Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Back to my ISP (sort of)
Things keep changing at SourceForge on a daily basis, and if something works today there's no guarantee that it will still work tomorrow. Now for some reason the files that I updated for 0.99.05.030 seem to have vanished. I'll try again later, but from now on I'll also make available the generic source archive and the Windows installer at my ISP, until the SourceForge interface becomes stable. If you want the latest version and the main links don't work, go to the download page; the links pointing to those files at my ISP are right after those at SourceForge.
Some fixes for the previous version
I guess the last version just had too many changes, and I didn't notice that I introduced several bugs. I did processed with it some 1000 of my MP3 files, but my normal usage pattern doesn't touch the affected areas. Today I tried some other things and I noticed that not everything works as designed. So there's a new version, to correct the issues that I uncovered.
The most annoying thing to me was that removing elements from lists (visible transformations, filters, ...) no longer worked.
Another issue was that the tag editor sometimes reserved a lot of space for fast editing, even when fast editing was disabled.
So nothing really big, or leading to data loss, but to me these warranted a new release.
Then there are older things that only got uncovered now:
Processing ID3V2.4.0 tags containing UTF-8 frames never worked. Those frames were read correctly, but writing them to ID3V2.3.0 caused the tag to appear broken. "Discard invalid ID3V2 data" was affected by this, as well as any other transformation that wrote V2.4.0 data to V2.3.0 tags. Well, now it's finally fixed.
I fixed several assertion failures that are quite unlikely to reach, so I won't get into details.
There are also some improvements:
The file renamer accepts now patterns that contain no path separators. That's what should be used to rename files inside a directory, without moving them elsewhere. This seemed to work fine but needs a bit more testing.
"Discard invalid ID3V2 data" is faster now if it doesn't make any changes.
When applying transformations their names are displayed. I find this more useful for custom transformation lists, when only 1 or 2 from the whole list actually get applied. Now you can finally see what's going on.
Saving from the tag editor now removes broken ID3V2 tags.
Well, if you have 0.99.05.029 you should probably move to 0.99.05.030 (though, given the extent of the changes in 0.99.05.029, chances are that a new bugfix release will come pretty soon.)
The most annoying thing to me was that removing elements from lists (visible transformations, filters, ...) no longer worked.
Another issue was that the tag editor sometimes reserved a lot of space for fast editing, even when fast editing was disabled.
So nothing really big, or leading to data loss, but to me these warranted a new release.
Then there are older things that only got uncovered now:
Processing ID3V2.4.0 tags containing UTF-8 frames never worked. Those frames were read correctly, but writing them to ID3V2.3.0 caused the tag to appear broken. "Discard invalid ID3V2 data" was affected by this, as well as any other transformation that wrote V2.4.0 data to V2.3.0 tags. Well, now it's finally fixed.
I fixed several assertion failures that are quite unlikely to reach, so I won't get into details.
There are also some improvements:
The file renamer accepts now patterns that contain no path separators. That's what should be used to rename files inside a directory, without moving them elsewhere. This seemed to work fine but needs a bit more testing.
"Discard invalid ID3V2 data" is faster now if it doesn't make any changes.
When applying transformations their names are displayed. I find this more useful for custom transformation lists, when only 1 or 2 from the whole list actually get applied. Now you can finally see what's going on.
Saving from the tag editor now removes broken ID3V2 tags.
Well, if you have 0.99.05.029 you should probably move to 0.99.05.030 (though, given the extent of the changes in 0.99.05.029, chances are that a new bugfix release will come pretty soon.)
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Getting close to feature complete
I just uploaded version 0.99.05.029. With it, most of the features that were planned for version 1.0 are implemented. What remains are several cosmetic changes and perhaps bug fixes, to the extent that I know about them and I can reproduce them.
There are many changes from the previous release, so here's the rather long list of what's new / different:
There is a new download option, meant mainly for packagers: a source+doc bundle. See the download page for the actual link.
For users with slower computers (like myself) the biggest improvement is an option to save from the tag editor much faster than before. This option has to be enabled manually and it works best if a new transformation called "Reserve space in ID3V2 for fast tag editing" is run before going to the tag editor. After doing the tag editing, it is a good idea to run "Remove extra space from ID3V2".
There are several Windows-specific changes: 1) now the backslash is used as the file separator, making the program look more "native"; 2) if you "copy" a JPG or PNG file in Windows Explorer, you can paste it to the tag editor; 3) the normalization dialog shows the progress correctly.
Previously the file renamer opened with its file list being the current album. Now it can open with whatever you have visible in the main window. You have to keep the CTRL key pressed when clicking on the button if you want this kind of behavior.
A new tab was added to the configuration dialog where you can choose which transformations should be visible in the transformations menu. Now some are hidden by default - basically those that I don't expect many people to use.
There's a new transformation for keeping a single image, as front cover.
There's a new transformation for removing ID3V1 tags.
There's a new button for erasing image files from the tag editor.
It is now possible to configure the maximum image size (pasting images larger than that size recompresses them.)
Improved paste in tag editor: it is possible to paste to multiple cells or to paste file names copied from file browsers.
Tooltips are shown for the transformations menu.
There are also several minor bug fixes, which are described in the changelog on the web site.
On the negative side, the documentation still needs to be updated, so for now the new features are only described in this post.
There are many changes from the previous release, so here's the rather long list of what's new / different:
There is a new download option, meant mainly for packagers: a source+doc bundle. See the download page for the actual link.
