Before I start, please don't read this the wrong way.  I'm not
complaining about anything, just puzzled!  It could well be that the
plugin just isn't for me, but I'd like to give it a fair chance first.

What's all the shouting for about the RandomPlay plugin?  What does it
give me that I didn't have before?  As far as I can tell, it gives me a
way of playing ten tracks at random, and that's it.  I can't add another
ten tracks until the first ten have finished playing.  How is this
better than the current random functionality?  Granted, without
RandomPlay I can only have _all_ tracks/albums on random, but there's
nothing to stop me pressing stop when I'm sated.  Why would I want only
ten?  I understand that RandomPlay was really only written to provide an
alarm clock functionality, so what is the advantage when you use it on
its own?  One advantage that I can think of is that it exposes
RandomPlay functionality in a more obvious way than the current "select
random and add tracks method" (but see my 2nd paragraph), but wouldn't
it be better just to add a more obvious path to do this into the ui
(i.e. add some menu items that automate the task)?  I thought that this
is what RandomPlay would do, but it seems not.

A more general issue that's been bugging me for a while is how plugins
are integrated into the main SlimServer distribution and released with
it.  Surely, once a feature is deemed good enough to become part of the
core distribution it should cease to be a plugin, or at least its plugin
nature should be hidden from the user.  If RandomPlay is a good feature
that is included as standard, why should the user have to know to look
for it under Plugins?  This part of the interface seems completely
counter-intuitive to me.  Plugins should be things that the user added
themselves.  Anything else should be properly integrated.  Please take
this paragraph as an invitation for discussion, not as a winge!

Max


-- 
max.spicer

The wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible
teeth
and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws
but Max stepped into his private boat and waved good-bye
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