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#54265 - 03/01/2002 12:27 Scrolling Display
jdandrea
member

Registered: 07/11/2001
Posts: 188
Loc: New Jersey
For the "main display" with the title, artist and album, the text scrolls to the end, pauses, and scrolls back to the beginning.

A fine way to show all that text, to be sure, but I'd also welcome a constant scroll in one direction, with some whitespace and then the text repeating, perhaps if the text is more than twice the length of the display? Or some user-configurable tweak in config.ini - Mark, here's a hack for ya! If I had the proper development environment I'd try for it myself ...

About the only usability gotcha I could see here is if some text scrolled back-and-forth, and some scrolled constantly. Might weird people out. But then it's just a starter thought. Let's see where it leads ...
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-- JD - SN# 040104008 (120GB Blue, Digital Out)

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#54266 - 03/01/2002 22:44 Re: Scrolling Display [Re: jdandrea]
hybrid8
carpal tunnel

Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
You could always do the wrap-scroll on all lines that needed to be scrolled. But it's going to look like a friggin circus. :)

I didn't care too much for the scrolling method at first... But it's the lesser of the evils I think. It could use a bit of tweaking, but I think it might be a good idea to wait a couple of releases. The guys have seen a lot of discussion (at least there has BEEN lots of discussion) about this, so there are some tweak ideas out there to experiment with.

The hardest part of many of the player features is coming up with a solution that will please the most people - while tryig to please everyone.

Bruno
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Bruno
Twisted Melon : Fine Mac OS Software

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#54267 - 03/01/2002 22:51 Re: Scrolling Display [Re: jdandrea]
mandiola
enthusiast

Registered: 26/12/2001
Posts: 386
Loc: Miami, FL - Sioux Falls, SD
I did some programming a long while ago (for a personal mp3 player much like the one Hugo first made in his car) on a screen smiliar to the empegs only it was a character based vfd. The first version of the software I put out scrolled the mp3 info just like you mentioned, the problem is that without making it pause at certian parts it can get kind of obnoxious to read.

One thing i noticed though is the text on the "text visuals". If i shutdown my player when its using one of these visuals and reboot it, the text comes up with the developers not the song information. While this is kind of cool that they did this it can be very annoying when your expecting it to be the song information bumping to the music not a bunch of peoples names. Once I switch to the next song all is well and it displays the song information.

-Greg

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#54268 - 04/01/2002 00:14 Re: Scrolling Display [Re: mandiola]
hybrid8
carpal tunnel

Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
The credits thing is a bug. It's already been reported. :)
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Bruno
Twisted Melon : Fine Mac OS Software

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#54269 - 04/01/2002 00:16 Re: Scrolling Display [Re: hybrid8]
mandiola
enthusiast

Registered: 26/12/2001
Posts: 386
Loc: Miami, FL - Sioux Falls, SD
Hehe.. I kinda figured that. Is there a website that lists the bugs that have been found?

-Greg

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#54270 - 04/01/2002 00:26 Re: Scrolling Display [Re: mandiola]
Terminator
old hand

Registered: 12/01/2000
Posts: 1079
Loc: Dallas, TX
No, just the bugs forum. Rob posts the bug list every once in a while there too.

Sean

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#54271 - 04/01/2002 13:16 Re: Scrolling Display [Re: hybrid8]
jdandrea
member

Registered: 07/11/2001
Posts: 188
Loc: New Jersey
But it's going to look like a friggin circus.

... without making it pause at certian parts it can get kind of obnoxious to read

Agreed, actually. I gave this some more thought as well and realized "it's not gonna work" - at least not in the present form. For one thing, there's a state machine of sorts in effect - the first line scrolls back and forth, followed by the next, followed by the next. They don't all scroll at once (good thing too!). So you'd need a pause, but where do you put it - scroll around to the beginning but stop when it fills the display? Umm ... no.

Good to think it through though! Obviously the Empeg team did. Yay!
_________________________
-- JD - SN# 040104008 (120GB Blue, Digital Out)

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#54272 - 09/01/2002 15:00 Re: Scrolling Display [Re: jdandrea]
Scorp1us
journeyman

Registered: 03/01/2002
Posts: 76
Or you could compress the track name. I wrote some code at sourceforge.net for project "DVF07Name" - My DVD changer has a port that you can control the player and program names into it. It's only got 12 chars to store artist and album title each, and most titles are easily readable. My program connects to CDDB and programs the names With the 30 or so chars on the display that you can do, it should eliminate the need to scroll while still having a legible title.

Fell free to use the code if you want to. I'm the copyright holder, and it's under GPL. If that's a worry, I can put that module under LGPL.

IIRC, "Pretty Hate Machine" would be: "PrettyHtMchn" in 12 chars and "What a Long strange trip it's been" would be:
"WhtaLngStrng" not bad for 12 chars, and it's assumed that you'll know what music you have, so you should recognize it.

There a few other algorithms there too.

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#54273 - 14/02/2003 10:16 Re: Scrolling Display [Re: jdandrea]
larry818
old hand

Registered: 01/10/2002
Posts: 1033
Loc: Fullerton, Calif.
This is something that annoys me too... I use only "track" info mode and the title display seems jerky to me. In the car it's a little distracting (I have a Volvo 240 where the empeg mounts quite high in one's field of vision). I'd prefer to scroll one direction and if a pause is necessary, to stop at the beginning (first character on the left). Less desirable but better than the current behavoiur would be that the title scroll backwards at the same rate as the forward.

Most of the artist and album fields do not exceed the space allotted on my player. It would be nice if the scroll behavoiur is settable.

Thanks for listening,

Larry

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