emms help

emms help

[Hadron]

Can someone help me use emms-browser please.

I assumed I would just call it and point it to a directory, but it just
opens with a blank buffer. If I expand it (1-4 keys) it just sits there
with the mouse cursor spinning. I tried switching it to "dired" mode,
but then I just had a pure dired with no emms functionality
available. I'm assuming, and no surprise, that there is something wrong
with my setup? 

I have a playlist file and can play from that.

Also, is there a way for emms to default to a playlist or to list
available playlists?

thanks for any helping hands to get me going with emms.

Re: emms help

[Jay Belanger]

Hadron <hadronquark@gmail.com> writes:

> Can someone help me use emms-browser please.

I'll try.  (I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.)


> I assumed I would just call it and point it to a directory, but it just
> opens with a blank buffer.

That's because it reads the information from a cache, which is
originally empty.  Load a directory with
 M-x emms-add-directory
or
 M-x emms-add-directory-tree
and then you'll have artists and/or songs in the browser.  Next time
you start it, that information will still be in the cache, so you will
still see it in the browser.

Jay

Re: emms help

[barry.reber+gnu.emacs.help@gmail.com]

On Mar 1, 9:10 am, Hadron <hadronqu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Can someone help me use emms-browser please.
>
> I assumed I would just call it and point it to a directory, but it just
> opens with a blank buffer. If I expand it (1-4 keys) it just sits there
> with the mouse cursor spinning. I tried switching it to "dired" mode,
> but then I just had a pure dired with no emms functionality
> available. I'm assuming, and no surprise, that there is something wrong
> with my setup?
>
> I have a playlist file and can play from that.
>
> Also, is there a way for emms to default to a playlist or to list
> available playlists?
>
> thanks for any helping hands to get me going with emms.

I had trouble getting emms working too.  Try <a href="http://
www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/emacs-en/Bongo>bongo</a>, it seems to be a
little friendlier to playlists, and *slightly* better documented.

Re: emms help

[Hadron]

"barry.reber+gnu.emacs.help@gmail.com" <barry.reber@gmail.com> writes:

> On Mar 1, 9:10 am, Hadron <hadronqu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Can someone help me use emms-browser please.
>>
>> I assumed I would just call it and point it to a directory, but it just
>> opens with a blank buffer. If I expand it (1-4 keys) it just sits there
>> with the mouse cursor spinning. I tried switching it to "dired" mode,
>> but then I just had a pure dired with no emms functionality
>> available. I'm assuming, and no surprise, that there is something wrong
>> with my setup?
>>
>> I have a playlist file and can play from that.
>>
>> Also, is there a way for emms to default to a playlist or to list
>> available playlists?
>>
>> thanks for any helping hands to get me going with emms.
>
> I had trouble getting emms working too.  Try <a href="http://
> www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/emacs-en/Bongo>bongo</a>, it seems to be a
> little friendlier to playlists, and *slightly* better documented.
>

I hope so : the emms documentation is a lisp programmers dream. But for
someone who wants to use it .... I would love to know how those screen
shots of album covers happened - it is almost impenetrable to me. Thanks
for the pointers.

Re: emms help

[Tassilo Horn]

Hadron <hadronquark@gmail.com> writes:

Hi Hadron,

> I hope so : the emms documentation is a lisp programmers dream. But
> for someone who wants to use it .... 

We're trying to do our best to make it useful for everyone. If there are
special documentation weaknesses, let us now so we can get it fixed
before the next release.

> I would love to know how those screen shots of album covers happened -
> it is almost impenetrable to me. Thanks for the pointers.

,----[ (info "(emms)Displaying Covers") ]
| The browser will attempt to display cover images if they're available.
| By default it looks for images cover_small.jpg, cover_med.jpg, etc.
| Customize EMMS-BROWSER-COVERS to use your own covers. Note that you'll
| probably want to resize your existing covers to particular sizes.
| Suggested sizes are 100x100 for small, and 200x200 for medium.
`----

Bye,
Tassilo
-- 
The glass is neither half-full nor half-empty: it's twice as big as it
needs to be.

Re: emms help

[Hadron]

Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org> writes:

> Hadron <hadronquark@gmail.com> writes:
>
> Hi Hadron,
>

Hi Tassilo,

Your translation/dict stuff is still going strong.

>> I hope so : the emms documentation is a lisp programmers dream. But
>> for someone who wants to use it .... 
>
> We're trying to do our best to make it useful for everyone. If there are
> special documentation weaknesses, let us now so we can get it fixed
> before the next release.

How about a "how to"?

