WeeMP3 Beta Info

The current version of !WeeMP3 is: Beta 1.6 (5th November 2001)

Latest News

(7th November 2001)
Gosh, it's been 7 months since the last beta release! It was only when I went back to the last beta to play with it that I realise how much things have moved on. I'll try to give a full list of the differences in the Version History list but in the mean time, this is what I have been doing:

I have added !AcornCD support. WeeMP3 will now report the CD artist, title and tracknames if the application is present.

The new playlist is in and working with only some minor tidying to be done. Playlists appear alongside mp3s and CDs as music sources.

There might be a few other things but I can't remember off the top of my head. Play with it and see what you find :-)

It is worth noting that I have been using WeeMP3 as my preferred CD and mp3 player for many months now and for the most part find it quite stable. I know that there are several bugs/effects in there so let's see if you can break it :-)

(29th September 2001)
After coming back from a 3 month work placement and 3 weeks holiday I thought that I'd push WeeMP3 on a bit more. Here's what's new:

The 150 frame lead-in 'feature' on CDs seems to act differently on ROS4. I've played about with it and hope that this will cure WeeMP3's habit of chopping the first 2 secs off cd tracks when skipping.

Finally 'plugged in' the new playlist engine that was sitting behind the scenes. This one is much more flexible and robust than the cobbled together job I put in for the beta testing.

Pausing and restarting mp3s now works as expected.

(5th July 2001)
Yes, I know that it's been a long time since the last update. Work has been progressing rather slowly recently but has stepped up pace over the last week or so. Here are a number of the features addeded/bugs fixed:

CD system now uses a different addressing technique and should now work on many more CD ROM drives.

Individual CD tracks can be selected from a list instead of having to skip track by track through the disc.

The internal playlist changes have continued but I still have a bit to go to get it working as planned.

Loads of other bug fixes and tweaks that you probably won't notice and I can't remember :-)

(6th April 2001)
Continuing internal changes

New buttons for repeat and random playback drawn

When an mp3 finishes, clicking Play will now restart it. (Finally this feature is back!)

Got rid of 'Clear Selection' bug that noone had spotted :-)

(2nd April 2001)
Fixed bug whereby WeeMP3 didn't quit when you shutdown the wimp. Also, I'm continuing internal changes to the Playlist playback system.

(31st March 2001)
A stupid bug in the error handling routine was causing WeeMP3 to hang. Of course, I didn't notice the bug while I have been developing since the program never crashes for me :-). The bug is now fixed and the new release is out.

(28th March 2001)
A nasty little bug in the volume slider system lead me to reassess the whole volume system in WeeMP3. Turns out that it was one, small line of code that was producing the bug! Should be working fine now so here is the release.

(22nd March 2001)
Still mucking about with the sliders to make them more Style Guide compliant and user friendly. I also have a small bug with the volume one that needs seeing to. Seems the wimp is not reporting the end of a slider drag :(.

(16th March 2001)
Making the playlist look more like a CD to the program internally. This should make extending the program's features more straight forward.

(13th March 2001)
Added sliders for both volume and track position.

Fixed the scrolling speed of the status text.

(11th March 2001)
Fixed a number of 'bugettes' and style guide matters.

(10th March 2001)
Playlist now shows the first 50 characters of the track's leafname rather than 30 as it did before.

(7th Match 2001)
Fixed the playlist redraw bug that crashed the prog if there were less than 3 items in the list

(2nd March 2001)
Fixed redraw bug whereby delete all was not clearing the window properly.

Fixed single item deletion bug.

Fixed Adjust-Drag bug

Added back in the Merge/Replace action with the playlist. (I don't know where it went in the first place!)

(28th Feb 2001)
Hopefully thrashed out the last few playlist database bugs.

Totally restructured the internal selection system and added own redraw code to the playlist window. Should be much faster now!

Added Shift+f12 to bring player to front. May or may not keep this.

Broke a load of other things that I'll have to fix tomorrow :-)

(18th Feb 2001)
Fixed bug whereby starting WeeMP3 would kill an mp3 currently playing.