For users with slower computers (like myself) the biggest improvement is an option to save from the tag editor much faster than before. This option has to be enabled manually and it works best if a new transformation called "Reserve space in ID3V2 for fast tag editing" is run before going to the tag editor. After doing the tag editing, it is a good idea to run "Remove extra space from ID3V2".
There are several Windows-specific changes: 1) now the backslash is used as the file separator, making the program look more "native"; 2) if you "copy" a JPG or PNG file in Windows Explorer, you can paste it to the tag editor; 3) the normalization dialog shows the progress correctly.
Previously the file renamer opened with its file list being the current album. Now it can open with whatever you have visible in the main window. You have to keep the CTRL key pressed when clicking on the button if you want this kind of behavior.
A new tab was added to the configuration dialog where you can choose which transformations should be visible in the transformations menu. Now some are hidden by default - basically those that I don't expect many people to use.
There's a new transformation for keeping a single image, as front cover.
There's a new transformation for removing ID3V1 tags.
There's a new button for erasing image files from the tag editor.
It is now possible to configure the maximum image size (pasting images larger than that size recompresses them.)
Improved paste in tag editor: it is possible to paste to multiple cells or to paste file names copied from file browsers.
Tooltips are shown for the transformations menu.
There are also several minor bug fixes, which are described in the changelog on the web site.
On the negative side, the documentation still needs to be updated, so for now the new features are only described in this post.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
MP3 Diags 0.99.04.026 available
For Windows users the big news is that now the program can handle files with non-ASCII names.
Other changes:
- The tag editor looks at the filter when going to the next / previous album.
- USLT Lyrics inside ID3V2 are shown in the "tag details" area.
- Support for "F1 help" was added. Pressing F1 in most windows will open the documentation page that best matches that window. The pages are loaded from SourceForge if they are not found locally. For now the directories that are checked are /usr/share/mp3diags-doc/html and /usr/share/doc/mp3diags/html
Other changes:
- The tag editor looks at the filter when going to the next / previous album.
- USLT Lyrics inside ID3V2 are shown in the "tag details" area.
- Support for "F1 help" was added. Pressing F1 in most windows will open the documentation page that best matches that window. The pages are loaded from SourceForge if they are not found locally. For now the directories that are checked are /usr/share/mp3diags-doc/html and /usr/share/doc/mp3diags/html
Friday, July 10, 2009
New look + Mandriva binaries
I've finally managed to implement a change that I meant to do for a while: restructuring the labels and the use of colors. This is supposed to downgrade the labeling system from "hopelessly confusing" to merely "confusing". So:
1) The 1-letter labels got replaced with 2-letter ones, where the first letter is used to identify the group, while the second letter is for the place of a note inside its group.
2) The background color of a note no longer depends on its severity (error / warning / support.) Instead, only the labels use different colors.
3) Gradients are used for easier easier visual identification of note groups.
4) In the Configuration dialog there is a new tab, where the background colors can be changed for each group. (Note the possibility of using "custom colors", for a more consistent look.)
5) The tag editor's background colors can be configured from its Palette dialog.
------------------
Other changes:
- Changes that are made by external tools are now detected and the user is told to reload. (Previously the program would just crash.)
- The font that is used for labels in the main table can be made smaller, so the note columns take up less space.
- Tooltips for the main table's header contain note descriptions.
- There are now Mandriva binaries available.
------------------
(Note that the documentation has not been updated yet, to reflect these changes.)
1) The 1-letter labels got replaced with 2-letter ones, where the first letter is used to identify the group, while the second letter is for the place of a note inside its group.
2) The background color of a note no longer depends on its severity (error / warning / support.) Instead, only the labels use different colors.
3) Gradients are used for easier easier visual identification of note groups.
4) In the Configuration dialog there is a new tab, where the background colors can be changed for each group. (Note the possibility of using "custom colors", for a more consistent look.)
5) The tag editor's background colors can be configured from its Palette dialog.
------------------
Other changes:
- Changes that are made by external tools are now detected and the user is told to reload. (Previously the program would just crash.)
- The font that is used for labels in the main table can be made smaller, so the note columns take up less space.
- Tooltips for the main table's header contain note descriptions.
- There are now Mandriva binaries available.
------------------
(Note that the documentation has not been updated yet, to reflect these changes.)
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Better file renamer + more
The file renamer now replaces "invalid" characters ('?', '*', "/", ...) with an underscore. This should make it more usable. There is still an issue regarding ":", which is invalid on some file systems and actually used on others. For now ":" is hardcoded to be invalid only on Windows, but that's not quite OK, because people mount in one OS file systems from another.
Also, the file renamer now works on Windows too.
Other changes in 0.99.02.020:
1) A fix for an assertion failure that was triggered by badly broken files.
2) Duration is now shown for audio streams.
3) More system information details in the assert dialog
4) Added a system information tab to "about" dialog
If you download the source, make sure you get the right one. SourceForge seems broken, and I can't find a way to make it use 0.99.02.020 for the default download (instead it points to 0.99.02.018)
Also, the file renamer now works on Windows too.
Other changes in 0.99.02.020:
1) A fix for an assertion failure that was triggered by badly broken files.
2) Duration is now shown for audio streams.
3) More system information details in the assert dialog
4) Added a system information tab to "about" dialog
If you download the source, make sure you get the right one. SourceForge seems broken, and I can't find a way to make it use 0.99.02.020 for the default download (instead it points to 0.99.02.018)
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