Porting MM4 scripts

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dtsig
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Re: Porting MM4 scripts

Post by dtsig »

although it is nice that you created a "backup" process, it is nothing like the functionality of Backup6.0. I allows you to have multiple backups at one time, compress the file and many more features. Yes I see that you create a backup with a datetime stamp but you don't allow the user to save it off to where they want to save them. Little things matter.
Don't get me wrong, I love where MM5 is going .. there are still some rough spots but it will get better.
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Peke
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Re: Porting MM4 scripts

Post by Peke »

dtsig wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 7:27 pm Don't get me wrong, I love where MM5 is going .. there are still some rough spots but it will get better.
Are you suggesting:
1. to add button to browse default backup location?
2. backup now act like restore give you access to select where to create backup with default selected folder from 1.?
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Weatherman
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Re: Porting MM4 scripts

Post by Weatherman »

In terms of tools / addons that we regularly useand will miss greatly with MM5, or which may prevent some of us from buying a new licence for MM5, I would list the following as the most important:
MagicNodes
RegExpression
PlayHistory
dtsig
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Re: Porting MM4 scripts

Post by dtsig »

Peke wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 10:31 pm
dtsig wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 7:27 pm Don't get me wrong, I love where MM5 is going .. there are still some rough spots but it will get better.
Are you suggesting:
1. to add button to browse default backup location?
2. backup now act like restore give you access to select where to create backup with default selected folder from 1.?
Yes .. it would be much better if the user could define where the backups go and remember between backups
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Peke
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Re: Porting MM4 scripts

Post by Peke »

dtsig,
added as https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=15663
Let me know if I got it correctly.
Weatherman wrote: Fri May 10, 2019 3:32 am MagicNodes
RegExpression
PlayHistory
Unfortunately it is up to ZvezdanD for port his scripts.
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Peke
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Snofru
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Re: Porting MM4 scripts

Post by Snofru »

Thanks for your detailed thoughts on Office export, Pavle! I also think that only 1 export format will be sufficient and LibreOffice or csv will be just fine. Being able to mark songs in MM5 and just copy/paste their tag information into a spreadsheet (like iTunes does) would be nice to have but no necessity for me.

Peke wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 5:51 pmOk, if I got you correctly about Advanced Duplicate Find & Fix basic thing you miss is:
a) That you can scan new upgraded FLAC and then in duplicates have context merge old Tags, statistics, playlists to new files and remove delete old files as duplicates eg. Select multiple duplicate files -> Merge -> Select file to retain and what data will be merged from others -> delete duplicates or correct metadata so that they are classified as duplicates
b) Assign new physical file to old metadata retaining metadata but assigned new file eg. in Track properties Replace MP3 with Upgraded FLAC version eg. Browse for new file that will replace old one, but retain all track properties from old one
c) On re-scan MM5 list/scan for duplicates and present them to user for correction
d) Combination of above
e) None of above
a) is what I usually do but b) would also be a very interesting solution. c) is not so important for me as my database is pretty much tidied up finally.

What I also like very much about Advanced Duplicate Find & Fix is that I can select which tags I want to copy to the other file. An example: Sometimes I buy remixes from old albums. When I like the remix more than the old version I sometimes want to keep both versions. Then I like to copy a number of tags like Title, Interpret, Genre, Rating, Original Date, Lyrics and also the playlists, Last Played and Played #. But I do not want to copy Date or Album or sometimes Album Art (if it is different between the versions). Played # and Last Played are important as a number of Auto Playlists depend on them and of course I want to have the version I like more in my favourites.
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dtsig
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Re: Porting MM4 scripts

Post by dtsig »

Peke wrote: Fri May 10, 2019 3:06 pm dtsig,
added as https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=15663
Let me know if I got it correctly.
Weatherman wrote: Fri May 10, 2019 3:32 am MagicNodes
RegExpression
PlayHistory
Unfortunately it is up to ZvezdanD for port his scripts.
Thanks Peke .. that just about does it for Backup. Is there need to backup the registry info as Backup6.0 does. Is there anything that defines how the windows look and the process works?
Where's the db and ini stored
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DTSig
Peke
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Re: Porting MM4 scripts