Obvious stuff like : Here is my music, how do I get emms to see it and
allow me to make a playlist? The documentation is lousy. Sorry :( It
really is semi-impenetrable. If you dont believe me, put someone in
front of it and ask them to make emms work! It took me half a day to
realise that the reason that it didnt work at all was down to its
default player list! Even though I had mplayer, it fell over when the
first one  in the list wasnt available. Who would have a default player
list of 5 players? Better to have none and document to add the one that
the user uses.

emms-browser : how does one use it? I open it and look at an empty buffer!

>
>> I would love to know how those screen shots of album covers happened -
>> it is almost impenetrable to me. Thanks for the pointers.
>
> ,----[ (info "(emms)Displaying Covers") ]
> | The browser will attempt to display cover images if they're available.
> | By default it looks for images cover_small.jpg, cover_med.jpg, etc.
> | Customize EMMS-BROWSER-COVERS to use your own covers. Note that you'll
> | probably want to resize your existing covers to particular sizes.
> | Suggested sizes are 100x100 for small, and 200x200 for medium.

Aha. Maybe I expected too much. I assumed it would look for them, like
every other music player out there, based on album name!

As you know, I love emacs, but it could/should be easier  to play a tune
:-;


> `----
>
> Bye,
> Tassilo

-- 

Re: emms help

[Tassilo Horn]

Hadron <hadronquark@gmail.com> writes:

Hi Hadron,

> Your translation/dict stuff is still going strong.

Thanks!

> How about a "how to"?
>
> Obvious stuff like : Here is my music, how do I get emms to see it and
> allow me to make a playlist?

Hm, yeah. That's mentioned in Basic Commands, but it probably gets lost
in the listing of all those function.

> It took me half a day to realise that the reason that it didnt work at
> all was down to its default player list! Even though I had mplayer, it
> fell over when the first one in the list wasnt available.

That's a bug or the file you wanted to play was not playable by all
other players.

> emms-browser : how does one use it? I open it and look at an empty
> buffer!

,----[ (info "(emms)The Browser") ]
|    To be properly useful, you should do M-x `emms-add-directory-tree'
| to all the files you own at least once so that the cache is fully
| populated.
`----

I guess you use emms-2.1, so maybe the docs have improved in the
meantime. But a quickstart guide really should be included.

Bye,
Tassilo
-- 
     My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.

Re: emms help

[Hadron]

Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org> writes:

> Hadron <hadronquark@gmail.com> writes:
>
> Hi Hadron,
>
>> Your translation/dict stuff is still going strong.
>
> Thanks!
>
>> How about a "how to"?
>>
>> Obvious stuff like : Here is my music, how do I get emms to see it and
>> allow me to make a playlist?
>
> Hm, yeah. That's mentioned in Basic Commands, but it probably gets lost
> in the listing of all those function.
>
>> It took me half a day to realise that the reason that it didnt work at
>> all was down to its default player list! Even though I had mplayer, it
>> fell over when the first one in the list wasnt available.
>
> That's a bug or the file you wanted to play was not playable by all
> other players.
>
>> emms-browser : how does one use it? I open it and look at an empty
>> buffer!
>
> ,----[ (info "(emms)The Browser") ]
> |    To be properly useful, you should do M-x `emms-add-directory-tree'
> | to all the files you own at least once so that the cache is fully
> | populated.
> `----
>
> I guess you use emms-2.1, so maybe the docs have improved in the
> meantime. But a quickstart guide really should be included.

Yup. In emacs world, people sometimes forget the little guy and the fact
that not everyone has the time or patience to read a whole lisp manual
to do something as mundane as expect a function called "emms-browser" to
actually "browse" the top level of a directory tree. Someone recommended
another player (coco?) but the first thing it expected was all my music
files to include artist-album-song information in the file name! Also
words like "should" need to be replaced with "must" :)

Anyway, regards

h.


>
> Bye,
> Tassilo

-- 

Re: emms help

[Tassilo Horn]

Hadron <hadronquark@gmail.com> writes:

Hi Hadron,

>> I guess you use emms-2.1, so maybe the docs have improved in the
>> meantime. But a quickstart guide really should be included.
>
> Yup. In emacs world, people sometimes forget the little guy and the
> fact that not everyone has the time or patience to read a whole lisp
> manual to do something as mundane as expect a function called
> "emms-browser" to actually "browse" the top level of a directory
> tree.

It's not a directory browser, it browses tracks by metainfos regardless
where the files are located.

I added a "Quickstart Guide" to the current development version of EMMS,
so the next release will include it. In the meantime you can grab the
current version (which works very stable and offers many new features)
from my darcs repository with

    $ darcs get http://www.tsdh.de/repos/darcs/emms

Regards,
Tassilo 
-- 
A child of five could understand this! Fetch me a child of five!

Re: emms help

[Jay Belanger]

Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org> writes:
...
> In the meantime you can grab the
> current version (which works very stable and offers many new features)
> from my darcs repository with
>
>     $ darcs get http://www.tsdh.de/repos/darcs/emms

The darcs repository mentioned on the quick-start page hasn't been up
for a while, it seems.  Is the above url its replacement?

