Amarok article

[Martin Steigerwald]

Hi Greg!

CC'd to you personally also, cause its an older thread.

I just have a few more questions ;-).

Am Donnerstag 13 September 2007 schrieb Greg Meyer:
> On Thursday 13 September 2007, Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> > 1) When writing about current state of affairs (i.e. Amarok 1.4.7),
> > is there anything that you think I should include in any case?
> > Anything that might be easily overlooked? I think I have quite a good
> > grasp on the key features, but if you have some additional input for
> > me, go ahead...
>
> Dynamic playlists are important.
>
> Scoring is often misunderstood, because people try to think of it in
> terms of a rating, but that is different.  Scoring is designed to tell
> you what music you prefer by reporting what you actually listen to.  I
> know it changed the way I purchase music because it is focused on the
> the music I actually like instead of the music I thought I liked.  Much
> of the criticism was centered around the scoring algorithm, but this
> can be controlled by the user since scoring is done via script and the
> user can create their own custom scoring script.

Whats the criticism here? 

> > 2) If I provide a tips and tricks section in my article, what
> > tips&tricks should be in there IMHO? Anything else than
> > http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/Tips_and_Tricks?
>
> A big one for me is feeding a dynamic playlist with a smart playlist
> rather something static or user created.  I created a smart playlist
> that selects songs with a score btween 80 and 95, with more than 8
> plays, and hasn't been heard in 3 weeks. 

Why did you use a upper limit for the score (95)?

[...]
> Another huge item for more technical users is the ability to retrieve
> information and control amarok through the KDE DCOP interface.  This
> will be replaced in 2.0 with DBUS.  Just type "dcop amarok" to see all
> the various dcop targets.  Then try dcop amarok player nowPlaying:
>
>      user at localhost $ dcop amarok player nowPlaying
>      The Cure - Friday I'm In Love
>
> "dcop amarok player showOSD" displays the OSD, etc.  You can use the
> KDE DCOP browser to see everything available.

Yes. Thats cute. I usually SSH into my Amarok machine - an used ThinkPad 
T23 - and just use amarok -f when it plays a song, I do not like.

It will be a challenge to fit all the good stuff into one article. I have 
installation, MP3 support, the context browser + all of the stuff it 
provides and intelligent as well as dynamic playlists covered - but so 
much is still missing.

Ciao,
-- 
Martin 'Helios' Steigerwald - http://www.Lichtvoll.de
GPG: 03B0 0D6C 0040 0710 4AFA  B82F 991B EAAC A599 84C7