Post by Peke »

dtsig wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 12:14 pm Thanks Peke .. that just about does it for Backup. Is there need to backup the registry info as Backup6.0 does. Is there anything that defines how the windows look and the process works?
I would rather leave UI Settings to do manual backup as that id just UI that can be unique to each PC eg. Moving UI settings from 4k display to HD (1080p) can and will make a lots of issues, but script for that should be easily made later.
Snofru wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 5:03 am Being able to mark songs in MM5 and just copy/paste their tag information into a spreadsheet (like iTunes does) would be nice to have but no necessity for me.
Didn't knew iTunes can do that, but from brief looks it looks like spreadsheet app is handling Clipboard data set by iTunes not other way around. So it is matter of format, not a bad for future versions if there is a bigger demand for it eg. spreadsheet (Column) Selection mode.
Snofru wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 5:03 am a) is what I usually do but b) would also be a very interesting solution. c) is not so important for me as my database is pretty much tidied up finally.
THX for info, personally I have more need for b) as after I bought NAS and put large HDDs I wanted to rerip all CDs in FLAC and retain my old statistics from my older MP3 Rips. c) is more for new users and users that migrate their library to new PC/HDD/NAS
Best regards,
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dypsis
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Re: Porting MM4 Scripts

Post by dypsis »

A MonkeyRok port please. :)
It's hard to live without once you've been using it.
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Re: Porting MM4 scripts

Post by Peke »

Hi,
It is up to Trixmoto to port it, but many things should be possible in MM5 new ART&DETAILS window and Playing tree node.
Best regards,
Peke
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ZvezdanD
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Re: Porting MM4 scripts

Post by ZvezdanD »

Ha ha, charade you are! The MM developers are playing naive here as politicians. I am pretty sure that they know very well which add-ons are the most popular and they don't need some users to tell them that. It is even more depressing if they really don't know that, 15 years after they introduced the scripting support in MM, because that shows how much they care about scripts and scripters who support their own program.

You cannot conclude about popularity of some add-ons from the opinion of one or two users who are willing to participate in this farce. There are several ways to determine that, beginning with the number of downloads of add-ons from their site. However, MM developers want you to think how they are doing their best to remedy this ugly situation in which they put us on all. They want from users to blame scripters for this fiasco, as it is our fault why there is no MM5 add-ons four years after their announcement.

First of all, you should know that I am not the one who gave the subject of this thread. Actually, I haven't even started this thread, although my post is now the first one in it. I posted it as a response to the announcement about MM5 in one other thread while this Forum was still opened only for a few scripters and hidden for public, but some moderator created this new thread and moved my post to it. Why I am mentioning this? Simply because the subject of this thread is misleading and I wouldn't called it like that. There is no such thing as "Porting MM4 scripts" to MM5. Well, maybe it could be done, but only with very small and very simple scripts.

Just for your information, Magic Nodes has 1 MB of source code before obfuscation (not including its masks full of SQL queries), RegExp Find & Replace has 650 KB (again, without its presets full of code), and my other scripts have in total another 1.5 MB. That is not small amount of source code at all. I have spent more than 10 years developing MM scripts, they are not developed for one lazy afternoon or one free weekend.

If you think that I am just stubborn and don't want to waste my time anymore on such things as "porting" to MM5, you are wrong. I was always ready to implement features of new versions of the program into my scripts, even when that required a lot of my time. My scripts are full of conditional executions allowing the same script to be used in different versions of the program because I want them to be vertically compatible as much as possible. Many of my add-ons still works with MM2, as well as with the newer versions.

However, this time it is really impossible to allow them to work with MM5 without writing them from the scratch, and most probably not even then. It is not because of me, but because of MM developers and their decision about the application programming interface with the scripts. This new API is completely incompatible with the previous versions, it is very unintuitive, poorly documented and I think it is severely crippled comparing to the old one. That is the main reason there is not a single MM5 add-on four years after they announced the new API in the Forum.

If that fact doesn't tell you anything, here is another story. I jumped on the MM bandwagon back in 2006 when I learned that MM has added scripting support, which was my main decision factor to switch to another software. I cannot know for sure when MM exactly added that support, but I searched Internet and here is the information from MM whatsnew (https://www.mediamonkey.com/sw/whatsnew.txt):
"MediaMonkey 2.3.1.811 (Alpha 2)
- Added scripting is now part of MediaMonkey standard functionality"
Unfortunately, there is no specified date of that release, but it is mentioned in the Forum on Nov 30, 2004 (http://mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2870), so I suppose it was released immediately before that.

Now, take a look at that how many MM scripts was created four years after November 2004 when MM added scripting, i.e. until November 2008. I don't know about others, but I will tell you about myself. I developed four scripts in that period (even with my late start by two years): Magic Nodes, RegExp Find and Replace, Invert Selection/Select None and Export/Create Playlists for Child Nodes. It is a little bit more difficult to check out the initial release dates of scripts by other authors, but there is an old thread with the list of scripts (http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... f=2&t=5803) where you could see that there was hundreds of them created in just that period.

