Reply
Thread Tools
Posts: 262 | Thanked: 9 times | Joined on Jun 2007
#31
Originally Posted by ClockworkCar View Post
I know "Genre" ID3 information has been discussed before, but have you considered utilizing other ID3 information like "Year" or "Comments"?

Keep up great work.
How would you use those? A Album/Artist-like screen that shows years? Drill down into that and see albums for that year?

Or would you just like to see it displayed somewhere per song?
(I'm guessing comments would just be a display thing)

BTW, does anyone particularly feel the need for a Genre view right now?
 
Posts: 262 | Thanked: 9 times | Joined on Jun 2007
#32
Originally Posted by ClockworkCar View Post
Trevarthen, I wasn't dismissing UKMP (or Canola) and I appreciate the lineage and inspiration drawn from those programs - but I think your team has taken the baton and is now sprinting in front
Glad you think so. I still think we've got a ways to go though. Canola still has a number of features that we lack (though we're catching up quickly). We have a few features that Canola lacks (Kinetic scrolling, Art downloading, Maemoscrobbler, and A2DP come to mind), but they've got the head start and they'll probably be making a new release soonish that will (I'm guessing) put Kagu to shame, at least visually.

The best thing that I like about Kagu vs Canola is that it's *Open Source*. Any programmer from the community is free to modify Kagu and submit patches or even fork the project if needed.

When I started Kagu, I thought that once we provided an actively developed alternative to Canola that we would gain a good developer following.

Unfortunately, that hasn't seemed to happen. disq, of course, is crucial to the project. Recently, Tony Maro of Thummim Reader fame has been doing some really cool work porting our kinetic scroll widget to GTK. Milhouse has done some awesome work automating the beastly A2DP install. And we received some help from artists early on. But other than disq and me, we haven't seen any solid, committed programmer support.

I suspect that might be because everyone perceives that disq and I are doing a pretty decent job so far keeping up with user requests. But I still wish we had more developers. We've got a fairly long list of open tickets that need to be worked and so far we're just prioritizing them and working the most important ones first. But the list keeps growing. I'd love to see that list get shorter for once so we could focus more on innovative new ideas rather than simply fleshing out the basic (and sometimes advanced) functionality that everyone expects from a media player. If we can't get to that point soon, I'm afraid the new upcoming Canola release might strangle Kagu under it's 800 pound gorilla girth.
 
Posts: 65 | Thanked: 6 times | Joined on Apr 2007
#33
just installed kagu. damn nice app. but am i missing something? is there no easy way to make a playlist of all my tracks? or keep my playlist when the app closes? or some way to show the playlist itself so i can jump to a particular track?

just asking because it all seems so obvious that i must be missing something.
 
Posts: 262 | Thanked: 9 times | Joined on Jun 2007
#34
Originally Posted by Roc Ingersol View Post
just installed kagu. damn nice app. but am i missing something? is there no easy way to make a playlist of all my tracks?
Yeah, that's easy. Hit the menu hardware key, then go to "All Songs" and then tap the CD+ icon on the left.

Originally Posted by Roc Ingersol View Post
or keep my playlist when the app closes?
Not yet, but I think we're all interested in getting that working.


Originally Posted by Roc Ingersol View Post
or some way to show the playlist itself so i can jump to a particular track?
Sure, just tap the nowplaying button in the lower right. It takes you to the playlist. Tapping it again will show a zoomed version of the album cover. Tapping a third time give you song seek. And a fourth time brings you back to the nowplaying view.
 
Posts: 65 | Thanked: 6 times | Joined on Apr 2007
#35
ahh cool. yeah, i'm an idiot.
thanks.
 
Posts: 450 | Thanked: 16 times | Joined on Mar 2006
#36
This most recent exchange, which reflects some of my own confusion (and ineptitude?) gives me the opportunity to ask whether there is yet a primer available that explains all of the Kagu buttons and operations? For me they are not intuitive (and I always have trouble with accurate icon recognition anyway).

