TOS Silver 2000

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Text File | 2000-04-21 | 9.2 KB | 200 lines

+~~~~~~~~~~~~~+ | FalcAMP | | GEM version | +~~~~~~~~~~~~~+ by SPLASH & STGHOST of SECTOR ONE v1.01 21/04/2000 Welcome to FalcAMP v1.01 ! This is the first GEM based version of our MP3 player for Atari Falcon030 computers. After a long while, it's finally here, we hope you'll enjoy the work we put in this project. Table Of Contents: ------------------ I / The Player II / GEM interface III / External control IV / Troubles ? I/ The Player -------------- Here's a completely new version of our player, now spread as a PRG with built-in GEM interface unlike previous releases. This version features a plugin system that will allow other fileformats to be played. Currently, only the Mpeg audio layer 3 plugin is available... Please refer to the documentation of the plugin itself for details about the supported features and abilities. The GEM interface is plugin independant (it's only designed for streamed replay). Some parts of the interface<->plugin protocol are not finished yet, so we apologize for missing functions... Don't contact us just for that, there will be other releases. II/ GEM Interface ------------------ We've tried to make it as easy to use as possible. However, please read what follows before complaining about strange behaviour because it has not a pure GEM behaviour in some cases... The interface is splitted into many windows and features keyboard shortcuts to move between these windows and access most function even without a mouse. Check KEYS.TXT for the detail of available shortcuts. The player will open many windows, if the system gets out of available windows, current one will be used for the new display, that's not a bug. This has been betatested under TOS, Mint and Magic, so in case of trouble remember it's (nearly) not OS-dependant. 1) Main window -------------- This window is icon based, most icons are quite specific but aren't... You can also find a sliding bar in the bottom that will allow you to move inside a file. Here comes the detail of all this... In the top of the window, you'll find the filename. It will be replaced by the title of the song if the file contain such information (ID3 tag in case of MP3 file). The 1st group of icons on the left controls the replay. It features basic cd player functions: load/stop/play/pause/next/previous... * LOAD: use it to change file... The new file will be loaded but won't be played directly. * STOP: use it to stop current replay. The audio system will remain locked and the file will remain locked, it's kind of super-pause in fact. The file will be restarted at the begining if you play it again... Click on STOP a 2nd time to physically close the file and to release audio subsystem & DSP. NB: When you quit FalcAMP, the audio subsystem will always be released. * PLAY: start the replay of current file (or unpause it if it was in pause). If no file is loaded or if the replay is already active, it will call the fileselector to load another file. If you load a file using this button, it will be played directly. * PAUSE: stops replay but keep current position. Re-select this button to unpause the file. * PREVIOUS: if elapsed time is higher than 3 seconds, it will seek to the file to its start. Else, will jump to previous file in playlist (if it's not empty...) * NEXT: jumps to next file in playlist (if it's not empty...) * FASTFORWARD: not available yet... * LOOP: when selected current file won't stop at the end, and will restart from its beginning, thus it won't allow the player to jump to next file if you're in playlist mode ! The second group of icons is a bit less obvious but not tricky at all...Here comes the details (from left to right and top to bottom order) * PLAYLIST: will open the playlist editor window * FILEINFO: will open a window with information about loaded file * ABOUT: will display informations about the program * ADDTOLIST: current file will be added at the end of the playlist * PLUGINFO: will open the plugin-info window * CONFIG: preliminary setup window... will be redesigned later. Then comes the time display. It displays theorically elapsed playtime, not real playtime. It's not possible to show the remaining time because of variable bitrate files... And finally, there's the slidebar that shows current position in current file. You can use it to move inside the file. BUT DON'T TRY TO SLIDE IT, just click to the position you want to go to ! 2) Program Information / File Informations ------------------------------------------ Well, these windows are rather obvious I think... nothing to do except reading what is written ! :-) 3) Playlist editor ------------------ This player comes with a very basic playlist editor. The playlist format is M3U, it's an ascii format so you can even make/edit list by hand too. The editor features a small display window and a slider on its right side (you can either click to where you want to go or slide the cursor here). Then comes a few buttons in the bottom: * ADD: open fileselector to select a new file... File will be appended at the end of the list or right before the 1st selected item on display. If you select a playlist, it will be appended to current one too. * DELETE: use it to remove all selected entries from the playlist. * PLAY: start the replay of playlist (the player is now in playlist mode until you manually load a file). * LOAD: let you load a new playlist * SAVE: save current playlist * CLEAR: flush all entries of current playlist 4) Plugin informations ---------------------- Nothing special here. It will display informations about available plugins in the player. Refer to the each plugin information file for details of supported/missing features. You can either slide or click to where you want with the slider. 5) Player setup --------------- Here you'll find an opton to force mono output, it's useful for slow Falcons (esp if you want to play MPEG1 streams). This was formerly known as the "Special Standard mode" in TTP version. III/ External control -------------------- This interface accept commandlines parameters and also VA_START & DRAG'n'DROP protocols. The commandline control is quite basic, you can specify either 1 or more files even with longnames. If multiples filenames are present, a playlist will be automatically built and started. If commandline contains 1 playlist, it will be loaded and played too (but the playlist has to be alone in the parameter list). The VA_START protocol can be used to start a file anytime. This will turn off playlist mode unless you send a playlist through this method, in which case it will be started automatically. The DRAG'n'DROP protocol can be used to pass 1 or more filenames to the player. If the dragndrop is performed on the playlist window, all passed file(s) will be appended to current list. If you dragndrop a playlist on the editor window it will be appended too. If you dragndrop on another window, 1 file will be played directly, many files will be played as a new list, and a playlist will be read as a new list too. IV/ Troubles ? -------------- THIS PLAYER DOESN'T WORK AS AN ACC UNDER PLAIN TOS !!! Because of the weird memory handling for ACC under TOS, and because of the RAM amount needed, we can't use a static memory model... So, here come a basic rule if you want to use FalcAMP as ACC under GEM: don't start or leave any program while the player is playing ! Do a double-stop before any program start/exit... That will avoid buffer-overwritting and other weird bugs ! Sorry for this, we'll try to hack the TOS for next release... The player has been tested alot but some bugs can remain :( The plugins can report errors (for example, the MP3 plugin may complain about a dsp timeout), in this case, have a look at the plugin doc... The GEM interface may only got troubles from plugins... The interface has been designed so that the closer button of each window will bring you to main window if no other one is available, and only the closer of main window will exit the program (but ctrl+q is always available). That's a security I kept from the single window version of the player, it's not a bug ! With Magic 5, the keyboard may get sometimes mad if you move too much the mouse, this is caused by a trouble in magic's keyboard interrupt rout... We can't do anything about it ! This doesn't happen under TOS & Mint. However, it hasn't been tested with Magic 6 yet... If you find any GEM Interface related bug, please email-me at this address: deunstg@free.fr with at least the keyword 'famp' in the subject. Don't hesitate to visit http://falcamp.atari.org if you have troubles or if you want to be sure to have the latest version (don't send a bug report if you don't have the latest release !!! it will be ignored then...)