MM developers, please compare that number with the number of MM5 scripts created in the last four years and ask yourself why is such difference. Do you really think it is a fault of the scripters why there is still no MM5 scripts? If your whole excuse is that "the original ones (scripters) don't have spare time to do this job", how do you explain that the old MM got so much scripts for the same timeframe of four years? Do you think that the scripters had more spare time back then than now? How many years should pass further before you figure that?

I think the explanation is obvious to all, but MM developers: the new scripting model is an unsuccessful experiment and complete failure. The MM developers should forget about it and try to make their application as much compatible with the old scripts as it is possible. There is no point in adding something that nobody sees a real benefit of it. Is it really better to have something full of empty promises that nobody is using instead of something else that already works fine?
Magic Nodes 4.3.3 / 5.2 RegExp Find & Replace 4.4.9 / 5.2  Invert Selection/Select None 1.5.1  Export/Create Playlists for Child Nodes 4.1.1 / 5.4.1  Expand Child Nodes/Expand All 1.1.2  Event Logger 2.7  Filtered Statistics Report 1.6  Track Redirection & Synchronization 3.4.2  Restore/Synchronize Database 3.1.8 / 4.0.1  Find Currently Playing Track 1.3.2  Queue List 1.2.1  Add to Library on Play 1.0.1  Tree Report for Child Nodes 1.1.1  Update Location of Files in Database 1.4.5 / 2.3  Inherit Child Playlists 1.0.3  Add Currently Playing/Selected Track(s) to Playlist 1.2
dtsig
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Re: Porting MM4 scripts

Post by dtsig »

Bravo :lol:
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DTSig
Lowlander
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Re: Porting MM4 scripts

Post by Lowlander »

In 4 years I count 8 final release for MediaMonkey pre 5, none so far for MediaMonkey 5. The first beta of MM5 was only 6 months ago. Downloads come from the Addon developers sites, thus there wouldn't be a reliable tracking for MediaMonkey on this (obviously the forum activity for Addons is an indicator on popularity), nor would it indicate which Addons being unavailable would have users hold back on upgrading to MediaMonkey 5. And lastly the switch from Windows to cross-platform will cause issues with Addons as it has caused issues for the developers as well.

As a user of Addons I wouldn't expect developers to have Addons ready during the Alpha phase as there are too many changes still going on, but I'd hope they would get involved with the feature/bug process of Addons development. As a user I'd hope that some developers start releasing updated Addons during the beta phase, but my expectation is that this really starts happening after a final release (unless we're dealing with large corporations that can have developers dedicated to Addon development support). Adoption rates of the new software would of course go along with the increasing availability of Addons users are used to.

ZvezdanD obviously is a great contributor to the MediaMonkey Addon community so far, has well used Addons I often recommend and tries to resolve issues with Addons. The loss of ZvezdanD Addons would be a loss for MediaMonkey and probably have some users stick with MediaMonkey 4.

I hope this all can get worked out.
dtsig
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Re: Porting MM4 scripts

Post by dtsig »

Well said Lowlander ... i would expect though, some addons coming out by now if they were going to be coming out... or at least some indication that they were being started.
I hope MM5 is a success and that is why it is the only player I am using ... i do have a master mm4 but my daily player has been mm5 for quite a while. I too hope that the differences between MM and developers can all be worked out but I don't think it will be any time soon
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MMuser2011
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Re: Porting MM4 scripts

Post by MMuser2011 »

Lowlander wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 12:20 pmZvezdanD obviously is a great contributor to the MediaMonkey Addon community so far, has well used Addons I often recommend and tries to resolve issues with Addons. The loss of ZvezdanD Addons would be a loss for MediaMonkey and probably have some users stick with MediaMonkey 4.I hope this all can get worked out.
If you read the answer from ZvezdanD you know: This will NOT happen.

IMHO it is more likely that more and more users find other software alternatives with better addon support or even included functionality. Some years ago, MM was really unique with his database and support to "Manage 100,000+ music and video files without bogging down."
Actually things like synchronization with other devices, NAS accessability, multi user environment, different web sources for DiscoGS, Musicbrainz, Lyrics sites, the detection of duplicate songs, the easy change of external harddrives with stored songs and many other aspects are much more important.

It doesn't look like that the developers really pay attention to all this things (many of them only solved with addons from third party developers, not getting any cent from the income of Ventismedia).

Sorry to say, but I fully understand ZvezdanD's answer and initial "charade you are".
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