Queue support and The Playlist

[Bart Cerneels]

On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 3:44 PM, Bart Cerneels <bart.cerneels at kde.org> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I promised to start a discussion about the queue manager.
>
> Fact: users want the queue manager back:
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=171939
>
> In my mind The Playlist is a queue, and the order of tracks in there
> is the order they will be played. I couldn't imagine anyone trying to
> use it any other way. In fact, when I learned about the queue manager
> I literally didn't understand it's use-case.
> Now I've realized that the people who use the queue manager for a
> couple of different reasons:
>
> 1) Playlist editor:
> Because Amarok doesn't have a separate playlist editor, people started
> using the PlaylistView like the Juk editor. Not wanting to destroy
> their precious works of (playlist-)art, mainly sort order, they use
> the queue-manager to play those tracks in an order other then the
> list-order.
> note: they could have just saved the playlist to disk and then
> rearranged, but the human mind probably perceives that as destroying
> previous work. We can't blame our users for being human, even tough
> they want us to be super-human.
>
> 2) Single click queue adjustment:
> Not everyone enjoys drag and drop. Especially if you want to arrange a
> large number of tracks fast clicking is easier. The queue-manager
> allows you to do that with Ctrl+"Right Click".
>
>   There might be other use cases. Reply if you can think of some.
>
> These are both useful features, both of which are missing in Amarok 2.
> A straight port of the queue manager from 1.4 would indeed solve 2)
> and allow users to do 1) sort of like before. But we still have the
> opportunity to rethink the concept now and implement it in a simpler
> way.
> So I propose we solve both separately, a Meta::Playlist editor and
> added functionality to PlaylistView for queueing.
>
> One click queueing we could easily implement with a mode that sends a
> track to right below the playing track when left-clicked (think
> touchscreen). Or use the middle button for this regardless of mode.
>
> I propose to make a playlist editing plasmoid to cover 2) and make
> mass tagging like in 1.4 possible. This should obviously be a
> spreadsheet view, which some users can't seem to do without. This
> would *not* be a queue editor. But since playlists can be saved,
> edited and then loaded in the queue the functionality is the same, if
> not better. It also allows any group of tracks from a Meta::Playlist
> to be added to the queue.
> We could still implement queue sorting in the way leinir proposed [1]
> but at least it will be used for queue ordering and not the only, or
> the prefered, UI for playlist editing.
>
> Now I understand Seb has queue-manager for 2.0 in a git tree. So
> perhaps it's similar to what I propose or a port from 1.4, need to see
> the code. Anyway I've started on the middle-click queue adjustment
> already, the playlist plasmoid is something I want for 2.1.
>
> [1] http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/810-The-Old-style-Playlist-Is-Dead,-Long-Live-The-Old-style-Playlist.html
>

OK, so I've committed something that shows that advanced queue
features are possible without to resorting to a queue manager. 2) is
now possible by Ctrl+ Right Click on a track or album header. The
track or album group will then be moved to right below the last
selected track or the end of the list.

I've chosen to commit this despite not having a consensus since I
realize the sentiment is "who does the work decides". I seem to be
able to explain better in code then email anyway.
Sebr can still present his work and my patch can then be reverted if
needed. I just want to show the direction I feel we should take.

Bart