WinCab 3.0b10 Preview Release

[Chris]

I'm getting close; I've fixed the CD skins, but I don't have enough full CD's to really test it.  In addition, DOSCab still needs some work; in the meantime, though, here's a preview of WinCab 3.0b10 for the intrepid adventurers among you; you can get it at http://webpages.charter.net/celamantia/jukebox/wincabb10.zip . Note that this is just the WinCab executable, and it may not be stable yet so back up your old one.

Here's the change list; this includes the b9 changes that have been floating around:

- Added checks for invalid symbol lookups.

- Added FileSystemEncoding setting to control which encoding is used to read filenames. This will almost certainly never be necessary to set, but it's there if some weird filesystem encoding doesn't work.

- Added ability to specify a different INI file on the command line.  For example, typing "wincab alt.ini" will start WinCab with alt.ini instead of jukebox.ini.

- Added UseTrackZero setting to skins to allow track numbers to start at 00 instead of 01.  This is mostly for people emulating specific mechanical jukeboxes, such as a three-column Seeburg layout.  If this option is used, you lose the ability to select track 00 to select an entire CD.  This option is only active when UseZero is set to True.

- Fixed bug that caused BTN_CLEARQUEUE to crash for queue sizes below 1000.

- Fixed Unicode handling for ID3 tags.

- Fixed database entries not getting a last updated date on first run.  This always caused the second indexing run to take as long as the first.

- Fixed bug that caused queue to fill with one song when queue was completely filled.

- Fixed bugs preventing songs with international characters in the filename from being loaded.

- Fixed bug that caused split CD's to be sorted in the wrong order.

- Changed MaxQueueSize range to 1-500, with 250 as the new default.

- Changed default on AllowDuplicatesInQueue to FALSE

- Changed maximum songs per strip to 100.  Again, this is to support physical emulations for people converting real jukeboxes.

I've also laid the groundwork for the following features to come soon:

- TrueType fonts as an option for displays
- Transparent display backgrounds
- Orphan control, dividing up split CD's in a more reasonable fashion rather than stranding one or two tracks on a CD
- More customizable displays; you'll be able to set up any arbitrary number of displays showing pretty much anything related to the status of the jukebox
- More customizable titlestrips, such as being able to add track numbers to singles strips, specifying different fonts for different display elemets, etc.
- Animated icons
- More flexibility over icons, i.e being able to send one message and respond to a different message
- A Slider object type for volume control or navigation
- An LED object type, allowing you to control the ScrollLock, CapsLock and NumLock LED's in response to jukebox status messages.
- Adding MouseOver events to icons to allow for more customization
- Queue/Credits optionally saved on shutdown
- Multi-page navigation options
- More page-change animations

The next set to work on after that is:
- Support for alternate titlestrip graphics for different genres
- Filter support to filter on an artist, genre, decade, or perhaps custom-definable filters
- Finish (or drop) MIDI support, which is still pretty rudimentary (does anyone actually use this?)
- Touchscreen support for Windows 98
- Changing skins/sorts on the fly (switch from random singles to sorted albums with the touch of a button, or from horizontal to vertical, or to flip sides on a cocktail, etc.)
- Faster indexing
- More screensaver options, including the much-requested slide show.

Options I'm considering but haven't committed to:
- A Search function.  (I'd have to create a customizable on-screen keyboard first.)
- Loading/Saving Queues.  Same problem as above.
- Support for 4x40 external LCD displays
- Support for one of the hardware light controller options.
- WMA support through Media Player

Options that will almost certainly NOT be added:
- Crossfading
- Linux or Mac support
- Videos
- Lyrics
- Coinbox audit reports or any other features that only have commercial uses

Is there anything else I've missed?  I'm going to comb through this board and my E-mails, but if you have an open support issue or (reasonable) feature request, please let me know!

--Chris

[tba]

i don't know if this has been fixed or not, but an option to customize the now playing window of the screen saver...

i have the now playing window set to 5 lines display in the skin, and it looks right. but i can only get the now playing window of the screen saver to display 3 lines... which doesn't look right. ideally i would like the 2 windows to look the same.

