choose: Use a one-pass algorithm to select tracks.

[disorder] / CHANGES

* Changes up to version 3.1

** Server

The 'gap' directive will no longer work.  It could be restored if there
is real demand.

*** Random Track Choice

This has been completely rewritten to support new features:
   - tracks in the recently-played list or in the queue are no longer
     eligible for random choice
   - there is a new 'weight' track preference allowing for non-uniform
     track selection.  See disorder(1) for details.
   - there is a new configuration item replay_min defining the minimum
     time before a played track can be picked at random.  The default is
     8 hours (which matches the earlier behaviour).

* Changes up to version 3.0.1

Debian upgrades from 2.0.x should now work better.

* Changes up to version 3.0

Important!  See README.upgrades when upgrading.

** Platforms And Installation

Mac OS X and FreeBSD are somewhat supported.  There is now a bash script
in scripts/setup which will automate the setup after 'make install'.

** Server

Users are now stored in the database rather than a configuration file.

The server now has a built-in list of stopwords and players, so only
additions to these need be mentioned in the configuration file.

The default inter-track gap is now 0s.

How sound is played is now controlled via the new 'api' configuration
command.  This also controls how the volume is set, which now works with
ALSA as well as OSS.

A bug in the MP3 decoder was fixed (also in 2.0.4).

** Web Interface

The web interface now uses cookies to remember user identity, and allows
online registration of new users.  Also it is no longer necessary to
manually specify the URL of the web interface (but you can override it
if you don't like the value it figures out).

It is possible to allow users to register via the web interface.

The web interface's browser support has been improved.  It has been
tested with Firefox 2, Safari 3, Konqueror 3, Internet Explorer 7 and
Opera 9.

** Disobedience

A bug which would cause a crash if you attempt to rearrange the queue
while no track was playing has been fixed.  There is a new 'deselect all
tracks' option, mirroring 'select all tracks.

* Changes up to version 2.0

** General

Tracks can now have tags associated with them.  See tags in disorder(1)
or the preferences documentation for the web interface or Disobedience.

The search facility knows how to limit results by tag (see search
documentation for any interface) as well as by word search.  It is
possible to limit random play by tag (see required-tags and
prohibited-tags in disorder_config(5)).

Unicode support is improved.  Case-folding and word breaking now follows
the rules given in the Unicode standard (with a bit of tailoring in the
latter case).

** Disobedience

There is a new client, 'Disobedience', that depends on the GTK+ library.
Feedback on the interface would be very welcome.

** Web Interface

The "New" screen display tracks recently added to the database.  From
here they can be played or their preferences changed.

Long track names are truncated so they fit better on the screen.  Hover
for the full name.

** Network Play

DisOrder can broadcast audio over a network, allowing it to be played on
multiple client machines.  See README.streams for details.

** Server

Slow file lookups are cached in the server.  This should help
installations with large collections and/or slow platforms.

The 'enabled' and 'random_enabled' configuration options are now gone.
Instead the state survives from one run of the server to the next.
'disable now' is gone as well - if you want to emulate it disable
playing and then scratch the current track.

The 'pick' plugin has been abolished.  All the logic formerly done there
is now built into the server, where it can be done much more
efficiently.

'tracklength' plugins must be explicitly specified.

A bug where removing a collection (from the configuration) could cause a
crash when random play was enabled has been fixed.

A new configuration option 'queue_pad' allows the number of random
tracks kept on the queue to be controlled.

There is a new utility disorder-decode which can decode OGG, MP3, WAV
and FLAC.  The example config file uses it.

Database statistics are computed in a subprocess so that the main server
(and all clients) are not blocked for the duration.

** disorderfm

There is a new command line tool called 'disorderfm' which is designed
for filename translation on (for instance) digital audio repositories.
It is not yet feature-complete.  See its man page for additional
details.

** Build And Configuration

You can control which components are built with new --with options.  See
README.

options.transform and the 'transform' web option have gone, replaced
with a 'transform' configuration command.  Both this and 'namepart' are
now optional.

** Thanks

Ross Younger, Colin Watson, Michael Stevens and Mark Wooding all
contributed in some way to this release.

* Changes up to version 1.5.1

** Web Interface

Correct regexp for non-alpha tracks.

* Changes up to version 1.5

** Web Interface

Regexp-based filtering of tracks (for instance as used by the initial
'Choose' page) now does the regexp matching in the server, limiting the
amount of data transferred to the web interface only to be discarded.

** Client

Regexp-base filtering of tracks is now available to the command line
client.

** Server

New server_nice, speaker_nice and rescan_nice configuration options
allow independent control of process priorities.

Scratches are now attributed to the user who requested them.

Bugs fixed:
  A file descriptor was leaked for each track played.
  The amount of a track played so far was not reported.
  The speaker process could crash on underrun.
  The server would crash if you paused a non-pause capable track.
  Regexp matching in the file and directory list commands was not
  reliable.
  Handling of variable-argument commands in the client was broken.

* Changes up to version 1.4

** General

Raw format players are now supported.  See README.upgrades and
README.raw for details.  This allows pausing and eliminating the
inter-track gap.

Pausing is also supported with suitably modified standalone player
plugins, though none of the supplied ones are capable of this.

When random play is enabled the randomly picked track now appears in the
queue, and can be moved around the queue, removed from it, etc.

** Web Interface

Switches (random play, pause, ...) are now presented as a
fixed-appearance switch with an adjacent state indicator.

