Notices

The playlist functionality in the built-in media player is so vestigial that it isn't worthy of criticism. Clearly the programmers didn't think it was important, so I won't annoy them by saying what a rotten job they did.

Presumably those playlists live somewhere and presumably an app could be written to edit them.

What I mostly want is an easy way to sequence the files in a playlist. If I play a symphony I want the opening movement first and the finale last. Is that so very much to want?

And an editor with a less counterintuitive interface would be nice.

Offers, anyone?

First read:
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...1&postcount=22

Then post a clear specification for an alternative playlist editor.

P.S. I won't accept the term "intuitive interface" as a specification .

i don't find any difficulties with this 'counterintuitive' interface...

it's no better nor worst than what i used in 'xpress music' s60 devices...

if that doesn't fit, you can always make .m3u using other software on your computer and copy it to your device...

although it wouldn't be bad to correct this in pr1.3 :P :P :P

Maybe a base for a specification can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUOf5DPfhYU
Listenial for the iPhone.

I think it can be also done on the N900 (with python). It can run outside the media player and start the media player with the created playlist file via dbus command.

http://wiki.maemo.org/Phone_control#...n_media_player

You state that you are a python programmer. Maybe you can create a little app for the playlist editor with python.

Actually, I started working on such an editor as a kind of hello world Qt app that I decided to extend and make useful. Its only able to edit and create .m3u files right now and I was planning on waiting to release it once I figured out how to use the MAFW playlists.

If anyone likes the look of the interface below though, and are willing to put up with such a limitation I can release it earlier. If not then suggested improvements are welcome.

Hopefully its obvious from the screenshot but the playlist is on the left and the tracks on the right. Tracks are browsable by their ID3 metadata much like the default media player.

I say release it. Looks like you could have saved me the time of writing something similar.

I have been very happy with vi as a playlist editor.

Your experience may vary.

Fair enough. Give a day or so then.

The built in method to create a playlist might be simple, but it is a quick and very dirty hack. Almost as though it was added as an afterthought. I agree with everything in your link about it being... difficult.

I ride a motorbike, the controls on the ear phones don't work (thanks Nokia)

If I have 300 tracks on my phone, I might only actually want to listen to 30 of them, though I don't know in advance which 30 they might be on any given day. I want to hear a bit of a sample and then think... "Yup, that one is good, I'll add that" - on the N900 to the best of my knowledge I cannot do this without some serious screen tapping. To add 30 songs in this way would take me a minute or two per song at the very least since I'd have to clear the current playlist each time.

What would be intuitive is to add all songs on the device to the 'now playing' list.

In the menu have a "Create playlist" option - give it a name.

As you are playing through each song, have some kind of trigger, be that a menu option or a button on screen that is simply "Add to Playlist" - where playlist is the one you just created.

I think that's about as simple as it could get for me : ) Without being able to use the headset controls, I think that'd be a good compromise.