Playlist Undo (v1.1 - 07/12/2010)

[clementj]

The recent question about having a button to implement playlist undo is actually a good idea. It would be really great if one could make controls which reside on an existing window to control things like playlist undo. I realize it appears on an "existing" menu. But what if you do not want to have that menu button?

The problem is that the existing menus have become sometimes difficult to understand, and have features that you might not want to ever use. But unfortunately a slip causes something unintended to happen.

So a separate visible button for playlist undo is a plus for my uses. I am trying to make a foolproof (after configuration) version of Winamp which can easily be used by novices. So having a separate button labeled "undo" would be super. I realize it may not be possible to have this at present, or it may need installation of another whole layer of plugins.

I am trying to implement this with only installation of 1 skin + configuration. Now virtually all features commonly used by our dance group are on the surface and only a one requires going to a menu.

Actually this would be a good feature to have as an integral part of the playlist.

[osmosis]

Originally posted by DrO
a redo action and forced limiter on will be the plans for the next version

Yay! Thanks so much!

the optional idea of having the top few undo actions available from the playlist editor right-click menu and also on the main winamp right-click menu ... some feedback would be nice as to whether i make it a default on or a default off action.

Hmm my Winamp menus are plenty cluttered as it is, but I can see the usefullness of the idea, so personally I'd have to say go for it, but default off.

P.S. on the topic of menu clutter, is there one of those nice bonus options in one of your plugins that would allow me to remove the 'Rate items' menu from the PL? I use a fair number of your plugins but you never know; those little gems seem to get spread out pretty evenly across them.

[Koopa]

the optional idea of having the top few undo actions available from the playlist editor right-click menu and also on the main winamp right-click menu ... some feedback would be nice as to whether i make it a default on or a default off action.

If you do it, default: off.

I guess the main menu already has enough entries, and we talk about playlist changes/modifications, so just an entry in the playlist rt click menu makes sense.

But this is just my opinion.

[clementj]

I would vote to provide the necessary incantations so that skinners can make their own buttons (Maki function), but keep it on the right click menu. Please in addition to undo, also have redo. I much prefer to put only buttons that I need, and remove ones I don't need.

[DrO]

i've little interest in implementing things for skinners that i'm not likely to ever use and just causes more overhead in testing and development maintainence that i'm not keen on having to deal with. with little formal documentation on such things as well i'm not going to hack something in from the source code i'm aware off as it almost always gets changed a few versions later to not work.

-daz

[oomingmak]

Hi Daz,

Would it be possible to have tooltips displayed in the Undo Queue List window when the Action Info text is too long to fit the available column width?

At the moment the only way to see the whole path is to have a huge long horizontal window, or to resize the Action Info column width much wider (which means you end up constantly scrolling back and forth in order to be able to see the other columns).

Another way to deal with the long path issue (possibly in addition to the tooltip idea above) might be to truncate the middle of long paths and replace the truncated section with dots (...) This would result in the beginning and the end of the path being visible, which is generally far more useful that just being able to see the start of a path but not knowing what folder it ends up in.

Thanks.

[DrewD]

I was wondering about the algorithm used to save the undo queue. Does the plug-in save a copy of the whole playlist each time a change is made? That's my guess based on the contents of the gen_undo folder in my Winamp profile; I've been maintaining a pretty long playlist lately (~200K) and so my gen_undo folder is full of ~200K files.

For large playlists, it seems inefficient to make a copy of the entire playlist when just minor changes are made, although I grant that it is a safe method that works. Wouldn't it be more efficient to save only changes to the playlist, like the way the Unix diff command works? The undo files would be much smaller that way. Of course, you'd still want to save a full copy of the playlist every so often just in case.

[DrO]

for most actions it is doing a full playlist backup and restore since that is generally the quickest way to do it against the client versions this was first developed against and for the slow machine i first made it on since selective comparison/tracking of individual changes was more time consuming when trying to get those changes reflected back in the playlist when an undo was done.

i've been meaning to re-evaluate the handling of some of the more common changes inorder to cut down what is being saved/see if i can improve the speed of restoring the backup. however in large playlist cases, it is actually quicker to just give winamp a full playlist to load and for the plugin to then just refresh the current playing position and a few other things.

then again i need to work on finishing this off as a 1.0 (at last) so will see what will come from that when i'm able to get back onto working on this (more likely due to the inclusion of an earlier version of it in the Essentials Pack).

