Plogg

Plogg is an ncurses-based music player front-end. Primarily supporting Ogg Vorbis and mp3, Plogg can be configured to handle additional back-end players as well. Rev: 03-12-30 ----- This program was originally based on "jb - a curses based 'jukebox'" which is (C) 1997 Kristian Wiklund (kw@dtek.clamers.se). It has since been tweaked to initially handle the playing Ogg Vorbis files, in addition to a few more keyboard commands to allow moving through a running playlist. In its recent incarnations Plogg has now been given the additional flexibility of running many different types of players as a "graphical" front-end. Not all features are available to all players; major support in Plogg is current for Ogg Vorbis and mp3. This software is still beta and quite rough. And also doesn't have a lot of features. My main purpose is very similar to the original creators... to use Plogg (or jb) much like a jukebox where it just plays away in the background. More features and control may show up in future versions. * * Plogg is (C) 2003 Jeff Robinson (jeffnik@anecho.mb.ca) * This program is licensed for your use under the Gnu General Public * License, version 2, which should be accompanying this source code, * in the file COPYING. * REQUIREMENTS: DART support (dart.dll) - Comes with OS/2 version 4, and should be available for OS/2 version 3 (only necessary for playing Ogg Vorbis files) EMX Runtime (tested with version 0.9d) THIS SOFTWARE PACKAGE ALSO INCLUDES: mpg123 and support files - The mp3 playing software ogg123 and support files - The Ogg Vorbis playing software ncurses termcap - It "draws the interface". Without it, things suck.* INSTALLATION: 1) The easiest (and recommended) way to install Plogg is to use the WarpIN archive for one-click-goodness! (Y'think we can patent that term? Or at least use this as prior art?) otherwise you can: 2) Unpack Plogg and its associated files in a directory of your choice. - If you do not have these variables set in your config.sys, add these and reboot: SET TERM=ansi-color-3 SET TERMINFO=c:/path/to/plogg/share/terminfo (Note that you must use forward slashes in the TERMINFO variable) USING PLOGG - Create a playlist in one of three ways: 1) Drag a supported music file onto the Plogg program object. This will automatically play the dropped file but will not affect any existing playlists. 2) If you installed a WarpIN archive, you will have a "Create Playlist" object. By dragging a folder onto this icon all the files in that directory and below will be used as your playlist. Right now there are no options to edit the playlist unless you do it by hand with a text editor. 3) From an OS/2 command prompt run the playlist.cmd file indicating the directory that contains your mp3's. playlist.cmd will recursively search that directory and create a new playlist of all files it finds. (e.g.: "playlist e:\bin\audio\mp3" without the quotes would add all the files in the e:\bin\audio\mp3 directory). - Start Plogg by either double-clicking the Plogg object or typing 'plogg' at the os/2 command prompt. - Selecting files to play - Using the up and down arrows of your keyboard you can highlight different songs. The song list will scroll if you arrow up or down beyond the "edge" of the screen to show all the available songs. p - play the highlighted song t - toggle the selection of a song; unselected becomes selected and selected becomes unselected v - View current playlist. (Not totally functional) g - play all selected songs ~ - Toggles the selection state of all of the songs on the list. r - play all selected songs in random order q - stop playing (selected songs) ESC - quit Plogg right arrow - jump to next selected song (while playing) left arrow - jump to previously selected song (while playing) up arrow - move one song up the playlist down arrow - move one song down the playlist Page Up - move a "page-worth" up the play list Page Down - move a "page-worth" down the play list THE PLOGG.INI FILE As of 2003-08-12, the Plogg.ini file format has now changed to support many different types of music players. The Plogg.ini file is now required for even basic operation of Plogg, but should be set-up with reasonable defaults. The syntax of each line of the Plogg.ini file is as follows: extension, player executable (and optional path), player options The "extension" tells Plogg what file extensions to use the listed player for. The "player executable" is the name of the player (and optionally it's path) for the player that will handle this file type. The "player options" allow you to feed command-line arguments to the player itself to let it operate in a more-nice way with Plogg... such as telling it to run in "quiet" mode, or redirecting the output, etc. Some examples: To get ogg123 (in the Plogg directory) to play Ogg Vorbis files, we can simple put: .ogg,ogg123.exe,-q -ddart Please note that it is important to put the period before the extension, otherwise you may end up having some funky behaviour from Plogg. Now, say we wanted to play both mp2 and mp3 files with mpg123, we could do this: .mp2 .mp3,c:\path\to\mpg123.exe,-q If a player does not have any options, you can leave the last section blank, but be certain to have the final comma in place. Comments can be put in the Plogg.ini file be prefacing them with a hash (#) mark. BUG REPORTS: There is now an on-line bug reporting facility for Plogg at http://mantis.anecho.mb.ca Here you may file bugs or RFEs (Request for Enhancements) in the Mantis database and (optionally) be updated via e-mail when the status of the bug has changed. TROUBLESHOOTING: - If Plogg fails to start by double-clicking, try to launch it from the command prompt to get a more detailed message of what went wrong. A stderr.log file now exists that you can check (when Plogg isn't running) for more information. - Make certain you've created a playlist before you start. - If Plogg fails to start from the command line with the message: Error opening terminal: (description) It may be that you do not have your term and terminfo set correctly. You can set this at the command line (and in your config.sys) by typing: set term=ansi If the error persists, it may be that your terminfo is not set correctly, or that you have no terminfo files. You can test this from the command-line by typing: set terminfo On my system this returns: TERMINFO=f:/emx/share/terminfo which points to the location of my terminfo files. These files are part of the ncurses library (which is available at http://hobbes.nmsu.edu), and are included with Plogg in the "share" directory. - If, after you have set-up your term and terminfo correctly and Plogg still doesn't start, please let me know!! (Preferably with a description of exactly what is happening or not happening when you start the program). Any questions, concerns or fixes, please feel free to contact me, Jeff Robinson at jeffnik@anecho.mb.ca