Added code to check to see if the playlist has been saved and give the user a chance to save it before quitting

Added in CDDB id code. Much more reliable at detecting a CD swap than *whichdisc.

Playlist window will now shrink in size when items are deleted.

(27th Feb 2001)
Wimpslot bug fixed

Playlist resizing bug fixed

Items dragged to the playlist will now appear in the position you dropped them

If nothing is playing, pressing PLAY will attempt to play the playlist

(17th Feb 2001)
Link to website added. Thanks to Chris Williams for pointing me towards the correct wimp message.

Draging directories full of MP3's to the playlist window will ADD them to the list. Dragging dirs to the main window will REPLACE the playlist with these new items.

(16th Feb 2001)
I have been working on code to create a CDDB compatible ID code for CDs. This is working now and will form the basis of a more complex CD track handling model.

Known Bugs

Pausing the track and clicking on 'Fast forward' causes 'CD drive empty at 12300' error. (unconfirmed)
Switch to CD mode. Insert CD. Click on Play. Track plays. Clicking on 'Fast Foward' generates the following errors in this order:
- Track skips slightly then 'CD-ROM drive empty at line 12470'
- 'Invalid Wimp operation in this context at line 820'
- 'Unknown Dynamic Area at line 640'. This error repeats indefiniately, requiring alt+break to escape.
This error is reproducible if WeeMP3 is started with a CD in the drive (regardless if it is playing or not).
Although unconfirmed, this error is likely to be due to a know bug in ROS4. I will attempt to work around it. The previous bug is probably also due to the ROS error.

To Do List

Make playlist accept CD tracks (90% done)
Add data track detection on CDs
CDDB support (done)
Volume Slider (done)
Add slider for track position (done)
Speed up playlist redraw with custon graphics routines (done)

Requested Features

When you load a playlist, I'd have thought that clicking on the play button would start playing tracks from it.
As the app doesn't have an iconbar icon, it might be nice if, when you build Choices, there be an option to keep it on top of all the other windows.
Another option might be whether the window open with just the main controls or the controls and counter/icons showing.
I wonder if playlists could be saved automatically to within the application/Choices directory.
Dragging the selection to a filer/Zap should save just those entries as a playlist.

Version History

Beta 1.6 (5th November 2001)
New playlist system that has been designed to be more robust and flexible.
New internal CD system that should be compatible with more CD drives.
Hopefully fixed pausing/restarting of tunes.
!AcornCD support.
Dunno if it was there before but you should be able to drag cd track files (0x0cd) from programs like !Amp and AudioFS2 onto WeeMP3 to get it to play the track.
You can pick which CD track to play by selecting from the new track menu.
Handful of other bug fixes and tweaks.

Beta 1.3 (31st March 2001)
Squashed a silly bug in the error handling routine that caused the app to hang.

Beta 1.3 (28th Match 2001)
Added sliders for both volume and track position.
Fixed the scrolling speed of the status text.
Internally, the playlist system has been tweaked.

Beta 1.2c (7th March 2001)
Fixed redraw bug that lead to crashes. See 'Latest News' for what's in this version.

Beta 1.2 (1st March 2001)
Fixed redraw bug whereby delete all was not clearing the window properly.
Fixed single item deletion bug.
Fixed Adjust-Drag bug
Added back in the Merge/Replace action with the playlist. (I don't know where it went in the first place!)

Beta 1.1 (16th Feb 2001)
b1.1 - fixed a Volume bug that killed the program when the user was playing around with both CD and MP3 volumes.
Fixed the code used when the program exits after a crash. Hopefully no more 'Invalid Wimp operation' or 'Unknown Dynamic Area' errors :-)
Fixed bug where deleting items from the playlist and then adding new entries would cause incorrect playback of playlist. Also a bug where by the playlist would become corrupt if you moved files around the first playlist entry. This should be the end of the 'Previous Pointer mismatch' errors.
Fixed Border being left around the CD/MP3 mode icon.

Beta 1.1 (13th Feb 2001) - First Beta Release b1.0 - First Beta Release

!WeeMP3 is (c) David S Watson, 2001