Notices

Yeah, it seems to be a "internal" Jolla library. User "hedwig" did encounter the same bug in Talefish which I could reproduce in january. The workaround then was to downgrade the buggy BlueZ 5 to BlueZ 4 – so it's not really a bug in Sailfish.Media, but in the BT stack.

Talefish post

Workaround source on TJC

A word of warning: I have not tested it since and there's a comment on TJC that it apparently broke BT on 2.1.4.14

cheers!

So I'm still a little bit confused about how this works. I've been downloading podcasts by long-pressing them and hitting the little down arrow, which seems to add them to the queue (is there a better way to do this? It's not very clear what the icons mean.) Usually, when I get to the end of one the next one in the list starts playing; but sometimes it doesn't, and I'm not sure why. Half the time it doesn't, if I open the podcast in question it shows the playback bar all the way at the end of the episode, but if I drag it back to the beginning it will play.

First of all: https://gitlab.com/cy8aer/podqast/wikis/the-manual - and with 1.9 you have a context sensitive help (sub pulley menu) which points to the pages in this wiki. You know it: documentation is the last thing... It shouldn't. Look at the main concept there. The documentation is not complete - I am still writing on it: podcast subscribe page is missing, also the whole discover stuff. Needs a bit time, sorry.

If a podcast post in the playlist ends playing it should be removed from the playlist, put to the history and reset to position 00:00:00. The hanging effect you have is interesting and needs investigation.

I cannot seem to figure out how to remove a podcast from the playlist.

Also, sometimes certain podcast episodes do not seem to be downloaded. I have yet to figure out a pattern. Losing Internet connectivity might play a role perhaps?

Put the podcast post to the archive (longpress-menu file symbol) and it is moved away from the playlist (to the history - everything ends in the history). Or (just to mention): play the post to the very end. After playing it is also put to the history.

If a post is not downloaded it should be downloaded again some time later (minute timer) when the internet connection is stable again. What might help: Switch to another page and back to playlist (then the re-download is triggered outside the timer loop). It also should try to re-download after restarting.

Yes this is not as good as you (and me) want to have it: There is some handling missing for hanging http downloads. If someone has an idea how to make it better with the used urllib this would help.

The archive button was rather confusing for me; I spent a long time looking for some sort of trash can icon for deleting listened podcasts (due to previously mentioned bug where listening to the end doesn't always trigger the delete). Eventually figured out that the folder icon, which I assumed would be "open folder containing this file", actually deletes it.

The main problem for me is creating new icons. I tried to use standard icons (see: https://sailfishos.org/develop/docs/jolla-ambient/) and learned: saving makes the whole thing not intuitive... Sorry.

But the documentation for this is just a bottom help menu away (since 1.9-x)

Again, thanks so much for your work, cy8aer.

To be quite honest, I haven't quite figured out the purpose of the archive. Is it just a record of all podcast episodes seen (and listened to), so this data can be used, firstly, when displaying the library, and secondly, when deciding which podcast episodes have been played (i.e. to avoid downloading them again).

"Moving" an episode to the archive automatically causes this episode's audio file being deleted, right? In that case, how about just switching the icon from "folder" to "icon-m-delete"?

I do not delete the post. The audio handling is independent from the existing of the post. So an archive icon is IMHO better.

Hm, there is one implementation thingie missing: the favorites. Making a post a favorite (star) should make the audio persistant - which means audio is downloaded and presented in a defined folder in the system e.g. ~/podqast/favorites.

Dynamically deleting audio when leaving the playlist makes sense for the system disk point of view: if you have a 16GB device it would fillup the disk with audio. There is also a "feature" missing which downloads new audio if less than X disk space is used. Otherwise it would be downloaded if played posts disappear and then less than X disk space is used.

I am also thinking of leaving the last x posts in the playlist for jumping back to leave the audio on disk for some time. But all this is not well thought yet.

And the history page shows all posts you had in inbox or playlist - so it is a history where you can get the posts to playlist back again. But to avoid a download you would need the not now implemented favorite.

Thanks for your detailed response, cy8aer. I appreciate it.

I completely agree with you about the limited space on the device. Deleting the episode after it's been played is a prudent precaution, which I am quite happy about.

Some ideas about the GUI. Wouldn't it be parsimonious to combine the "inbox" and the "library" into one dialogue? The available and the downloaded episodes could be numbers on top of the podcast logo, i.e. 2/5 -> five available, two of those already downloaded to the playlist. Then, you'd only have one place for all the information. I have to admit I was at first confused about the "inbox". After all, I expected everything coming in should appear on the playlist (at least for my use case).

If the main aspect of the favourites is to "download" them into a different folder, how about calling that functionality "permanent download" or just "sticky"? By the way, I like the idea of a separate folder. That makes it easier to find the episode for transfer.

One more question about the archive. If the episode is removed from the feed, will it still remain in the archive? Wouldn't it be a good idea to completely remove it then, unless is has been downloaded (as a favourite or just lingering in the playlist)? Again, saving space might be an argument in favour of this. Why keep outdated data? Also, if you delete a podcast, the relating data should be removed. I have some trouble getting episodes automatically downloaded with on podcast (I must have limited to number of downloads to 2 when a whole avalanche of episodes appeared on the feed - ever since then PodQast has been refusing to download any episodes from that podcast automagically). So, I thought deleting the podcast from the library and then discovering it again might solve the problem. But everything just came back as before.