-daz

[DrewD]

Thanks for the quick response. Perhaps for most users, optimizing the plug-in for speed is more important than optimizing for disk space, but in my case I found that the Playlist Undo files were adding several megabytes to my incremental system backups, and over time those extra megs can accumulate. I had been keeping the last 50 changes to the playlist, but I've since reduced that to about 20 to conserve disk space. I guess what I'd like to see eventually is some sort of compromise between speed and disk usage, but it's ultimately your call.

[DrO]

speed and less disk usage would be the better option but somethings are ultimately based on how winamp works and what can be done with it.

there was a request a while back to limit the size of the undo files kept to a given size on disk so maybe something like that will help you in the case of keeping backups at a consistant size.

either way more work needs to be done on the plugin since it still impacts on the operation of winamp in some cases that i'm not at all keen on so will see what comes over the next few months.

-daz

[osmosis]

well they're just text right? what about on-the-fly compression of the undo files.. how would that affect undo action speed?

[DrO]

is an idea that i can look into but i'd expect it to be slower and the overhead wouldn't be justifiable i think for small changes but i see where you're coming from

i've still got to get around to testing out a few ideas i've had from the suggestions so will see what comes from it though there'll be a folder size limit introduced whatever i do with the rest of the way the plugin works (i also think a keep backups for x days was suggested as well sometime back so that may appear as well).

-daz

[Kyin01]

is it possible to not use alt+z?
i have that as a global hotkey for something else

[DrO]

not without recoding the plugin, sorry.

-daz

[CurryCurra]

am i seeing this correct, this only saves the playlist in the playlist editor, but not those in the media library?

yes, im seeing this correct, great, what use is this then anyway?

[Koopa]

Originally posted by CurryCurra
yes, im seeing this correct, great, what use is this then anyway?

Easily restoring the previous files in the playlist editor maybe? Undoing unwanted changes, which were made in the playlist maybe?

Well, now lets clear, why it isn't working in the library...ah yeah, because it's called 'Playlist Undo'

[DrO]

the media library playlists are saved once you close the view whereas the playlist editor (as this plugin is only designed to work on) doesn't unless Winamp is properly closed or a plugin tells it to save the playlist. i don't remember anything in the information about this plugin ever saying that it worked on the media library playlists.

-daz

[DrO]

Playlist Undo v1.0 Alpha 3

• Updated common preferences code to resolve a possible crash bug (found in the Playlist File Remover plugin)
• Added winampUninstallPlugin(..) support (cleans up after itself when uninstalled from Winamp's preferences)
• Started on work to implement a 'redo' mode (placeholders, etc implemented but no functioality that works currently)
• Added in localisation support for the plugin (example .lng file in the installer)
• Plugin now requires Winamp 5.5+ to work (due to localisation support which i _may_ work around if there is a demand)
• Better caches some of the playlist contents to speed up the backup process
• Added some right-click options in the undo queue list dialog to removing the need to go to the preferences to clear the queue completely
• Tries not to save out empty backup playlists
• Added an option for showing the undo menu actions in the main Winamp right-click menu (mainly one for me)

get v1.0 Alpha 3

-daz

[billyvnilly]

Thanks darren

[DrO]

Playlist Undo v1.0 Alpha 4

• Changed preferences name to just 'Undo'
• Now loads all caches if handling a change and they are not loaded already (detected using the 'Add to media library' option in Explorer

get v1.0 Alpha 4

-daz

[DrO]

Playlist Undo v1.0 Alpha 5

• Fixed compatability issue with the insertion of the undo menu items into the main Winamp

get v1.0 Alpha 5

-daz

[DrO]

Playlist Undo v1.0

• Removed strings 34 and 39 from the resources
• Removed some more version checks not needed as we're running on 5.5+ only
• Minor code cleanup
• Everything else in the 1.0 Alpha builds

get v1.0

A 1.0 at last as i'll now roll-out the redo queue, etc for later versions. Main aim is to have a current (localised) version in the Essentials Pack (especially with some of the fixes made in the 1.0 alphas.

-daz

[osmosis]

Hey Daz, found a little bug with 1.0 final; it appears to be truncating the Winamp tooltip to 1 character (at the very least with the taskbar on Windows 7, can't check other setups).

