so happy when it works on my computer so i feelt to share that! :) ....You are doing a great work and i hope you feel that you getting good response from people! ....i mean it's a cool screenlet and that is great! :-)
No Deadbeef Support :(
You won't see that too soon unless I have a working computer.. which I don't have.
Hello I filed a bug on Launchpad for NowPlaying. There is an issue with unspecified licenses in headers of source files and in order to maintain the NowPlaying in basic-pack, this must be corrected. Only you can do it, because only you know where did you take the snippets you are using. Do you have time to fix these formal issues? For details, see: https://bugs.launchpad.net/indiv-screenlets/+bug/825696.
I can't update the package so if the following archive is fine please do update the screenlet: http://www.mediafire.com/?55pocewqtz9t96z
Hello! Great work! ...But i have an issue! I use Rhythmbox and having trouble with Now Playing to show correct cover art. In rhythmbox i can see the cover art but now playing isn't showing the same cover art as Rhythmbox! ...strange!! This is when i play music on my lokal files. I only use rhythmbox to that! Now some music song shown is now playing correct cover art. I have had this trouble in sevral installation of my Linux dist (currently Linux Mint 10) Rhythmbox that i use have version number 0.13.1 and now playing is in version 0.3.4.3 ....Really hope you can help me with this! ...the Now Playing screenlet is so Cool when it work's correct!! :-)
Thank you for the almost perfect improvement of Now Playing. It work very well with MPD. But I would love to see a option, in the left click, where it was possible to re-fetch the cover. Because it is not always the fetching ends up in a cover.
I don't think I'll be able to do this or any other improvement too soon. My laptop's video card is failing and I get ugly display problem. I can only boot with a live CD running in low graphics mode (still having plenty of graphic artifacts and enough errors at boot) So until I can do something about that I'm stuck with mobile internet. Sorry.
Wow.. Damn it sounds crappy. Take all the time you need. After all, it is not as necessary as I thought. After some thinking, I can't even figure out a scenario where I would need to re-fetch. :)
Hi Brucelee, your improved version of this screenlet is fabulous. Especially the broken glass theme. Thank you for paying attention to this app and kicking this screenlet off a bit more. I will add a notice to my page (http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=113532) that there is a newer version available. The Screenlet, theming and the mpd module is working fine for me.
Thanks for the fix brucelee. The play/ pause works as expected now. I'm still having some anomalies that happen sporadically. I'm having trouble putting my finger on a couple of 'em. So, the problem may be with my setup as opposed to the Now Playing screenlet. Using Ubuntu 10.10, Banshee, Reflective-black theme. When I click the next button sometimes the next song's info won't display in the Now Playing screenlet (No song title, no artist name, no album name, and no cover art). In order to get it to show song info again, I click on a different song in Banshee (from playlist). Also does this using other themes. In the Default theme, I have 3 of them in my themes list (default, default-old, and default listed again further down the list). This is as I'm right-clicking the screenlet, then click Themes in the drop-down menu as opposed to clicking Properties then the Themes tab. So, I may have obsolete themes from previous installs. I clicked the 'default' from the Themes tab and the mouse-over buttons work, kinda. I can pause it, but it isn't always responsive thereafter (prev, play/ pause, next). Clicking any of the buttons is hit & miss. Sometimes I have to double-click to get some kind of reaction. I'm getting some album covers that are showing incorrectly for some reason. Example, Don Henley's 'Boys of Summer' song shows the album cover for 'Legends of Rock - Steppenwolf'. The album cover is correct in Banshee, though. I've seen where the Steppenwolf cover has shown on several other songs as well. I'm still trying to figure out why. Another example is Van Halen's 'Humans Being' song. The album cover shows as a tribute album to Van Halen (wrong album). It shows correctly in Banshee. Is there a way to have the album covers be consistent with the music player (Banshee)? For instance, I play several different Rob Zombie songs from their respective albums. The albums are correct in Banshee, but in the Now Playing screenlet the album cover is from a greatest hits album (Not necessarily wrong). Another example, is an album cover will show in Banshee, but a soundtrack cover will show in Now Playing. Not a biggy, but I'd prefer the original album cover as opposed to a greatest hits album or movie soundtrack. If it matters, I have most of my music on a networked Windows computer (SAMBA mounted drive linked to a local folder). I also have a local music folder with a few songs in it. Both folders make up my music library in Banshee.
