Thread: AMP v1.0 Worklog

Originally Posted by iamgnat

When the minutes (and presumably hours) are less than 10, they aren't padded with a zero. "11:8pm" just looks funny to me

LOL! I saw this yesterday evening and cracked up laughing at it. It's already fixed, will be in the next version uploaded.

Originally Posted by iamgnat

If you can do that, then everyone can tweak it to their own tastes (I prefer US 24 hour time with seconds myself ).

I'll look into that.

Originally Posted by iamgnat

Nice touch.
I would still prefer something that just pops up over the list though (as an option?).

What would be the point of that? You already have music controls at the bottom of the screen when looking at the lists of songs, artists, etc. What would be the point of having an additional set of controls on the screen?

Originally Posted by iamgnat

Also, the rotating CD case seems to hide the track name under the time scale. I remember you said that this wasn't yours before, but I don't recall it doing that and didn't know if you tweaked it.

Does it only hide the name, etc, when it's stretched to full screen? It hides it when I stretch it to fullscreen, but when it runs at the correct resolution (800x480), it looks perfect. Do you have the same results?

Originally Posted by iamgnat

Looking really good.

Thanks,
-dave

Again, thank you for the kind words
Aychamo

Originally Posted by avagadrox

Really great stuff. Thanks a lot. My only request would be to make everything centered on the screen. I know you've said its for 800x480, but when viewed in 800x600 everything is bottom left aligned. This leaves you with blank space at the top of the screen.

Anyway, thanks for the hard work.

I'll look into this, but a lot of stuff gets really, really complicated when doing something like this. I've literally spent hours and hours getting different buttons on different views to all line up to the exact pixel. Like, in the music view when you switch between album view, artist view, & radio view, it's all different things that popup, but you can't tell anything is even going on because everything lines up exactly right.

Hey guys!

I have something to say. First, I really enjoy developing AMP. The problem is I enjoy it too much. I've been neglecting my studies, and I subsequently failed a test. I can't do that. This is all material that I need to know (literally, for the rest of my life), and school is already putting me in a huge debt, and school needs to be my number one thing right now.

I'm most likely going to do the following. I'm going to patch a handful of things that I mentioned up above, and release it as 1.0a, and along with it I will release the entire source code to AMP.

If people add things in, they can either submit patches to me, or they are free to take the entire project off into a whole new direction. The only thing I ask is that if any projects fork off of the AMP codebase, to please give AMP credit! (like, in the about screen, etc) I know there are a lot of talented coders out there, so I know you guys will be able to take AMP places I never will be able to.

I just don't have access to anything where I live right now. I can't do OBDII because my piece of **** car here doesn't have OBDII. I don't own a radioSHARK, so I can't do anything clever with it. I don't own a GPS so I can't really do anything clever with that. I have no desire to use a phidget, so I would never use that, etc.

I'll still continue to develop my primary codebase of AMP (that's why I say I'll be happy to accept patches from other developers). But certain things, I would just never be able to implement, so I will leave that up to you guys. One thing I would suggest for certain "plug-in" type things is to literally just develop a separate program, that maintains the exact look & feel of AMP, and just have AMP run the program, etc, you know what I mean?

I want to be clear that I'm not giving up! I did pretty much exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to make a rock solid front end for the Mac. There may (or may not) be tiny bugs in AMP. But there are no gaping bugs, with **** crashing all the time (lol), like I've read about in some of the PC front ends.

I just hope, when I release the source, that some other developers will help make some new exciting stuff for AMP, submit patches, tweaks, etc. They can even use the source just to get a framework for developing a plug-in, etc. Or, a new developer can gank it to kick start a new project.

Ok guys, I gotta hit the sack. I'll release this next version & the source really soon.

- Aychamo

Originally Posted by aychamo

What would be the point of that? You already have music controls at the bottom of the screen when looking at the lists of songs, artists, etc. What would be the point of having an additional set of controls on the screen?

Not looking for the controls in that case (since as you point out they are already there), just that the splash that comes up when you change a track be resized and moved to cover the list and then stays around. My issue is that the info at the bottom is too small to read while doing 60mph

Does it only hide the name, etc, when it's stretched to full screen? It hides it when I stretch it to fullscreen, but when it runs at the correct resolution (800x480), it looks perfect. Do you have the same results?