[Chris]

i don't know if this has been fixed or not, but an option to customize the now playing window of the screen saver...

i have the now playing window set to 5 lines display in the skin, and it looks right. but i can only get the now playing window of the screen saver to display 3 lines... which doesn't look right. ideally i would like the 2 windows to look the same.

No, that hasn't been changed yet.  Once I have full customizable displays you'll be able to make this look any way you want; for the short term I'll figure something out to make this situation better.

--Chris

[Chris]

I set up a new test machine last night, and the new DOSCab seems to work on it perfectly.  Hmm.  I'm a little disturbed that it stopped working on my old test machine, but since it was a Thinkpad, I'm inclined to let it slide.  Notebook video cards under DOS are probably not a good real-world test.  That notebook has a NeoMagic graphics chipset, so beware that if you are using a NeoMagic-based system DOSCab may give you trouble.

So tonight I'm going to give it another workout, and if all seems to be well I'll put out an official release and move on to the rest of my To-Do list.

--Chris

[cripto9t]

Hi Chris, great work  .
I'm new here and I've decided to build a dedicated jukebox using WinCab. I've been testing WinCab for the last few days and I have a few questions, some of them you have listed.

- More customizable titlestrips, such as being able to add track numbers to singles strips, specifying different fonts for different display elemets, etc.

I'm leaning toward a cd lay-out and I would like to have album number listed above the selections instead of with the artist and title. That way all the numbers would be together and it also makes more room for the titles. I like the different font idea also.

- Added UseTrackZero setting to skins to allow track numbers to start at 00 instead of 01.  This is mostly for people emulating specific mechanical jukeboxes, such as a three-column Seeburg layout.  If this option is used, you lose the ability to select track 00 to select an entire CD.  This option is only active when UseZero is set to True.

Cool!   I didn't know about the 00 cd option.

- Transparent display backgrounds
- Orphan control, dividing up split CD's in a more reasonable fashion rather than stranding one or two tracks on a CD

Two more things I was going to ask about  that I'd like to see .

- More screensaver options, including the much-requested slide show.

I would like to have the CD cover float around with the song info or maybe just the cover itself.
Also can I adjust the colors on the default screen saver?

One thing not on your to-do list  - I'd like to have a 3 coin set-up like this
nickel = 1/2 or .5 credit
dime = 1 credit
quarter = 3 credits
Would it be possible to have half credits? 2 nickels = 1 credit

I'm almost done  .  I think I may have found a bug, at least it is happening on my machine. When "random" is pressed while a song is playing the credits do not adjust in the display until the song changes or I page up or down. The credits do adjust, the display just doesn't change.

That's all. I'm sorry about all the questions but I would like to get all the information I can so I have a plan together before I start this project

Thanks

[Chris]

I'm leaning toward a cd lay-out and I would like to have album number listed above the selections instead of with the artist and title. That way all the numbers would be together and it also makes more room for the titles.

For some reason I'm not picturing this in my head.  Are you talking about something like the way SK Jukebox does it?

Cool!   I didn't know about the 00 cd option.

That's 'cause I haven't documented it yet.   

I would like to have the CD cover float around with the song info or maybe just the cover itself.

Hmm... good idea.  I had been kicking around the idea, once custom displays are in place, to specify as many displays as you want on the screensaver and how they'd move around... so I'd just need to make "current album art" a display.

Also can I adjust the colors on the default screen saver?

It selects from all colors; all you can adjust is how often they jump as opposed to changing smoothly.  I suppose I could add an option to restrict the RGB ranges.. that way you could, say, keep the colors to shades of blue or purple, for example.

One thing not on your to-do list  - I'd like to have a 3 coin set-up like this
nickel = 1/2 or .5 credit
dime = 1 credit
quarter = 3 credits
Would it be possible to have half credits? 2 nickels = 1 credit

This would be easy enough to do... I've been asked for it before.  I had been hesitant to implement it because it seems like it would be most useful for someone trying to build a commercial jukebox, not a home one.