We are planning to add NowPlaying to default screenlets pack. But it would be much more convenient for the project if you put your updates in Individual Screenlets Bazaar repository and keep it refreshed there. It is not useful to keep two sources, especially since we host translations on Launchpad now and we need to manually update gettext decorated translation strings in the code every time you make a new version. So please, give it a thought! It gives you proper bug tracking etc. See also http://screenlets.org/index.php/Documentation#Why_should_I_add_my_Screenlet_to_individual_Screenlets_project. About... ImportError: No module named pydcop And I don't know, if you have noticed, but you can use __requires__ field for extra modules, if they are needed for basic functionality. See http://screenlets.org/index.php/Documentation#Lets_set_some_global_vars. It currently works only under Debian/Ubuntu.
Although I have no experience with launchpad I'll go for it as it will be way more accessible. Thanks for this. I'll join the inidv-screenlets-dev team. I'll check out your links as soon as the screenlets website is online. (maybe it's just me but right now I can't access the site) And thanks for the ImportError tip. I must say this is my first time scripting in python and I didn't even read the screenlets documentation. So I still consider myself quite a beginner.
Thanks for including me in the team. Unfortunately I've screwed up the 833 revision as I was learning to use bzr but r834 should be fine now.. I hope that's not a big problem. Sorry for the inconvenient event. Further on I'd like to know 2 things: 1. How are the translations generated 2. How is the project packed as deb. Automatically or do I have to do something about it to update it in the repository. Thanks
Thanks for joining, everything seems to be fine at the moment, so don't worry about it. I answered to your two questions at individual screenlets mailing list: https://lists.launchpad.net/indiv-screenlets-dev/msg00043.html. If you were not added to the list automatically, you can join at https://launchpad.net/~indiv-screenlets-dev.
You can see how the NowPlaying screenlet was made translatable from previous revision on project: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~indiv-screenlets-dev/indiv-screenlets/trunk/view/832/src/NowPlaying/NowPlayingScreenlet.py. Although I think the row #113 with "# The Screenlet" should be removed, in order to make docstring translatable. Notice the _("String") patterns around UI strings (and not internally used strings). You should incorporate these to the .py files of your screenlet. By now ./potfiles.sh doesn't search *.py in project subdirectories, so I if that's needed I can modify the process (if you don't dare to do it yourself). If you make your screenlet work with gettext in next few days, we can include the latest version in 0.1.3 of Screenlets.
I 'gettexted' the Screenlet once more in revision http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~indiv-screenlets-dev/indiv-screenlets/trunk/revision/841, please update your local code before making changes, and if you have time, please see, if everything is fine after the changes.
You didn't have to do that.. You've lost so much time with this while I already had it done. Sorry for that. Unfortunately during the last 3 days I didn't have an internet connection to upload the gettexted version which also includes a fix for the sleep fade feature. I'll upload right now.
First, I use your Now Playing screenlet all the time. Very handy. Thanks a bunch for makin' it. :-) I'm using Ubuntu 10.10 OS & Banshee music player. I typically use the Reflective-Black theme in the Now Playing screenlet. Big improvement since v0.3.3. Had trouble with some covers showing (ie. AC/DC). v0.3.4+ is much better. What I've noticed so far just upgrading to v0.3.4.1. Using Reflective-Black theme, I click to pause and the pause button shows as paused. Then I click again to play, play button shows. I click to pause again, music stops, but button stays showing as playing. It stays as the play button no matter how many times I toggle pause/ play. The music stops/ starts correctly, but the button stays as playing. No biggy, it works, but can be misleading if I have the volume turned down, muted, or my stereo is switched on a different setting (ie. Tuner, Aux). I use an FM transmitter for my music on the Tuner and Aux for Television, DVD, etc... On the Default theme, the mouse-over controls don't work. They show, but clicking on them doesn't do anything. I have to right-click the screenlet then chose previous, next, pause, etc...
Thanks for reporting the problem. I'll do some tests with banshee.
The play button issue should be solved. As for the other problem with the buttons which didn't work at all.. I didn't encounter such problem. Check out v.0.3.4.2.
Hi! It's me again... :) I use Rhythmbox, as I already stated. Everything is ok, except one little strange thing... I have a couple of albums in a large flac file. The folder of that albuns contain only the big flac with all the musics, the folder.jpg for cover and the cue file. With Rhythmbox, no cover is displayed or fetched. I tried other players and cover was displayed with all I tried. Any idea? BTW, any tips on how to read the cue file with rhythmbox? Or a player like rhythmbox that reads cue files? Thanks in advance, Keep up the great work! Best regards
Well, that's strange... Could you post the path to the folder and the contents of it (exact names)? I'd like to try and reproduce the situation and see if I can figure out the problem. Also mention one or more players that worked. Thanks. As for the cue player.. I don't know any. I keep everything mp3.