Hey guys,
RE: The proposal we're talking about that involves selecting multiple
crates using the sidebar. I think a much simpler way of doing this would be
to make a simple drop-down in the AutoDJ section (not that we especially
have free screen real estate for it but...):
"When the AutoDJ playlist is empty: <drop-down selector>"
And you select from
"Stop playing." (default)
"Automatically select a track from Crate/Playlist X"
"Automatically select a track from the Library"
"Play Track X (e.g. closing credits / radio callsign / etc.)"
I'm not sure it adds much extra value to be able to select multiple crates
as your pool.
Plus, we already have an "Add to AutoDJ" context menu for crates and
playlists that queues all their tracks to the ADJ playlist. It will be
confusing if there are two separate ways to add a crate to AutoDJ that do
different things and have no text to explain the difference (more on that
below).
But....
I've been thinking over this feature and I'm not sure it's a direction we
should take. I think we need to pick what kind of software we are and stick
to it. We are DJ software for performing live mixes, not iTunes.
There are scores of other apps that can handle jukebox-mode much better
than we can. In fact, Mixxx used to have a "jukebox" mode (the NEXT mode,
if anybody remembers that) and we removed it for this same reason.
I think supporting radio DJ use cases is a worthy goal but I'd rather keep
it to radio use cases that involve a human. Things like the track-selector
project that help the DJ select songs are right up our alley but totally
replacing the DJ (auto-playing 24/7) is handled well by other software.
AutoDJ (better known as Pee Break mode) is IMHO the closest we should get
to automated playing.
Sometimes less is more -- the changes we're talking about really complicate
the AutoDJ metaphor. Right now I can explain AutoDJ in one simple sentence:
"it's a playlist that you put tracks in and Mixxx automatically mixes
them". Selecting crates to indicate a pool of music that Mixxx
automatically draws from once the AutoDJ playlist is exhausted makes it
more complicated.
A DJ needs to have confidence in her tools -- in important part of this is
that the tools are simple and rarely do something unexpected. What happens
when AutoDJ plays the last song in the playlist? The simplest thing is that
AutoDJ turns off. Playing a randomly selected (or algorithmically ranked)
song from a crate would be unexpected.
If we do add logic that does something when the ADJ playlist is empty, the
user should have a very clear understanding of what is going to happen.
That's why I would go with something that explicitly says "When AutoDJ is
done, do X" in the AutoDJ section of the library. It would be hard to
misunderstand what will happen if you do it that way.
One of our top user complaints is that the Mixxx interface is hard to
understand, we need to keep it simple and focus on our goal.
Sorry to be a wet blanket :),
RJ
On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 5:25 PM, Daniel Schürmann <dasch...@mixxx.org>wrote:
> Hi Steven,
>
> >Are you saying the feature is badly written and the source code isn't
> documented? You lost me.
> No, No, Sorry for being not clear enough. Let me try again:
> There are no comments at the merge request at launchpad. This fact looks
> like no one is interested in the branch, but this is not the case.
>
> >It took a lot of code-reading to figure out that it wasn't hard to add.
> :-)
> Yes, me too, every time I look at it. Probably a candidate for
> refactoring. But at least it works :-)
>
> WCrateTableView vs TrackTable
>
> I am unsure.
>
> For me the most natural thing would be a Track Table View.
> Than you can tweak the crate where you expect it. But displaying the same
> crate in Mixxx twice maybe confuses the user. He might think he is tweaking
> a copy of the original crate. (Or is this a feature?)
>
> WCrateTableView with statistics might be slightly better but more effort.
>
> You should also know that the GUI part might be subject for change,
> because we have proposed a library layout redesign.
> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/mixxx/+spec/three-column-library-layout
> You will find proposals here:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/mixxx/+bug/986704
> I hope we will do some steps of it for 1.12.0
>
> So you may invest less effort in polishing the current GUI but make it
> reusable in your favorite proposal from above.
> Please feel free to edit them if your have any ideas.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Daniel
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Am 11.04.2013 22:10, schrieb Steven Boswell II:
>
> >The merge request from:
>
> >lp:~keithsalisbury/mixxx/track_selector_feature<https://code.launchpad.net/%7Ekeithsalisbury/mixxx/track_selector_feature>
> >looks really not nice without any comment.
>
> Are you saying the feature is badly written and the source code isn't
> documented? You lost me.
>
> Re: crates in auto-DJ, let me tell you where I'm at so you can stop me if
> I'm going wrong. I now have a "Crates" tree-item under the "Auto DJ"
> tree-item in the library view. (It took a lot of code-reading to figure
> out that it wasn't hard to add. :-) Now it looks like I have to create a
> new subclass of WLibraryTableView, called WCrateTableView, so that the
> crates loaded into auto-DJ can be displayed. There I can display the name
> of the crate, the number of tracks in the crate, and the number of tracks
> being considered for playback (i.e. based on how many times they've already
> been played). The alternative is to display the crate names as sub-items of
> the new "Crates" tree-item, and to display the tracks in each crate if
> they're clicked on, but that seems redundant and pointless. A crate view
> seems more meaningful, though it's more work.
>
> Steven Boswell
>
>
>
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