A M <alex334...@gmail.com> writes: > Hello Yoni, > >>What's missing? > > If I would attempt to answer what EMMS is missing: Intuitiveness, > being self-explanatory.
You bring up good points. Despite everything I state below I want to be clear: you are absolutely right that Emms needs to be easier to set up. Below I'm going to go in to the details of why that's a challenge. > If there was a User Guide maybe that would help a lot to improve the > situation. Yes, I know there is a full Manual but take a few moments and > compare the EMMS Manual to the introduction provided for listen.el > https://github.com/alphapapa/listen.el > The introduction for listen.el is -what? a 10-minute read?- and after that > a user knows how to use listen.el Listen is a tiny project in comparison with Emms; of course it's manual is going to be significantly shorter. Since you can set up Emms in so many different ways, it isn't obvious which setup we should be with the grasp of that "10-minute read" window. Different people come to Emms wanting to setup very different features; and there is a lot of them to choose from. Emms is a big project, and continues to grow. In that sense it is like its host, Emacs. If you would ask "How do I quickly set up Emacs?" then a fair reply would be "Quickly set up Emacs to do what? a Python REPL? editing Latex for academic math papers? Gnus for reading gmail?" We could in theory make Emms very fast to setup if we choose a very particular use idiom and stick with it. But if we allow for Emacs-like customization, then the consequence is that we need to document all of those customization options, and then reading through them all can take a lot of time and effort (just like Emacs.) We try to ameliorate this with the "quickstart" section of the manual. It should get people going after adding just three lines of config, and the entire thing is 70 lines to read. If you have suggestions for improving the manual in any way, please do so. Writing documentation is an ever-present challenge and there are never enough volunteers wanting to do it: "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few." > Another thing that could help would be complete, fully working > dotfiles showcasing how emms could be setup. Ranging from simple/basic > setups to big complex ones. Compare to the Manual which is sprinkled > with bits of lisp code here and there. It's an excellent idea, but I think that the manual wouldn't be a good place for that. We've added a couple to the "setup examples" chapter, but I don't think people read that (one additional challenge with setups is that they succumb to bit-rot.) Perhaps we can clean up the ancient and messy Emacswiki section on Emms, add different configurations there, and link to that from the quickstart section of the manual and Website. What do people think about that idea? > On Thu, Apr 25, 2024 at 2:59 PM Yoni Rabkin <y...@rabkins.net> wrote: > >> A M <alex334...@gmail.com> writes: >> >> > Hello >> > >> > I would like to setup/configure EMMS to be like a "file/file-system >> > oriented music player", is that possible? >> > >> > It's probably good to explain further and give some examples of such >> music >> > players that I'm thinking of: MOC (console application), Audacious >> > (graphical program). >> > >> > You could really just say that I would like to configure EMMS to be a >> clone >> > of MOC, in other words. >> > Here's a good video demonstrating MOC, the video also nicely demonstrates >> > the working principle of the player: >> > https://youtu.be/m8pvj4QQU9w?t=374 >> > >> > Briefly put: A dired-window (or something similar) on one side, where I >> > browse and add stuff: single files, folders, playlist-files (.pls, .m3u >> > et.c.) and a playlist-window on the other side where things get added. >> >> I already typically use Emms like that. I don't use the Emms browser at >> all. >> >> I go to dired, use `emms-add-dired' to add the tracks I've marked, and >> then switch to the playlist and play those tracks. >> >> What's missing? >> >> -- >> "Cut your own wood and it will warm you twice" >> -- "Cut your own wood and it will warm you twice"
