[slinkelist] newbie notes

[shawn@sboyle.com]

You can do number six right now. You need to use the slink-e activeX control. You can get info for the playing track, as well as info for any track in the playlist. 

I have a program that I wrote to generate a text file of the current song's info. I use it with HomeVision to display track info on all of the TV's. I don't have it here at work but I'd be happy to post a link to it when I get home. If you know VB you can also take a look at the source code to see how it works. I think CDJ also comes with a sample VB app.

For number two -- if you set the default action to "Add as next and play" [in the options window] then double clicking on a track produces the same result as in previous versions.

-Shawn

On Mon, 21 August 2000, Mike Macgirvin wrote:

> 
> 
> I just recently got cdj and slinke running last week and overall I'm
> very pleased with the combo - especially given the pathetic user
> interface of the Sony CX450.
> 
> I've also looked at recent mailing list archives, so I know that this is
> a product in active development and things are changing. As a first time
> user, I wanted to point out a few areas that could benefit from just a
> bit of enhancement.
> 
> 1. Saving window layouts. Every time I start it up I've got to drag the
> artist/title columns wide enough to read. 
> 
> 2. Ability to play directly without adding to a playlist. I notice that
> this feature apparently once existed but not in the recent code.
> 
> 3. The help files say you can import mp3's by dragging them into the
> library. I did this with 150 selected files and got back 150 error
> messages (separated by a few seconds each) telling me I needed to drop
> them into an album, not a CD. No way to stop/cancel. Now that I know I
> won't do it that way again, but changing the help text (create an album
> first, then drag onto the album) could save some grief and a lot of
> time. Or allow a cancel-all at the point the error first comes up. Or
> would it be too difficult for the software to just create an album and
> drop them in?  --- I also tried to drag a file system folder containing
> MP3's and wasn't allowed (folder file type unsupported). Seems the
> folder could make an easy named album _if_ auto-create happened.
> 
> 4. A bit concerned about database reliability. Once when I restarted,
> there were empty slots where they had previously been found and
> identified. Scanning again found them and didn't have to go out to CDDB
> to name them. But the concern is because I had about thirty or so CD's
> which weren't in CDDB and I've now typed them all in by hand and fixed
> some CDDB entries that were wrong. I don't wish to do it again. Options
> could be to backup the DB (which I did manually), and/or allow
> import/export to text files.
> 
> 5. As noted by others the upload of text to the CX-450 seems to be
> missing stuff. This may be a player limitation. Why on earth they would
> limit a 400-CD player to 200 artist names is beyond me; unless they just
> reused firmware from the CX-200. Half my collection is "various artists"
> so I think I've got about 1000 total. But the song names seem to be
> missing - all I get is album name on the player.
> 
> 6. Long term enhancement - it would be nice to see "What's Playing"
> queryable from a remote computer or device. I'm piping music all over
> the house. If it were just dumped to a text file I could work with it.
> Added points for "What's Next" in the cases where that's known, but I
> understand how hard that one could be.
> 
> None of these are critical issues except perhaps the DB reliability, and
> I can work around or live with all of them. This is mostly just a note
> so that the developers can tabulate what irks the most people the most
> and prioritize accordingly. 
> 
> I'm quite happy with this product overall and would like to praise the
> developers for such a painless installation. Getting strange hardware
> and software to communicate is usually quite a daunting task and the
> installation went very smoothly and everything worked pretty much as
> expected the first time.
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> slinkelist maillist  -  slinkelist@nirvis.com
> http://www.nirvis.com/mailman/listinfo/slinkelist

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