I didn't tell it to stretch, but it was filling my whole screen (unlike AMP itself). I'll see what it looks like in the car to see if it has the same issue.

Again, thank you for the kind words

And again, thank you for the hard work.

-dave

Originally Posted by aychamo

I've been neglecting my studies, and I subsequently failed a test.

Ah, the mark of a real life. Responsibilities

Bummer. Sorry to hear about the test. Knowledge is the most important thing, so you will get no hard feelings from me to go seek it. Good luck with your future tests.

I can't wait to get hold of your source (i'll get my floater yet! ) and play around. My biggest problem has always been getting the basics done in a manner I like. You've done that so hopefully I can move forward with the fun cool stuff

Thanks again for all your hard work so far and i'm sorry it cost you that test.

Thanks,
-dave

Hey guys;

I'm on lunch, just a quick word. I'm doing a rudimentary plugin architecture for AMP real quick. As of now, AMP publishes a dictionary (NSDictionary) containing info on the song that is currently playing, and the path to the album art for the song. So if anyone did a plugin, they would be able to see what song the user currently has playing (in case you want to integrate it somehow).

Also, AMP will check for the presence of a dictionary in a certain location (I'll give more info later), and you can control AMP through that dictionary (ie, make music start/stop/next/previous, etc)

This type of system is nice because it seems infinitely extensible. It could go as far as you making your program write a common to AMP asking it for a list of albums by a certain artist, or whatever, and it would give you what you want, etc. Really neat.

I'll try to get this version and the source out soon.

Dave, I see what you mean now about a floater. I can make that easy, and put it back on the album art button. You mean just a big version of the little screen that pops up? With larger text, etc? Floating on top of the music lists, etc?

Oh, and about the time format, I've never done the stuff with user defaults, etc like that. Do you have a routine to return the time in the user specified format as a string?

Originally Posted by aychamo

Dave, I see what you mean now about a floater. I can make that easy, and put it back on the album art button. You mean just a big version of the little screen that pops up? With larger text, etc? Floating on top of the music lists, etc?

Yes, but go study

Oh, and about the time format, I've never done the stuff with user defaults, etc like that. Do you have a routine to return the time in the user specified format as a string?

Nope. It's only recently that it occured to be to use the global prefs info and I haven't done a clock since then. I'll work on it when I get hold of your code

-dave

- AMP 1.0 Release
http://www.aychamo.com/amp/AMP.zip
http://www.aychamo.com/amp/AMPSource.zip

This 1.0a release contains bug fixes for the things mentioned above (clock, config issues). Also, the clock area is now a "hot button" to bring up a set of controls to control AMP in basically every menu. Even if the clock isn't being displayed, the area is still a "hot spot" and should bring up a little menut to control music (ie, you are in the middle of config-ing something, and want to change a song). There is also a music button in the web browser now that lets you control songs, etc.

Also.. I've released the source code. I've included additionally a sample AMP plugin that should get you off the ground with communicating with AMP, and getting your plugin to have the "look & feel"of AMP. If you need to find out how I did something, in order to implement it in your plug-in, just look in the source, or post here and I can tell you.

PLEASE DON'T LAUGH AT MY CODE! lol! I started AMP to help a buddy get some CoreData importing action going on in his FrontEnd, and it just blossomed. My naming schemes are weird and inconsistant, nothing is broken up into different classes because everything is so interdependent.

Because the core part of AMP is all so interdependent on itself is the reason (what a horrible sentence) I thought it's best to make all plug-ins just seperate program. The source would be too huge and unmanageable if we just lumped it all into one big file. The included plugin really should get you going as far as making something for AMP.

AMP can already communicate 2 ways with plugins, etc. I'll have to write a front-end for the plug-ins though (to manage them, etc). I will handle that.

If anyone tweaks anything in the code that is worth submitting, please do so. Just shoot me a PM here, or email me. When you first look at the code, just go through it slowly, following the method calls, etc, to get a feel for how it works. Most methods and variables are named very accordingly and should do all it can to help unobfuscate the code.

Again, I ask, if you use this code to start your own project, then please just give me a little shout w/ a link to my site That's all I ask. Let's get some really good **** going on in the front end community for the Mac!

- Aychamo

PS - With the plugins, when you starting reading through it, if you have any good suggetions for plug-in commands to AMP, please let me know!