The 'Manage' screen has new buttons to move tracks to the head or tail
of the queue.

You can now edit the preferences for all the tracks in an album in a
single screen, rather than having to visit each separately.  For the
time being the raw preferences editing has gone; it can be reintroduced
on some form if there is demand.  (You can still edit raw preferences
from the command line.)

Labels are now documented in options.labels rather than
disorder_config(5).

** Server

If you tried to start up on any empty database with random play enabled
the server would exit with an error.

The server no longer risks failing if you strace its player
subprocesses.

It was possible for the server to hang when a 'reconfigure' command was
issued.  This should no longer be the case.

The default signal to forcibly terminate players is now SIGKILL.

** Plugins

Plugins must now declare a type word.  This allows them to document
whether they are a standalone player or a raw-format player, and whether
they support pausing.  They can also arrange to get setup and cleanup
calls in the main server.  See disorder(3) for more details.

* Changes up to version 1.3

** Dependencies

Berkeley DB 4.2 is no longer supported.  Use 4.3.

** Client

There is a new 'authorize' command to simplify the addition of local
users.  Please report successes as well as failures.

There is a new 'resolve' command to return the real track name behind an
alias.

The 'rescan' command no longer takes an argument.

** Server

The track database code has been largely rewritten to improve
maintainability.

There is a new 'lock' directive.  By default the server uses a lockfile
to prevent multiple copies of itself running simultaneously; this can be
inhibited e.g. if you are using a filesystem that does not support
locking and are confident you can prevent concurrent running yourself.

Aliases for track names, constructed from trackname_display_
preferences, now appear in the virtual filesystem.  

The server now executes a subprocess for the rescan operation.  It also
runs a separate deadlock manager.

Standard output and standard error from subprocesses are now logged.
This is handy if you need to figure out why a player failed unexpectedly
but might lead to huge log files if you have needlessly verbose players.

** Web Interface

Enable/disable buttons are now colored to reflect current state.

Entering numeric volume values (rather than clicking on the arrows) now
works.

Connection errors are reported more gracefully.

** Plugins

Scanner plugins are now always invoked in a subprocess.

disorder_track_count() and disorder_track_getn() are no longer
available.  Instead use disorder_track_random().

Plugins are now opened with RTLD_NOW, so link errors are detected
immediately.

** Tools

disorder-dump now insists on the input/output file being a named regular
file, rather than using stdin or stdout.

** Other

Some missing files have been added, and some notes added regarding
getting text encoding right.

* Changes up to version 1.2

See README.upgrades when upgrading to this version.

** Bugs Fixed

Avoid accumulating overlarge recently played list.

When the server was stopped, the currently playing track would not be
added to the recently played list.  This has been fixed.

Reloading the 'volume' page no longer repeats the last volume-changing
action.

The search facility now works properly for multiple hits within a single
artist or album.

** Server

New namepart directive replaces web interface's trackname-part.  There
are associated changes to the protocol and clients.

The number of database queries per candidate match required when
searching has been reduced.

The operator can control the signal used to scratch playing tracks.  The
default has been changed to SIGINT from SIGKILL.

The 'log' command now provides a formalised event log, rather than raw
access to the server's ordinary log output.

** Web Interface Changes

*** Choosing Tracks

When picking a track the client now stays on the same screen rather than
redirecting back to the 'Playing' screen.  So that the user gets
feedback from their action, playing and queued tracks are now marked as
such in the track picking screen.

It is possible to revert to the old behaviour by removing the back=
argument from the choose.html and search.html templates (and optionally
the trackstate lines).

*** Search

Non-ASCII characters are now properly supported in search terms.

*** Syntax

The template syntax has been changed slightly to ignore whitespace in
certain places.

*** Miscellaneous

Some formerly textual buttons are now replaced by images (with ALT text
reflecting the old value).  The stylesheet is now a .css file (installed
in the same place as the images) rather than being embedded into every
template.

Artist and album names in the playing and recently-played lists are now
links to the corresponding directory.

More functions are now available from the 'manage' screen.

The menus are now (by default) across the top of the screen instead of
down the side.  Set the 'menu' label to 'sidebar' to restore the old
appearance.  'Volume' is not present in this new menu, use 'Manage'
instead (or edit the template).

** tkdisorder

tkdisorder now displays artist, album and title in the queue and
recently played widgets, rather than just the title (as formerly).

* Changes up to version 1.1

** Bugs Fixed

Corrected various problems with UTF-8 parsing.

In the web interface, "The Beatles" (etc) are now grouped under 'B' not
'T' when grouping tracks by initial letter.

** Server

The list of recently played tracks is now preserved across server
restarts.

Track IDs are more compact.

Versions of libdb before 4.2 are no longer supported.  4.2 and 4.3 both
work now.  4.2 support will be removed in some future release.

Prehistoric backwards-compatibility logic removed.  Only affects people
upgrading from long before 1.0 (who should upgrade to 1.0 and then to
1.1.)

** Command Line

Tracks can be moved in the queue from the command line.

'disorder queue' now reports track IDs.

$pkgdatadir/completion.bash provides tab completion over commands and
options.

** Web Interface

New 'cooked' preferences interface saves users having to know arcane
details of trackname preferences and so on.  Non-ASCII characters are
now properly supported in this context.

CGI arguments to the web interface are now checked for UTF-8 compliance.

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