2 feature requests

[pickle]

1) Make it optional and/or skin controllable whether or not to scroll the song text
2) Make it optional to whether to have 'Xion' at the front of the song list or not

[Cliff Cawley]

Hi pickle,

1) Make it optional and/or skin controllable whether or not to scroll the song text

What should the text do if it is too long to fit on the text area on the skin?

Would it be more convenient if the song title only scrolled if it couldn't fit into the area on the skin? Is that the reason you are requesting such a feature?

My goal with Xion is to have as much flexibility and customization with as little options as possible.

I hate opening an option screen and being overwhelmed by options. I think that overwhelming options means that the author couldn't come to a decision either way and just threw that responsibility on to the user.

I'm not saying I won't add an option to do what you have requested, I'm just saying if there is a very good reason to do so, then I will consider it, however I don't want to create a massive options window that 99% of users will be turned off.

I prefer more to dig down to the issue that is causing the request for a feature and solving that so that there is no need for an option, due to an oversight in direction.

Warm regards,
Cliff

[pickle]

Would it be more convenient if the song title only scrolled if it couldn't fit into the area on the skin? Is that the reason you are requesting such a feature?

Yep, that's exactly the reason.

The Formentera skin is long enough for pretty much any song title, but it scrolls anyway. I'd really like to just be able to glance at the player & see the song title.

Maybe if you made it an optional keyword in the skin, the casual user wouldn't have to worry about the option overload.

[Cliff Cawley]

Maybe if you made it an optional keyword in the skin, the casual user wouldn't have to worry about the option overload.

Ok, what I might do is change the default behaviour to only scroll when the song name can't fit and provide an option to always scroll.

Logically I can only think that you would want it scrolling if you can't actually see the whole name, unless it was a feature of the skin.

Also, if it was to scroll automatically there are a few options I can think of.

1) Do you think it should scroll how it does now so that there is a period where there is nothing on the screen
2) Scroll left till you can see the right most side of the string, and then scroll right until you can see the left most, back and forth like that?
3) Contiunually scroll left, but remove any blank sections, so that it looks like a continuous ticker tape?

What do you think? Which one seems most logical/useful in general usage?

Cliff

[pickle]

1) No - that's what prompted me to request the scrolling stop
2) That might be cool - QCD does that in it's playlist. It might bloat your code a bit to program something this fancy though (forgive me if I seem to be horning in on your job - Xion just has a low memory footprint & I imagine you'd want to keep it that way)
3) This would be the best one IMO - but put a few spaces between the rightmost & leftmost edges so at least there's some visual separation.

[Cliff Cawley]

1) No - that's what prompted me to request the scrolling stop
2) That might be cool - QCD does that in it's playlist. It might bloat your code a bit to program something this fancy though (forgive me if I seem to be horning in on your job - Xion just has a low memory footprint & I imagine you'd want to keep it that way)
3) This would be the best one IMO - but put a few spaces between the rightmost & leftmost edges so at least there's some visual separation.

Firstly, I meant that all of these options would only apply if the song name wasn't long enough.

Secondly, the memory requrements would not change much at all (if at all) with any of these 3 solutions

I guess the option 1 and 3 will mean that if the text is too large to display all at once, then it will be always scroll and never stop.

Option 2 would stop as it hits the left side, pause for a moment then scroll back the other way, stopping on the right, pausing, then scrolling back again. It might look a bit silly if the text is only < 5 pixels wider than the region on the skin; and you will get a weird scrolling where it scrolls only a tiny bit. I think i've seen this sort of effect in other players.

Ok, so applying these options only when the song name isn't long enough to fit on the screen, which ones do you now choose?

Cliff

[pickle]

I'd say 3

[Cliff Cawley]

I'd say 3

Excellent, I'll look into adding it for the next release.

Just so you know, i'm going to do the following:

1) If the text area for the song title on a skin is too small to display the text, it will start scrolling, otherwise it will just sit still

2) When scrolling, the text will wrap so that there are no large gaps as there currently is.

Cliff

[pickle]

Sweet.

[Cliff Cawley]

FYI: Both features requests are now implemented in Xion.

They will be available in the next Beta and subsequent Public releases

Cliff

[pickle]

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