Notices

Thanks Handful.

I am using a N800, as for repositories, I added a ton. Regardless of my previous problems, I followed your link in the post above to the "uninstall" instructions looked in as root and the install via terminal. After doing that it seems to work!

Thanks

This new version of Canola still has the same bugs with Unicode names that the previous version did. I am using IT OS 2007 and have the CJK software installed for Japanese support.

Neither the Nokia media player nor mplayer have any of these problems. Of course, Canola is much prettier and has kinetic scrolling ala Apple iToy; but if it can't handle my media library I can't very well show it off...

Specific problems:

The music player does not show any Artists or Albums for any music files that have Japanese strings anywhere (file name, song name, artist name, album name) even if the item itself is ASCII. For example, an ASCII Album name in the albums list won't show up because there's a Japanese artist or song name.

Under All Songs, the missing songs all show up with the proper Japanese names. But when you try to play it, the player ends up showing up the song as being 0:00 duration and it won't play.

The video viewer will show videos which have Japanese file names, but it shows a 4:3 movie s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d to 16:9. Both the Nokia media player and mplayer show it in proper aspect ratio.

The photo viewer will show photos that have Japanese file names, but the file names themselves show up as blurs.

Also, for no apparent reason, Canola suddenly terminates.

My guess is that, since Canola is apparently based upon Python, that it fails to apply proper quoting to Unicode strings. I hope that this gets fixed soon.

Thanks for your attention.

Mrcrispin,
(Forgot one thing: the bug is for the 2006 and 2007, fixed already on 2008)
(2008 is a huge leap from the 2007, and solves a lot of bug, you could update right? or are you using 770 HE?)


There are couple of more issues. One of them is that we use DBUS for managing communication inter the process (Canola -> Atabake -> Media Player) and thus you have a fatal bug, that doesn't affect the media player nor the mplayer: Dbus can handle the unicode strings (when we send it "play this file name".

Altought, we didn't say in the changelog that this was fixed (AFAIK) and we have been saying that it's under the todo and will be done. It just takes a little bit of time to be able to implement everything / test it / and deliver.

I think the video stretch is also commented in a thread, is a known issue, and the latest version of mplayer improved this stretch problem, but it is possible that is happening again.

If it is terminating, there's a reason, if you can start canola in the terminal (using -vv as argument) it would be nice to receive the reason while it is quitting. Maybe is related to the unicode, but I don't think it's python's fault.. as it supports unicode.

So, as I asked some other guys, please send me some of your files, so I can add to the media card, and this will help us speed up the development in this front.

Anyways it is indeed a bug...

I was loading up my N800 with media and I noticed something. Maybe the way I want to store my photos for example is odd, but I think that it makes browsing easier.

On my memory card, I setup main folders (i.e. Vacations) and then put subfolders in there (i.e. Talladega 2007, SeaWorld 2007) but when I browse with Canola the parent folder doesn't show up but the subfolders do. I would think being able to browse through subfolders, rather then having ALL of your photo folders on one page would be a good option to have. But then you probably wouldn't use the cool scrolling feature as much though.

Just passing on an idea.

@Extreme :

We today actually don't do "folder browsing" just "browse your collection of watched folders" all in the same level.

As this is requested a lot by the users, it's being developed first for music, but I requested it to be as reusable as possible so for example photos could benefit from that.

But I really don't think (personally) that's the way a more "media center" oriented app should behave. Browsing folders is more for a file manager IMHO, but seems that people likes to connect with their organization of files, thus folder browsing becomes indeed quite important!


Thanks for the suggestion

When you have 100+ different photo folders, I just think its easier to group them down a little bit, to make browsing easier. Don't know the difficulty in incorporating it, but if it could be an option for those who want it, so that it doesn't effect the people who like it how it is.

Kudos to you and your crew though for making a great app for the maemo platform.

Btw, is it possible to go by tags in photos? Like IPTC tags? If not, could that be implemented (if it wouldn't be alot of trouble).

Extreme :

The thing is really not about difficulty =) it's more like the most famous picture applications on the desktops (Picasa, iphoto etc) you browse by your albuns, not folders...
And the thing of not being about complicated things.. is to keep the design simple.

Sometimes it sucks for some users, but we need to avoid adding "more and more " styles / options to avoid clumsyness or bloatness... if we "accept" every single "wish"
we end up killing the basic thing : being simple.

But anyways, this is how we are doing, we note the suggestion, it goes into a worksheet, and everytime is requested I increase it's rating... once reaches high rating it comes into , if just a couple of people ask, unfortunately we think twice if is really needed. Sometimes makes sense.. sometimes doesn't make

For example : for music... it does makes a lot more sense than photos, but this is also a point that could be discussed =)

but thanks ..

Laughing : not possible now, but it can be (actually the white part of the photo was to show that... just lack of time... :/

Br

For me, control over folder access is important. I carry around 1 folder of MP3 of famous speeches and 1 folder of comedy. I also have lots of songs. In Canola, you give me no way to block the speeches or comedy from music playback. Ive been learning to get podcasts from New York Times in MP3 format. I don't want Canola to play those.

There's no downer so bad as when you listen to music and along comes the state of the union address or some stupid news report.

You could change it so it doesn't scan those podcasts or speeches. Then when you want to, turn it back on for later.

Not the best solution, I know. But it works for your problem till a better solution is inplace.