Regarding the following instruction: "Sure, just tap the nowplaying button in the lower right. It takes you to the playlist. Tapping it again will show a zoomed version of the album cover. Tapping a third time give you song seek. And a fourth time brings you back to the nowplaying view." My "tapping a third time" didn't give me a song seek, but instead apparently gave me the screen to choose sound levels.

Also, the album cover for my album of songs by the late German bass Hans Hotter gave me a jazzy one called "Hotter than Hell." Rather amusing.
 
Posts: 262 | Thanked: 9 times | Joined on Jun 2007
#37
Originally Posted by ascherjim View Post
This most recent exchange, which reflects some of my own confusion (and ineptitude?) gives me the opportunity to ask whether there is yet a primer available that explains all of the Kagu buttons and operations? For me they are not intuitive (and I always have trouble with accurate icon recognition anyway).
No, I don't think it's ineptitude. It's just that Kagu is becoming more mature and therefore more complex. Many applications these days have functionality that most users don't ever use or know about. Kagu probably won't be the exception to that rule as we attempt to satisfy everyone.

We're swamped, so I don't think you'll be seeing anything in the way of a more intuitive UI or context help in the next release. It's on the roadmap, but it's a low priority.

I've already mentioned that it would be nice to have a video walkthrough of Kagu. Anyone from the community is welcome to step up and help us out there. Someone from the community could also start a Wiki page somewhere for help documentation. There are lots of possibilities. The guardiani.us server is reserved for development purposes right now, so I don't plan to open up that wiki to the general public. Any suggestions for a wiki location?


Originally Posted by ascherjim View Post
Regarding the following instruction: "Sure, just tap the nowplaying button in the lower right. It takes you to the playlist. Tapping it again will show a zoomed version of the album cover. Tapping a third time give you song seek. And a fourth time brings you back to the nowplaying view." My "tapping a third time" didn't give me a song seek, but instead apparently gave me the screen to choose sound levels.
I don't believe you. It always pulls up seek for me. Has a bunch of items like "0:20", "0:30", etc.


Originally Posted by ascherjim View Post
Also, the album cover for my album of songs by the late German bass Hans Hotter gave me a jazzy one called "Hotter than Hell." Rather amusing.
Yeah, that sucks. Any suggestions for us there? I'm not sure what to do about that other than tell you to use a cover.jpg or something to override the downloaded art.
 
Posts: 262 | Thanked: 9 times | Joined on Jun 2007
#38
Originally Posted by trevarthan View Post
I've already mentioned that it would be nice to have a video walkthrough of Kagu. Anyone from the community is welcome to step up and help us out there. Someone from the community could also start a Wiki page somewhere for help documentation. There are lots of possibilities. The guardiani.us server is reserved for development purposes right now, so I don't plan to open up that wiki to the general public. Any suggestions for a wiki location?
Yay! Tony made a video for us! I still think we need a wiki documentation page to compliment it, but at least we've got a video now:
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ad.php?p=74074
 
Posts: 450 | Thanked: 16 times | Joined on Mar 2006
#39
Originally Posted by trevarthan View Post
I don't believe you. It always pulls up seek for me. Has a bunch of items like "0:20", "0:30", etc.
Ah, ha! "items like "0:20", "0:30" are exactly what WERE brought up -- and I mistakenly thought they represented sound levels! I just don't yet know how to interpret (or make sense of) them as "seeking" devices? Just one more reason why I need to apply myself and try to ferret out and comprehend all the wonderful nuances of Kagu. I will understand if, with all else you're currently dealing with, you ignore such (innane) queries of mine for awhile.
 
Posts: 262 | Thanked: 9 times | Joined on Jun 2007
#40
Originally Posted by ascherjim View Post
Ah, ha! "items like "0:20", "0:30" are exactly what WERE brought up -- and I mistakenly thought they represented sound levels! I just don't yet know how to interpret (or make sense of) them as "seeking" devices? Just one more reason why I need to apply myself and try to ferret out and comprehend all the wonderful nuances of Kagu. I will understand if, with all else you're currently dealing with, you ignore such (innane) queries of mine for awhile.
They represent minutes:seconds. We'll probably replace that interface with a proper timeline eventually, but we did it that way to save time in development for now.
 
Reply


 
Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 01:06.