If I did implement it, the display would not change until the full credit was entered; however, I could send a "fractional credit" message, allowing you to have an icon set to respond to that message to indicate the fractional credit.

I'm almost done  .  I think I may have found a bug, at least it is happening on my machine. When "random" is pressed while a song is playing the credits do not adjust in the display until the song changes or I page up or down. The credits do adjust, the display just doesn't change.

This does sound like a bug, like a "display refresh" is being missed.  Should be easy to find and fix.

Thank you for the comments!

--Chris

[Chris]

I'm almost done  .  I think I may have found a bug, at least it is happening on my machine. When "random" is pressed while a song is playing the credits do not adjust in the display until the song changes or I page up or down. The credits do adjust, the display just doesn't change.

This does sound like a bug, like a "display refresh" is being missed.  Should be easy to find and fix.

And indeed it was; the fix will be in the next version I post.

[dibb1er]

- More customizable displays; you'll be able to set up any arbitrary number of displays showing pretty much anything related to the status of the jukebox

??

arbitrary number of displays = more than 1 monitor? (or am i setting my hopes too high 

[Chris]

- More customizable displays; you'll be able to set up any arbitrary number of displays showing pretty much anything related to the status of the jukebox

??

arbitrary number of displays = more than 1 monitor? (or am i setting my hopes too high 

Yes, you are getting your hopes too high. 

In this context, "displays" are the display on the simulated jukebox, the four dot-natrix sections showing info about the currently playing song, the song queue, etc.  Right now, you can resize, move, or disable displays, but there are always exactly four, and you cannot specify their contents.  Ideally, you'd be able to set up any number of them and define the information that appears in them.

--Chris

[dibb1er]

ok, still a pretty cool idea 

[dibb1er]

hmm... dont know if this is easy or not, but how about a secondary sort?
i.e. sort on artist, then sort by song title
(i suppose this would only be useful for classic or aj8 style skins, not the CD skins)

at the moment, im still using b8 (until a proper release , kidding, i know its a constant "work in progress" ), it sorts by artist ok, but it seems to sort the song title by the order they were written to the disk.

[Chris]

hmm... dont know if this is easy or not, but how about a secondary sort?
i.e. sort on artist, then sort by song title
(i suppose this would only be useful for classic or aj8 style skins, not the CD skins)

at the moment, im still using b8 (until a proper release , kidding, i know its a constant "work in progress" ), it sorts by artist ok, but it seems to sort the song title by the order they were written to the disk.

There actually is a secondary sort; it's by album, so songs from the same album should group together. There is no further sorting, though.

Maing the secondary sort selectable should be an easy thing to add; I'll take a look at it.  Thank you for the suggestion!

--Chris

[Chris]

Also can I adjust the colors on the default screen saver?

It selects from all colors; all you can adjust is how often they jump as opposed to changing smoothly.  I suppose I could add an option to restrict the RGB ranges.. that way you could, say, keep the colors to shades of blue or purple, for example.

Okay, this is in place for the next release.  You can specify MinRed, MaxRed, MinGreen, MaxGreen, MinBlue, and MaxBlue to control the color ranges used by the screen saver; these settings range from 0 to 255.  The minimums default to 50 and the maximums default to 250.

[Chris]

i don't know if this has been fixed or not, but an option to customize the now playing window of the screen saver...

i have the now playing window set to 5 lines display in the skin, and it looks right. but i can only get the now playing window of the screen saver to display 3 lines... which doesn't look right. ideally i would like the 2 windows to look the same.

OK, this is in place for the next release.  It still doesn't duplicate the Now Playing display, but you have all the same controls for it so you can make them look the same.

The new settings in JUKEBOX.INI are:

SongInfoLines
SongInfoWidth
SongInfoHeight
SongInfoColor
SongInfoBgcolor

Note that the width and height are actual pixel sizes; they are not adjusted for resolution or aspect ratio, but they are adjusted for rotation.