Operation in the car

Rather than the infinite proliferation of fine-grained features, this player does one thing: it plays songs, picked by "album" (a filesystem directory). Pick an artist (top-level container directory), then an album; it starts playing the first song (.mp3 file), proceeds to the next when complete, etc. Left to itself, when it completes the last song, it stops. Manual controls skip forward and backward, pause and unpause. That's it.

(I use the old-fashioned word "album", because it at least implies an intentional collection; "disc" means those round flat shiny things, and podcasts from some authoring site is more "album-like" than "disc-like".)

The "radio" interface is brutally simple: on the left is the volume knob. Pressing it stops, then plays, whatever music is currently selected.

The knob on the right is slightly more complex, and is modal. Turning the knob selects from a list (see below), pressing it cycles through one of three lists: ARTIST, ALBUM, PLAY.

When playing, turning the right knob moves through the list of songs in the currently-selected album. The list itself is invisible, but since we all know (...) that songs on an album are in some order, it all works out OK.

Pressing the right knob once, while playing, the display says CHOOSE ARTIST: and turning the right knob runs through the list of artists (top-level container). Turning it slowly goes through the list one by one (in alphabetical order), but turning it fast jumps to the next initial letter: ANIKI to BLUE COMPILATION to CHUMBAWAMBA to ...

(Pressing the left knob while in CHOOSE mode aborts the choose business, and returns to normal playing, no changes or interruptions.)

While the display says CHOOSE ARTIST, pressing the right knob again selects that top-level container ("artist" but maybe "Podcast"), and shows the "discs" or "albums" contained within it. Turning the right knob runs through this list of albums under this artist (podcast, ...) in the same manner, speed-sensitive as well.

(Pressing the left knob while in CHOOSE mode aborts the choose business, and returns to normal playing, no changes or interruptions.)

Pressing the right knob a third time stops the currently playing song, and starts playing the first song in the selected "album".

Music plays while all this is going on, but the display is occupied with showing you the results of your knob twiddling.

That's it; that's all the intentional operating states. There are some side effects, here are the ones I know about:

• When Paused, volume works normally (CW increases, CCW decreases) but since it's paused, you can't hear the change! I decided to leave this as-is. Some systems un-pause, but I hate default-assumption-making automaticity. You have a brain, use it.
• When paused, and not choosing, turning the right knob to the next or previous song will cause it to play that song, eg. come out of pause. I consider this a bug; I pressed pause, dammit! I will fix this "soon".
• The interface never, ever times out, and falls back into any default mode. I hate crap like that!!! It's reasonable in many contexts, such as passworded logins/sessions, or controlling external physical processes, but I'm driving; it might take a few minutes for me to navigate some situation or other. It's not like it's hard to get back to PLAY mode!
• Current player state -- play, choose, etc -- is preserved through car off/car on cycles, unless the computer shuts down, in which case upon power-on, it returns to the current-song-selection-Paused state. This is simply Programmers Convenience.
• If music is playing while you are choosing (artist or album) you can turn the volume down, but you cannot pause it, because the play/pause button cancels choosing. Eh, you can't have everything.
• If music is playing while you are choosing (artist or album) it will play all songs left in the song list. When it reaches the end of the last song (while you are choosing) it simply stops.