Jay

Re: emms help

[Tassilo Horn]

Jay Belanger <belanger@truman.edu> writes:

Hi Jay,

>>     $ darcs get http://www.tsdh.de/repos/darcs/emms
>
> The darcs repository mentioned on the quick-start page hasn't been up
> for a while, it seems.  Is the above url its replacement?

Not really, but it seems Jorgen who maintains the main repository has
some server problems. We follow a decentralized development approach and
all devs have their own repositories and we merge them once a change
seems to be mature.

The repository listed on our homepage is the one you normally should get
your sources from, but if it's not available you can use mine [the one
above] as well or the one of Michael Olson [1], who is the most active
developer ATM.

Bye,
Tassilo

Footnotes: 
[1] http://www.mwolson.org/darcs/emms2
-- 
[Emacs] is written in Lisp, which is the only computer language that is
beautiful.  -- Neal Stephenson, _In the Beginning was the Command Line_

Re: emms help

[Jay Belanger]

Hadron <hadronquark@gmail.com> writes:
...
> Yup. In emacs world, people sometimes forget the little guy and the fact
> that not everyone has the time or patience to read a whole lisp manual
> to do something as mundane as expect a function called "emms-browser" to
> actually "browse" the top level of a directory tree.

Directories aren't the only things that are browsed; in this case a
cache is browsed.  Reading the whole info file for emms isn't
necessary; the "Basic commands" page should get you started listening
to music.  That page contains plenty of "emms-play-..." commands.
But it wouldn't be a bad idea (in my opinion) if when emms tries to
browse an empty cache a short help screen popped up; something like
  Welcome to EMMS.
  The emms cache, which contains the songs that emms can browse, is
  currently empty.  To populate it, you may wish to use one of the
  following commands:
  M-x emms-add-directory-tree:  Add all music files contained in a
      directory or its subdirectories.
  M-x emms-add-directory:  Add all music files contained in a directory.
  M-x emms-add-file:  Add a single music file.
  etc."

Jay

Re: emms help

[Hadron]

Jay Belanger <belanger@truman.edu> writes:

> Hadron <hadronquark@gmail.com> writes:
> ...
>> Yup. In emacs world, people sometimes forget the little guy and the fact
>> that not everyone has the time or patience to read a whole lisp manual
>> to do something as mundane as expect a function called "emms-browser" to
>> actually "browse" the top level of a directory tree.
>
> Directories aren't the only things that are browsed; in this case a
> cache is browsed.  Reading the whole info file for emms isn't
> necessary; the "Basic commands" page should get you started listening
> to music.  That page contains plenty of "emms-play-..." commands.
> But it wouldn't be a bad idea (in my opinion) if when emms tries to
> browse an empty cache a short help screen popped up; something like
>   Welcome to EMMS.
>   The emms cache, which contains the songs that emms can browse, is
>   currently empty.  To populate it, you may wish to use one of the
>   following commands:
>   M-x emms-add-directory-tree:  Add all music files contained in a
>       directory or its subdirectories.

This just returns that there are no songs in the top level - it seems to
ignore the "tree" bit ...

>   M-x emms-add-directory:  Add all music files contained in a directory.
>   M-x emms-add-file:  Add a single music file.
>   etc."
>
> Jay

-- 

Re: emms help

[Tassilo Horn]

Hadron <hadronquark@gmail.com> writes:

Hi Hadron,

>>   M-x emms-add-directory-tree:  Add all music files contained in a
>>       directory or its subdirectories.
>
> This just returns that there are no songs in the top level - it seems
> to ignore the "tree" bit ...

Hm, do you use a current darcs checkout or version 2.1? Maybe there's a
bug in it. At least the current version warks flawlessly.

Bye,
Tassilo
-- 
A child of five could understand this! Fetch me a child of five!

Re: emms help

[Hadron]

Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org> writes:

> Hadron <hadronquark@gmail.com> writes:
>
> Hi Hadron,
>
>>>   M-x emms-add-directory-tree:  Add all music files contained in a
>>>       directory or its subdirectories.
>>
>> This just returns that there are no songs in the top level - it seems
>> to ignore the "tree" bit ...
>
> Hm, do you use a current darcs checkout or version 2.1? Maybe there's a
> bug in it. At least the current version warks flawlessly.
>
> Bye,
> Tassilo

I took the darcs version. How to determine emms version? There is no
emms-version function.

Does not work for me. I have a top level "music" folder and point
emms-browser at it using emms-add-directory-tree. Below it are
directories named after the artist, then below the albums then the song
files. I get this in the messages after emms-add-directory-tree :

Building playlist...done
emms-playlist-first: No first track

If I add (for example) music/beach boys/albumname/ then the songs are
added for that directory only.

