amaroK, the do it yourself player

Thursday, August 18. 2005

amaroK, the do it yourself player

One of the things I find interesting about amaroK is the amount of control and information that is available using DCOP. An often asked question is "How do I know the number of tracks in my collection?". Using DCOP we can find this out.

dcop amarok collection query "SELECT COUNT( url ) FROM tags;"

Maybe you would rather know how many albums.

dcop amarok collection query "SELECT COUNT( id ) FROM album;"

It could be that you just want the cached lyrics of the track you're listening to now. With DCOP this is as simple as

dcop amarok player lyrics

It doesn't stop there, I counted almost 80 DCOP calls in the current SVN of amaroK, with the newest being setLyricsByPath. This call combined with the script manager should allow script writers to choose there favorite site for downloading lyrics. We even have a DCOP call to add custom items into the playlist context menu for scripts that work on selected tracks only.

So the next time you wish you could have more control of amaroK from your multimedia keyboard, look into what DCOP has to offer. The handbook that shipped with your amaroK lists them all, or you can use kdcop if you would like a nice interface for trying them out.

Posted by Mike Diehl in madpenguin8 at 00:59 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)

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Well, that's nice of course, for advanced users...but is it user-friendly for the average user?

I mean, the two "dcop amarok collection query" calls are handy for sure, but why not integrate it into amaroK and turn the useless HOME tab into a useful statistic browser?

http://amarok.kde.org/component/option,com_simpleboard/Itemid,/func,view/catid,9/id,2946/#2946

Just my 2 cents.

#1 fish (Homepage) on 2005-08-18 04:42 (Reply)

Don't worry, we're well aware of the uselessness of the current Home tab.

#1.1 Ian Monroe on 2005-08-18 16:12 (Reply)

I used query call as an example to show that amaroK's DCOP is quite extensive. You could say that some of the calls are more advanced, yes, but what are your comments on artist, currentTime, genre and the many others that are single commands with no extra arguments.

Some people just aren't aware something like DCOP even exists, and that it can be used with khotkeys, or irkick. My whole point was to help people realize that amaroK offers more control than what shows in the GUI.

#2 madpenguin8 (Homepage) on 2005-08-18 17:39 (Reply)

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