Re: Grid thumbnail arrangement of a playlist

[Yuchen Pei]

I'd like to report what I've done regarding this, which also 
serves as a "bookmark", in case I shelf it for a while.

Yoni Rabkin <yoni@rabkins.net> writes:

> Yuchen Pei <ycp@gnu.org> writes:
>
> > With this one can listen to radio or watch TV with emms with a 
> > nicer
> > interface.
>
> That's a subjective statement. For me, the purely textual 
> interface of
> Emms' playlist is an advantage and my preference.
>
> > So kind of like image-dired thumbnail mode.
>
> Never used it, but I can readily imagine what it probably looks 
> like.
>
> > emms can already play url streams, so that's not a problem.
> >
> > I imagine the change could be as simple as
> >
> > 1. representing a track by an image, or a default image if none 
> > is
> > specified

I have more or less implemented a way to do this (sans the default 
image part), by adding a display text property in (defun 
emms-playlist-mode-insert-track (track &optional no-newline):

modified   emms-playlist-mode.el
@@ -470,9 +470,15 @@ This preserves the current EMMS buffer."
When NO-NEWLINE is non-nil, do not insert a newline after the 
track."
  (emms-playlist-ensure-playlist-buffer)
  (emms-with-inhibit-read-only-t
-   (insert (emms-propertize (emms-track-force-description track)
-                            'emms-track track
-                            'face 'emms-playlist-track-face))
+   (if (emms-track-get track 'thumbnail)
+       (insert (emms-propertize
+               (emms-track-force-description track)
+               'emms-track track
+               'face 'emms-playlist-track-face
+		'display (create-image (emms-track-get track 
'thumbnail))))
+     (insert (emms-propertize (emms-track-force-description 
track)
+                               'emms-track track
+                               'face 'emms-playlist-track-face)))
   (when (emms-playlist-selected-track-at-p)
     (emms-playlist-mode-overlay-selected))
   (if no-newline

You can try it out by adding a thumbnail text property a string of 
path to the image file.

> > 2. instead of a list of things representing tracks, display 
> > them in a
> > grid, and the selection can move horizontally as well as 
> > vertically

This one is harder to do.  To get a horizontal play list of 
tracks, one could insert a space after the track when inserting a 
track to a playlist, i.e. in (defun 
emms-playlist-mode-insert-track (track &optional no-newline):

modified   emms-playlist-mode.el
@@ -475,7 +475,8 @@ When NO-NEWLINE is non-nil, do not insert a 
newline after the track."
                            'face 'emms-playlist-track-face))
   (when (emms-playlist-selected-track-at-p)
     (emms-playlist-mode-overlay-selected))
-   (unless no-newline
+   (if no-newline
+       (insert " ")
     (insert "\n"))))

(defun emms-playlist-mode-update-track-function ()

What remains is to turn it into a grid i.e. adding tracks 
horizontally *and* vertically.  

> > I would be interested in implementing it.
> >
> > What do you think?
>
> I see no reason why not. It could be called 
> emms-browser-tiled.el or
> similar, since it is conceptually a type of browser and would 
> probably
> lean on browser code. Please feel free to add a branch on the 
> Savannah
> repo for it.

Thanks.  So far it looks to me like one should reuse the existing 
playlist code, which is why I haven't created a new 
emms-browser-tiled.el.  It is still WIP so I'm not sure if I 
should push it to a branch.

--
Best,
Yuchen

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