gmusicbrowser development

Contributed icons and layouts
layouts documentation
translations
rough draft of the SongTree syntax

NEW : There is now a git repository (mirrored on github). See this mini-guide in the wiki.
NEW : #gmusicbrowser IRC channel on Freenode.

Future development versions will be announced on the mailing-list gmusicbrowser-announce (RSS feeds are available via gmane)

Latest development version : gmusicbrowser-1.1.5.tar.gz (released on 20-04-2010)

gentoo ebuild, arch linux
This is an alpha version, mainly because there are still a few regressions compared to v1.0.x, but it should be perfectly usable if you don't mind a few bugs and few missing features.
You are strongly encouraged to backup your music collection if you edit tags in m4a files, as it has only be tested on ~10 files coming from itunes and winamp.
Layouts settings (such as window/panel/column sizes, displayed columns, ...) from previous versions (v1.0.x or v1.1.1) will be wiped, due to a redesign of the widget option system.

Regressions

slower startup and saving, not sure it can be improved
the auto-finding of covers for albums during collection scans is not implemented yet
filter edition/description : not updated yet, so only works with filters that already existed
genre/label edition in song(s) properties : the widget needs lots of improvements
probably a few things I forgot ... And more bugs :)

New features in v1.1.5

do not run a new instance of gmb if an existing one is found
change some command-line options (see this commit)
new "desktop widgets" plugin to display special layouts on your desktop, only a few layouts are included for now, but you can make more (they work just like normal layouts, they just need a type=D line)
add a few eye-candy options to Cover/ArtistPic widgets, see this commit
make the Total widget work with TabbedLists widgets
fix scanning bug that could make scanning slow (last modification date and size of songs were never updated after first add, so once changed they were considered as new every time)
lots of smaller things (see git log for more details)

New features in v1.1.3

lots of changes in the way window options are handled, window background can be transparent (requires Cairo and acompositing window manager), the whole window can be made "mouse-invisible", and it is now eazy to open window at specific position, more details in this commit
karoke plugin, uses already present .lrc files, no automatic download currently

New features in v1.1.2

optional gapless playback with gstreamer, it can be enabled in the gstreamer advanced options, due to a bug you may need to restart gmusicbrowser unless you haven't started playing yet. It uses playbin2 instead of playbin, so it may not be as stable. Currently, when this option is turned on, all songs transitions will be gapless, except when in weighted random mode.
support for .m4a files, please use backups and report any problems with it, don't hesitate to send me .m4a files that cause problems
special groups : in a custom layout, you can set a widget's group to Play, Recent, Next (Recent and Next may be followed by a number) more details in this commit
related groups : a SongList/SongTree with a group=name:album will follow the album of the selected song from group "name", which can be the group of another SongList/SongTree or a special group like Play. Other fields like :artist and :year are possible too.
new LockSong widget to repeat a song
DBus interface : replaced the SongChanged signal by 3 signals : SongFieldsChanged, SongChanged and PlayingSongChanged
genres are now split on ';' when read (will be an option in the future)
Redesign of widget options handling, of ExtraWidget,TabbedLists and Context widgets (see this commit)
SimpleSearch widget ; speed improvement and smart syntax see this commit for some examples
Forgot to mention for v1.1.1 : new commands : NextAlbum and NextArtist
some things I forgot...

New features in v1.1.1

artist fields : there are a now a number of artist fields :
- artist : simply what is in tag
- artists : virtual field that transform the artist field into multiple artists
- album_artist_raw : value of the album_artist tag
- album_artist : virtual field that default to artist when no album_artist_raw, note that both album_artist_raw and album_artist fields are named "Album artist" which results in some problems like 2 columns named "Album artist". Suggestions to solve this are welcome
- first_artist : virtual field, the first artist when multiple artists are present in the artist field. Currently named "Main artist", not sure about that
album : multiple albums with the same name can now exists if they have a different album_artist, it will be customizable, maybe by using a customizable album_id virtual field
filetags : a demo field that can be used to find what tags are present in your files, it won't be enabled by default in the stable release, if there at all
2 new widgets (Progress and ProgressV) that can display progress informations, if none of them is used a window will popup when needed
new default layout
new "TimeBar" and "VolBar" widgets, a nicer alternative for the "Scale" and "VolSlider" widget
the "Total" widget has a new "listed" mode that display the totals for the listed songs in the associated SongList/SongTree
you now add/remove pages in the FPanes widgets by right-clicking on the tabs
FPanes can now display a tree : for example artist/album (it has a few small bugs, I may implement it in a different way in the future, using the SongTree code)
the SongTree widget can be used everywhere the SongList is used : in playlist mode, in the TabbedList widget (with the option songtree=1).
support for mpg123 instead of mpg321, and for playing flac files with ogg123
you can replace simple_http.pm with simple_http_wget.pm to test using wget for all internet requests (cover search, lyrics plugin, lastfm scrobbling). It should make cover searching with google images more responsive. You can also use it with gmusicbrowser 1.0.
support for different albums with the same name (if they have a different album_artist, will be customizable)
improved support for accentuated characters
search-as-you-type in the SongTree, Mosaic and Cloud view, with some options
less memory usage by the collection data
some things I forgot...

Import stats from amarok

amarok2gmb.pl
Barely tested script to import rating, lastplay, playcount and labels from amarok.
The script look for a sqlite database at ~/.kde/share/apps/amarok/collection.db, it needs the perl sqlite module (probably libdbd-sqlite-perl). If you use a postgresql or mysql database, the script will need some slight alteration a the correct perl module.
Gmusicbrowser needs to be running, with the perl dbus module (libnet-dbus-perl) installed, and due to changes I made to the dbus namespace I use, you need version >=0.9642.
To run it, simply type "perl amarok2gmb.pl"
It will print an error for any problem importing a value.