I won't get close to a computer from tomorrow until Sunday. I thought I should mention it since people might start wondering why I don't reply to their messages.
Messages which are not always very helpful. There isn't much one can do with a bug report if all it says is basically "the thing crashes".
Another thing: a lot of people who visit MP3 Diags' website come from this article on lifehacker.com. Asking questions there is a bit like the blind leading the blind and I'm worried that those reading the posts might get some wrong ideas about the program; there are 2 posts in particular that I'd like to reply to, only I'm stuck in a "your account has not been approved yet" state.
Readers of the replies to BishopBlaize's post might be left with the impression that you can't use MP3 Diags to get track info from file names, while this was one of the main reasons to create the program in the first place, and there's detailed documentation at http://mp3diags.sourceforge.net/220_tag_editor_patterns.html
Also, by seeing dchall8's post about the "installation instructions for Windows" people might believe that they have to compile the program themselves, while there's been a setup.exe for as long as the program was made available on Windows. All you had to do was go to http://mp3diags.sourceforge.net/010_getting_the_program.html#binWindows
So can someone with a lifehacker account please set the record straight by posting these links to the appropriate places? Just one. Thanks!
(Note that you need to click on "Show hidden threads", at the bottom of the page.)
Monday, August 24, 2009
Trying to deal with the Windows crashes
Last Friday the number of web site views and downloads increased dramatically as a result of reviews on several popular sites, most notable lifehacker.com.
However, as Windows users started to install the program, reports of mostly random crashes began to show up on the issue tracker. There are 2 things that make it hard to deal with them:
1) I don't get any crashes on my computer.
2) Most of those who report the crashes don't respond to my questions, so I have no idea what might have caused them.
So now version 0.99.05.032 is trying to tackle this issue. Changes related to this:
1) Improved the crash detector and added a rudimentary trace / log, so some files will hopefully tell what the program was doing at the time of the crash.
2) Switched to a newer Qt and compiler; while I'm curious to learn if this makes any difference, what really made me do this switch was what looks like a compiler bug in the previous MinGW version.
Other changes:
- Sometimes in Windows XP SP3 (and perhaps others) letters would be shown as little rectangles, making the program unusable. This should be fixed. (At least I tested the new version on a friend's computer and it worked fine, while the previous ones showed rectangles.)
- Track info is now read from Lyrics3 V2 streams (but for now the image names and the INF fields are ignored.)
--------------------
Since this is more of an "emergency" release to deal with Windows issues, I'd recommend Linux users to stay on 0.99.05.031 unless they really care about Lyrics.
However, as Windows users started to install the program, reports of mostly random crashes began to show up on the issue tracker. There are 2 things that make it hard to deal with them:
1) I don't get any crashes on my computer.
2) Most of those who report the crashes don't respond to my questions, so I have no idea what might have caused them.
So now version 0.99.05.032 is trying to tackle this issue. Changes related to this:
1) Improved the crash detector and added a rudimentary trace / log, so some files will hopefully tell what the program was doing at the time of the crash.
2) Switched to a newer Qt and compiler; while I'm curious to learn if this makes any difference, what really made me do this switch was what looks like a compiler bug in the previous MinGW version.
Other changes:
- Sometimes in Windows XP SP3 (and perhaps others) letters would be shown as little rectangles, making the program unusable. This should be fixed. (At least I tested the new version on a friend's computer and it worked fine, while the previous ones showed rectangles.)
- Track info is now read from Lyrics3 V2 streams (but for now the image names and the INF fields are ignored.)
--------------------
Since this is more of an "emergency" release to deal with Windows issues, I'd recommend Linux users to stay on 0.99.05.031 unless they really care about Lyrics.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
0.99.05.031 available
There's a new version ready for download. There are only rather minor changes from the last one, like adding a crash detector (which encourages the users to report crashes when the application is restarted, if it seems that it wasn't shut down properly) or fixing a bug in the selection of multiple cells in the tag editor.
Another change is using a busy / hourglass cursor when closing the normalization, in the hope that this will signal the users that the program isn't frozen even if it appears so. Sometimes (quite rarely) MP3 Diags loses its link to the normalization program and thinks the normalization is still running when it actually finished. If that happens, MP3 Diags looks frozen, but there's a timeout of less than 1 minute, after which it works fine. While I'm investigating the reason for this and a possible fix, the new cursor should provide a hint that the program will resume responding.
Yet another minor change is that now the content of GEOB frames in ID3V2 is shown when displaying the "File details".
Another change is using a busy / hourglass cursor when closing the normalization, in the hope that this will signal the users that the program isn't frozen even if it appears so. Sometimes (quite rarely) MP3 Diags loses its link to the normalization program and thinks the normalization is still running when it actually finished. If that happens, MP3 Diags looks frozen, but there's a timeout of less than 1 minute, after which it works fine. While I'm investigating the reason for this and a possible fix, the new cursor should provide a hint that the program will resume responding.
Yet another minor change is that now the content of GEOB frames in ID3V2 is shown when displaying the "File details".
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