Re: Shuffling and unshuffling (was Re: ID3 tag question)

I posted an explanation of how shuffle currently works from work, but it 
never made it to the list, so here it comes again:

There is an array in the client struct which contains the current playlist 
(the full paths to the songs).  This remains in the order that it is 
built/loaded, unless a 'playlist' 'move' command is used on an unshuffled list.

There is a second array in the client struct (the shufflelist) which 
contains indexes into the playlist, in the order in which they will be played.

There is also an index into the shufflelist, which indicates the currently 
playing song.

In other words, we do just like Eivind described xmms's behavior, but we 
display the shuffled list and not the actual playlist.  Shuffling has no 
impact on the actual playlist, which is why we can unshuffle an arbitrary 
list back into how it was before.

That being said, there is no particular reason why we couldn't display the 
list either way.

In other shuffling news, I checked in the reshuffle at the end of the list 
change, with the preference defaulting to not reshuffle the list.  Change 
from the server - behavior page.

Robert

At 01:09 PM 2/19/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>On Wed, Feb 19, 2003 at 12:23:36PM -0600, Dave Sherohman wrote:
> > On Wed, Feb 19, 2003 at 09:45:37AM -0800, dean blackketter wrote:
> > > I'm opposed to full random (as opposed to shuffle).
> > Fair enough.  Nobody but me has had anything good to say about it and
> > even I would be just as happy with 'reshuffle on startup' and 'reshuffle
> > at end of playlist' as I would be with full random.
>
>I've been waiting for a good point to jump in, and this seems to be it.
>In general I prefer non-random play, but there are two key points I feel
>I must make in defense of Dave's ideas: 1) When I want to hear "random"
>music, I want to hear all the songs, I want to be able to see the the
>context around the song I'm listening to, like artist and album, and I
>want to be able to go forward and back logically, even when I
>arbitrarily click on a song to play now, then want to go back to where I
>was. This is essentially the winamp/xmms behavior, and the key is that
>your "playlist" is the ordering of songs that YOU selected, not the
>server, and it doesn't change. This alows me to easily scan (visually)
>the playlist and say "Oh, this song is from the middle of album X by Y".
>I understand the benefits of displaying the shuffled playlist, but I
>think that these are two separate uses of the player. That is why
>winamp/xmms separate the ideas of "play randomly" (which apparently
>creates a stack of already played songs) and "shuffle playlist". It is
>likely that most people will use only one of these systems at a time, but
>I think that there are enough people in both camps to warrant this as a
>feature. 2) "Play randomly" with a stack of played songs would solve the
>problem I stated earlier this week about adding new songs to (what is
>today) a shuffled playlist. In "play randomly" mode, the new songs would
>get added to the end of the Playlist (which I define, remember?), but
>the would all get played because they aren't in the "Already played,
>don't play again" stack.
>
>I've always not been a huge fan of Shuffle mode, although I use it
>frequently. This discussion has caused me to understand why: I think
>that shuffling the playlist and playing randomly are two distinct, valid
>ideas. I agree that we don't want to change the UI drastically from
>under the users' feet, but I think that these two things can live
>harmoniously together.
>
>-will
>
> >
> > > I'm also opposed to reshuffling at the end of the playlist.
>
>Agreed (the Playlist should never change without you changing it), but
>with Random Play you'd just have to clear the stack once you've played
>everything and things would work perfectly.
>
>--
>---------Will McDonald-----------------will-TFaeeA7fOO4cYzUW3nBFdvj1EjU76JnwloudME1CUYE@public.gmane.org
>GPG encrypted mail preferred. Join the web-o-trust!  Key ID: F4332B28


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