Xmms2 plugin

Overview

This plugin allows you to interact with your xmms2daemon through Do. It requires xmms2, and the xmms2 command line client. Both are available through Synaptic, although I suggest using the Dr. Lecter release, rather than the default Ubuntu repository release, as the default has been known to be buggy.

Built off the original Rhythmbox plugin, most of the functionality is the same, and playlist support has been added. It is still somewhat of a beta version, so there will be bugs, such as song/artist names being clipped, and cover support not being enabled. Anyone who knows C/C++ and the xmms2client API would be greatly appreciated as a co-developer, the source is on Lauchpad: https://code.launchpad.net/~mechaphoenix25/do-plugins/xmms2Plugin

Basic Controls

There are several basic commands to control your xmms2 playback directly. play plays, pause pauses, stop stops. There are also previous and next commands, as well as volume up, volume down and mute. All commands can be seen under xmms2 Music, by selecting in in Do and pressing right, the same way folders are browsed into.

One last simple command, Queue All, queues your entire music library in the Default playlist. This operation is fast (due to the nature of xmms2), but be careful, as viewing your default playlist in Do can then take a very long time, depending on the size of your library.

Browsing Music

You can browse your xmms2 library through Do, and play or queue artists, albums, or songs. This can be done 2 ways. The first is to simply search for an artist or album by name, then browse deeper into it by pressing right, just like browsing folders. The second is to go in through browse artists or browse albums. This will give you a list of just artists or just albums respectively. You can right arrow into artists to get their albums, and right arrow into albums to get their songs. All 3 levels can be played and queued.

One key difference between the Rhythmbox plugin and this one is that every artist has a Songs album added to their album list. This album contains all their songs, so if you want to queue several songs from different albums (through the multi-select comma trick in .5.97.1), or if you want to just see all the songs by an artist, this will allow you to. Note, the Songs album is not available for queueing or playing, because it doesn't actually exist. If you want to queue or play all songs by an artist, simply queue or play the artist.

Multi-item support via the comma trick, (enabled in Do .5.0.97 and later) for playing and queueing songs and albums is enabled, although selecting multiple third-pane items is not, as of yet. This will be implemented shortly.

Playing songs clears the default playlist, adds the songs to it, and begins playing them. Queue, on the other hand, adds the songs to whatever playlist is specified in the third pane, defaulting to Default. NOTE: the queue action does NOT display the third pane immediately, you have to hit <tab> again to change which playlist will be queued. This is designed to prevent accidentally clearing or adding unwanted songs onto a non-default playlist, because Do does not update the (current) tag on the loaded playlist fast enough (see below).

Playlist Support

Yes, folks, playlist support has been added. However, this being a completely new feature, there are some odd conventions. Playlists are indexed as items by Do, and can be browsed into using right, just like directories or artists. Browsing into a playlist will give you (surprise) a list of songs in that playlist. They should be in order (although they won't necessarily be), and you can select songs from the playlist to queue or play just like with songs from an album.

In addition, you can perform many actions on the playlists themselves. Play, Clear Playlist, Shuffle Playlist, Load Playlist, Remove Playlist, Repeat, and Queue pretty much explain themselves, although there are a few #Quirks

One last playlist related action is Create Playlist, which pretty much explains itself, and allows you to name your playlist.

Quirks

Play works differently with playlists than it does with songs. Songs are queued in the default playlist and played, whereas playlists are simply loaded as the currently playing list and played. It also does NOT work with multiple playlist items selected.

Repeat due to the nature of xmms2, is a one-way trip, it cannot be disabled for a given playlist once enabled. Any xmms2 experts feel free to post how to do this, it will be happily implemented.

Author

Originally created by Scott Albertine