[DrO]

hmm, am running on Win7 at the moment and not seeing such an issue - maybe there's another plug-in installed causing a conflict as there shouldn't be reason for this one to cause something like that happening. plug-in list time i think

-daz

[DrO]

any luck with tracking the issue down osmosis?
it does give me an idea for something to help fix the issue automatically for plug-ins not compatible with 5.34+ and the unicode taskbar button text but have a feeling it could cause more issues than it's worth, heh

-daz

[osmosis]

Haven't had the time yet; busy week. I'll do the old move-out-the-plugins and add one-by-one maneuver over the next few days. As it is, I haven't seen the issue again so it's intermittant.. though I had recreated it on 2 different computers with roughly the same plugins. Odd indeed.

[DrO]

yeah, does sound a bit weird and not to worry (know that thing with being busy )

-daz

[osmosis]

Looks like the problem I was experiencing is related to a combination of plugins. gen_undo.dll, and gen_mwblock.dll seem to be the important ones, and gen_win7shell.dll makes it more apparent by showing the window title more readily in the custom thumb. Renaming/disabling either gen_undo.dll or gen_mwblock.dll allows it to work normally again even if the other plugin is still active.

I recreated this by moving all my other non-default plugins out of the directory, and managed it on a couple of machines so hopefully you can recreate it as well.

MouseWheel Blocker v1.0 [gen_mwblock.dll]
Playlist Undo v1.0 [gen_undo.dll]
Windows 7 Taskbar Integration v1.12 [gen_win7shell.dll]

[DrO]

ah MouseWheel Blocker... there was an update in 2007 to resolve the issue http://www.nunzioweb.com/daz/release...tml#13/03/2007

see how things work with that installed as i know playlist undo was designed to cope with 5.34+ clients when unicode taskbar support was implemented. and i've just checked the source code for gen_win7shell.dll and that is also designed to cope with things.

usually it's down to quirks in the loading order of the plug-ins which can cause the issue to only appear with certain configurations. hopefully the updated mousewheel blocker will sort you out.

-daz

[osmosis]

Yup, that seems to have resolved it. Thanks! Funny because I was just trying to recall the other day whether I had seen an MWBlocker v1.01 floating around even though I had 1.0. I just started using the plugin again recently since I was using DnD to block the MW until that functionality was broken (in Joonas' more recent private build where he fixed that MLBookmarks issue).. Fix one thing, break another; ain't that just the way?

Anyway, glad to have that quirk cleared up. Thanks again

[DrO]

that's good to hear - is usually older plug-ins which are causing the issue (apart from one thread i've seen where installing time restore fixed it, heh).

-daz

[DrO]

Playlist Undo v1.0.1

• Added strings 43 and 44 to allow for better pluralisation handling so strings 25 and 27 are now for when there is 1 item (for Koopa)
• Adjusted the queue viewer to use the MS Shell Dlg font to better match the OS font styling (for Pawel)
• Adjusted the resizing code of the queue viewer to deal with altered button sizes so it'll work better with some languages as required (for Viper)

get v1.0.1

Minor localisation update otherwise no functional changes.

-daz

[Pawel]

Thanks (for You)

-Pawel

[DrO]

Playlist Undo v1.0.2

• Fixed dialogs / messages not using unicode strings in all cases

get v1.0.2

-daz

[schweinhundert]

Ach, I killed 2 playlists and a solid hour's work, then I got this, and when I did it AGAIN, 3rd time in a row, you saved me from my own stupidity, thanks a ton!

[dazbradbury]

This has always been a annoyance of mine in winamp. It's extremely easy to delete your current playlist, and every time I do it I think an undo should be core to the functionality.

After 10 or so years of using winamp, you've finally made it perfect, so thanks!

[DrO]

glad it's of use (also make sure you're using v1.1 and not the older v1.0.2 (have remembered to update the title now) and funnily the plug-in has been around since a few months after you registered on these forums

-daz

[dazbradbury]

Originally Posted by DrO

funnily the plug-in has been around since a few months after you registered on these forums

Haha, I imagine I looked for it all those years ago as well! And who would have thought it would be developed by someone with the same name?! (Looking at the other plug-ins you've developed, seems like it was actually quite likely!).

When I move from a struggling entrepreneur to a successful one, I will be sure to send a donation your way, sorry I can't do so now!

Cheers,
Daz.

[osmosis]

Haha "Influences properties pertaining to Geese" - silly spam bots..

While I'm here.. Any chance you ever got to see what the story was with ActiveWinamp with open file handles and Playlist Undo's queue on the same install that silently deleted files?

[DrO]

nope, don't remember finding a cause other than it just being ActiveWinamp being buggy like normal.

-daz