Why is a call to add-directoy-tree even calling a play function in the
first place? The browser is not where files are played from - this is
the job of the play lists is it not?

(ps How about a menu item for emms? is it there?)

How to remove stuff from emms-browser? The "delete" option worries me -
the documentation isnt clear as to what it deletes - I just want to
empty the browser cache - not remove the files from the hard drive.

,----
| emms-browser-delete-files is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `emms-browser.el'.
| (emms-browser-delete-files)
| 
| Delete all files under point.
| Disabled by default.
`----

Re: emms help

[Tassilo Horn]

Hadron <hadronquark@gmail.com> writes:

Hi Hadron,

> I took the darcs version. How to determine emms version? There is no
> emms-version function.

You cannot automatically. You can only name the version of the tarball
you installed or the date, time and repository you checked out.

> Does not work for me. I have a top level "music" folder and point
> emms-browser at it using emms-add-directory-tree. Below it are
> directories named after the artist, then below the albums then the
> song files.

Exactly the same here. But it works...

I have 

  (setq emms-source-file-directory-tree-function
        'emms-source-file-directory-tree-find)

in my .emacs. Maybe that fixes the problems. If yes, please send a bug
report to the emms-help mailing list [1]. (You can also access it via
Gmane [2].)

> ,----
> | emms-browser-delete-files is an interactive compiled Lisp function
> | in `emms-browser.el'.
> | (emms-browser-delete-files)
> | 
> | Delete all files under point.
> | Disabled by default.
> `----

This function deletes the files physically.

Please use the mailing list / gmane group for further questions. There
are people with more insight into the core modules than me.

Bye,
Tassilo

Footnotes: 
[1] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emms-help
[2] http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.emms.user
-- 
VI VI VI - The Roman Number Of The Beast

Re: emms help

[Hadron]

Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org> writes:

> Hadron <hadronquark@gmail.com> writes:
>
> Hi Hadron,
>
>> I took the darcs version. How to determine emms version? There is no
>> emms-version function.
>
> You cannot automatically. You can only name the version of the tarball
> you installed or the date, time and repository you checked out.
>
>> Does not work for me. I have a top level "music" folder and point
>> emms-browser at it using emms-add-directory-tree. Below it are
>> directories named after the artist, then below the albums then the
>> song files.
>
> Exactly the same here. But it works...
>
> I have 
>
>   (setq emms-source-file-directory-tree-function
>         'emms-source-file-directory-tree-find)
>
> in my .emacs. Maybe that fixes the problems. If yes, please send a bug
> report to the emms-help mailing list [1]. (You can also access it via
> Gmane [2].)
>
>> ,----
>> | emms-browser-delete-files is an interactive compiled Lisp function
>> | in `emms-browser.el'.
>> | (emms-browser-delete-files)
>> | 
>> | Delete all files under point.
>> | Disabled by default.
>> `----
>
> This function deletes the files physically.
>
> Please use the mailing list / gmane group for further questions. There
> are people with more insight into the core modules than me.

Sorry man, but please answer this : how to I clear my browser cache
without deleting the file?

>
> Bye,
> Tassilo
>
> Footnotes: 
> [1] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emms-help
> [2] http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.emms.user

-- 

Re: emms help

[Tassilo Horn]

Hadron <hadronquark@gmail.com> writes:

Hi Hadron,

> Sorry man, but please answer this : how to I clear my browser cache
> without deleting the file?

Hm, I'd say `M-: (setq emms-cache-db nil) RET' should do the trick.

Bye,
Tassilo
-- 
          "Emacs is not a development tool but a way of life."
                - David Kastrup in alt.religion.emacs -

Re: emms help

[Tassilo Horn]

Jay Belanger <belanger@truman.edu> writes:

Hi Jay,

Damien Elmes, the author of the browser, added such a message. You can
get the version which includes the patch from my darcs repository.

    darcs {get,pull} http://www.tsdh.de/repos/darcs/emms

Bye,
Tassilo
-- 
* delYsid has mortgage, opportunity and penis in his score file.
<delYsid> thats pretty effective against spam
<Luke> aren't you worried about missing opportunities to mortgage
       your penis?

Re: emms help

[Daniel Brockman]

Hadron <hadronquark@gmail.com> writes:

> Someone recommended another player (coco?)

Bongo.

> but the first thing it expected was all my music files to
> include artist-album-song information in the file name!

To be fair, it does ship with a tool (`tree-from-tags.rb')
that automatically creates a tree of symlinks into your
media library named according to Bongo's expectations.

Bongo doesn't _require_ file names to contain meta data,
by the way, but it cannot read ID3 or Ogg tags.

Thank you for your feedback.  It represents a user vote
to implement support for reading tags.

-- 
Daniel Brockman <daniel@brockman.se>