HARP

A menu has been added to selections attempted using names rather than IDs. If HARP matches more than one item for the given name, it will display a list of possible results and prompt for more information.

The AAC plugin can now be used to decode AAC or AAC+ audio streams.

Some changes have been made to the Stream plugin so it will work better on OS X.

A plugin has been added for audio streams (SHOUTcast, Icecast, etc.). In order to decode the audio, the stream plugin makes use of the first installed plugin with the correct audio type.

Several improvements have been made to Shuffle and ZShuffle. Most importantly, the ability to shuffle albums and artists as well as individual songs and a now non-broken ZShuffle.

Many other changes have been made. Please check the ChangeLog for a full listing of the changes in this version.

The database layout has changed. You will need to delete your existing database before running this version of HARP.

This is the first beta release of HARP. Along with the usual bug fixes, I have put a good deal of time into improving the speed and efficiency of some of the features.

I had been noticing that not only was zshuffle was not doing its job, it was also using a dangerous amount of memory. My improvements made it somewhat slower, but it now uses virtually no additional memory compared to the standard shuffle. The algorithm has also been improved to ensure that infrequently played songs are interleaved into the top section of the playlist.

The player was another area that was using far more memory than was actually needed. The player now stores only information about the song that is currently playing, instead of the entire playlist. This change has the added bonus of making the loading faster.

Along with the shuffle improvements, I decided it would be nice to have a section in the admin menu for statistics. The full details are in the README, but in short, you are now able to export a list of statistics to a file, or reset certain statistics.

The final major improvement was to song insertion. I made some improvements to the insertion speed as well as to the accuracy of the information inserted. A new feature as been added (to either supplement or overwrite the existing metadata search) that allows you to use your existing directory hierarchy to organize your songs. HARP will use the directory names following the pattern(s) specified in the configuration file to organize your music.

This release adds support for OS X (through the JACK audio connection kit) and possibly other operating systems (although it has only been tested on FreeBSD, Linux, and OS X). It also fixes the OSS problems noted in the previous release and fixes a bug with song insertion (see ChangeLog).
Please note that the structure of the package has changed. See README for updated installation instructions.

Nearly a month after the previous release, I noticed a bug preventing any songs from being inserted into the database. This release fixes that bug.
Upon updating my FreeBSD system to 8.0-BETA4, some of the volume control features in HARP (OSS only) stopped working. Until I can fix this (assuming this is not a local problem), you will need to adjust the volume outside of HARP. I have also been working on including JACK playback support for the past few weeks. I probably won't make another release until these two problems are fixed.

Changes in HARP-0.2.2:

• Bug fixes.
• Fixed portal returns to allow sub-menus to return to the main menu.
• Fixed AAC metadata parsing.
• Added arguments to the song activation edit menu. Users may now specify the desired activation status.
• When searching for the ID of a string, HARP will now select an ID if one of the results is a match.
• Added genre tagging:
• "--type=g" now available.
• List all genres or all songs listed in specific genres.
• Add (or remove) songs to genres in the song section of the edit menu.
• Genre edit menu now available.
• Play songs in selected genres.
• Playlists are now created from the edit menu instead of insert.

ALERT: There have been changes to the database. If you have used a previous version of HARP, please create the 'Unknown' genre before creating any others. New databases will handle this automatically.

Changes in HARP-0.2.1:

• Added directory scanning for song insertion.
• Added song restarting for mp3s.
• Debug messages now display on -v.
• Fixed a bug causing player commands to be ignored.
• Fixed a bug causing some names to be misinterpreted as IDs.
• Fixed seg. faults occurring on player exit.

A new version of HARP has been released!
Please view the new README for updated usage.
Also note: "trunk" and "tags" directories have been added to the SVN repository.

Changes in HARP-0.2:

• Added advanced command interface to player controls.
• List current playlist
• Jump to a new song in the playlist
• Seek a specific number of seconds forward or back in the current song.
• Multiple players are now able to run simultaneously without conflict
• Edit has been given an interface similar to the admin interface.
• Edit all songs in an album or artist
• List affected items from the editor
• List can now handle multiple items
  (--list=2,3,5)
• Gaps in playlist order numbers have been minimized.
• Various bug fixes

HARP has received some nice upgrades since the initial release. There have been several (minor) bug fixes, as well as some new additions to the player. In the initial release, attempting to use two or more instances of the HARP player simultaneously would cause the playlists to behave strangely. This issue has been resolved; however, the solution created a new problem. Previously, users were able to view the current playlist by using 'harp -tp -l0'. This will not work currently, as 'temporary' (shuffled or ad-hoc) playlists are hidden from all other instances of HARP. I created an in-player listing command (something that needed to be done anyway) to counteract this rather inconvenient side effect. While I was writing it, I decided this interface would be a good place to insert a song jumping feature as well. Users may now 'jump' to a new position in the playlist by specifying a particular SongID or Order.

These additions probably aren't enough to warrant a new version. For the time being I am recommending that users pull the source from the subversion repository.

There is a web site in development for this project. The layout is done and content is (slowly) being written. I might have it completed this week.

The first version of HARP has been released.