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Next/previous track & custom fonts

PostPosted: October 21st, 2006, 1:09 pm
by pickle
Like the subject says - two suggestions. These aren't things I'd expect in a player, but they would be nice for skin making.

  1. Have a way to display the next & previous tracks - either in the skin proper or in tooltips.
  2. Be able to define a custom font. By that I mean be able to put some text on a layer & be able to make Xion break up that layer into letters & use them for whatever. In my opinion, this would be REALLY helpful to make skins pop (though I understand that it would probably require a lot of new code).

PostPosted: October 22nd, 2006, 12:37 am
by SLoB
bitmap fonts would be cool, they would/should also force fonts to be changed into fixed width fonts, which means 85 odd % of fonts are non fixed width but will be able to be used in a static way such as static placed timer text etc..

dont think this will happen anytime soon tho, it will also mean the canvas size would need to be increased to cope with the font or that a bitmap font will need to be an extra png in the xsf
would be a cool addition imo

for the next/prev tho, wot happens for shuffle? you could do prev but what about next?, when does the engine decide what is next?

PostPosted: October 22nd, 2006, 3:13 am
by pickle
I'd hazard a guess that the whole random playlist is figured out ahead of time - it would allow for much faster scrolling through songs than if the next song was determined on the fly.

If I'm wrong though, then you have a point ;) - the next song wouldn't be able to be shown.

PostPosted: October 22nd, 2006, 3:57 am
by Harkonenn
Re: bitmap fonts - I'm a fan of bitmap fonts (I use them a lot in Flash and for general web design work). I don't think that the canvas size should have to increase to accommodate the font set. What if the font could be on its own layer with a keyword that would indicate its function? Also, perhaps instead of that layer requiring transparency, it could have a default color that would be the alpha (like 255,0,255)...?

PostPosted: October 22nd, 2006, 8:55 am
by Cliff Cawley
pickle Wrote:I'd hazard a guess that the whole random playlist is figured out ahead of time - it would allow for much faster scrolling through songs than if the next song was determined on the fly.

If I'm wrong though, then you have a point ;) - the next song wouldn't be able to be shown.

Actually I calculate the next song 5 seconds before the end of the current song so that I can play it without any gaps.

If you keep pressing next, it chooses a random song on the fly.

Cliff :)

PostPosted: October 22nd, 2006, 9:41 pm
by SLoB
as i thought ;)
although it probably wouldnt be too much if you chose the next few songs and cached those names, if a user removes one of those songs from their playlist then it would be the next song available that was cached
this would be good for a notifier or section within a skin, the notifier could then show when songtitle changed the next song being played as the random choice is moved to when the song changes rather than at the end

probably with an indi text object(s) for prev, next songs?

will crossfade be implemented in a future build?

PostPosted: October 23rd, 2006, 7:00 am
by Cliff Cawley
SLoB Wrote:will crossfade be implemented in a future build?


I do plan on adding crossfade support, yes :)

Cliff :)