Very very very originally, the player did have vertical menus; horizontal are better, given the controls (or so we decided after playing with both quite a lot).

fd's are cached, there may be a number open at a time with no particular way I can think off (offhand) to work out which is the actual one in use.

I suspect a named pipe or similar is the best way to get the info out of the player, but I'll let Mike comment on that!

Hugo