Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Some suggestions

[Colin Walters <walters verbum org>]

On Mon, 2003-09-08 at 19:28, Gisli Ottarsson wrote:
> I am watching the rewrite of the database back-end (from a safe
> distance) with much anticipation.  I've fallen hard for Rhythmbox
> and have ripped a lot of my CDs into .ogg format.  Soon after
> exceeding 2000 songs responsiveness started suffering and at 3500
> songs life has become quite painful (Pentium III 750MHz laptop,
> accessing songs via IEEE 802.11).  I'll beat on the new database
> code as soon as it hits CVS (or arch, if I can figure that out).

Some code is alredy in arch/CVS, but no GUI yet.  The whole rewrite is
probably only 1/3 done.

>  1) It would be nice to be able to queue up songs without
>     having to build a play-list.  Drag songs into the queue
>     where they wait their turn.  Once played they simply fall
>     off the queue.  Great for parties where everyone is a DJ.
>     Perhaps the vertical "Source" area could be tabbed with
>     "Queue" area in another tab.

This is what playlists *should* be.  We just have to unbreak them.  This
will happen right after the database reworking.

>  2) Occasionally, when playing in Random mode, a song will 
>     pop up and I would like to switch to listening to that
>     artist only or that album.  It would be nice to be able
>     to right-mouse on the Artist or Album and "Narrow to
>     Artist" or "Narrow to Album".  Now I have to hunt for
>     Album/Artist in the browser views to get the effect.

Seems reasonable.

>  3) The incremental search feature, although nice and natural
>     for an Emacs user, can be a pain when the library has 
>     reached a certain size.  The erasing of a typo in the
>     search field can send Rhythmbox into a thrashing mode. 
>     Perhaps incremental search mode could be supplemented 
>     with an optional "type text and hit return" mode.

Yeah, this will be fixed by both making the backend faster, and also by
doing the search asynchronously.  So you'll see "Working..." or
something like that in the status display, and rb will still be
responsive while doing the search.