[bongo-devel] Re: Bongo marking and selecting random tracks

[Daniel Jensen]

Daniel Brockman <address@hidden> writes:

> address@hidden (Daniel Jensen) writes:
>
>> Or rather, it is a function of the random playback mode,
>> it does not affect anything else.
>
> I think this is actually a problem.  If marks select which
> tracks should be played in random playback mode, why should
> they not do the same in other playback modes?

Yes, this is a valid point. Unfortunately, I think it will be a lot of
work implementing something that works all around. It sounds like a
unmarked-tracks-are-invisible type of feature, I think that is the
closest to Anthony's original feature request. It could be another
type of mark, but as I said I doubt it is necessary. (See below.)
Well, making tracks invisible is not strictly necessary either ...

Since Anthony's feature will probably not be included in Bongo, here
is my advice (pun intended) to Anthony:

(defadvice bongo-randomly-playable-track-line-p (after random-follows-marks
                                                       (&optional point)
                                                       activate)
  (setq ad-return-value (and ad-return-value
                             (or (null bongo-marked-track-line-markers)
                                 (bongo-marked-track-line-p point)))))

Reminder to Daniel: Don't forget to consider the discussion about the
bug (?) with random playback picking the currently playing track.

> Because buffers are convenient enough (and more powerful)
> or because overloading process marks would work well?

Because of the former. I may be basing this mostly on my own usage of
Bongo -- I use library buffers and compose a playlist when I want it.

> With multiple playlist buffers, some interesting questions arise.
> For example, what if you want to use one playlist buffer as a
> library for another.  Could a buffer be both a playlist and a
> library at the same time?  What about the UI for this?

Why have multiple playlists? They can't be playing at the same time.
Are you thinking of having one /active/ playlist, and other buffers
can become the active playlist at the user's request? This sounds good
to me.

So for example, you can open your library and start playback directly
in that buffer. Then you open a fresh playlist buffer and it becomes
the playlist, you insert a few tracks ... and so on.