new rhythmbox 3.4 released

Unusually early this time, Rhythmbox 3.4 has been released.

Its available for Yakkety users – but I’ve done some judicious hacking and its now also available for 16.04 users as well.

(screenshot taken with rhythmbox 3.4 + my alternative-toolbar plugin)

Thanks to the key Rhythmbox maintainer Jonathan Matthew we have a good release that incorporates a variety of fixes and improvements over the rhythmbox 3.3 available in xenial by default.

This version contains the following:

Overview of changes in Rhythmbox 3.4

• New web-control plugin –> I couldn’t get this to work in Yakkety nor Xenial so lets skip over this bit…
• Grilo plugin now uses Grilo 0.3 –> only relevant to Yakkety, downgraded in Xenial due to the older Grilo available
• Soundcloud plugin fetches more search results and allows pausing
• No longer uses webkit (partly due to OpenBSD W^X enforcement)–>my plugin coverart browser is broken due to GTK3.18 changes in xenial.  This webkit change basically will necessitate a rewrite 😦
• Slightly better handling of keyboard shortcuts for playback
• Core and some plugin data files compiled into binaries using GResources

  Bugs fixed:
  
  703910  Entering then leaving Party Mode breaks the app menu; Party Mode status incorrectly reported
  721926  TerraParser (lyric's plugin) is not fetching lyrics correctly
  759589  grilo: Port to 0.3.0
  765833  [regression] Cover art shown superposed over the song titles and artist names when cover art is 
  disabled
  766584  Referenced website replaygain.org is not about ReplayGain
  767318  Use correct pkg-config binary
  767466  daap: Fix warnings when configuring music sharing
  767524  "To translators: the context is" doesn't continue the sentence
  768545  Cannot change MP4 encoder settings
  769404  Memory leak

Stock Ubuntu 16.04 users should definitely benefit for 12+ months worth of bug-fixes and refinements.

IMPORTANT:

If you are using my plugin alternative-toolbar this version of rhythmbox introduces a nasty regression and breaks the plugin.  I’ve fixed this now for xenial users and is available in my rhythmbox-plugins PPA or via GitHub.  I’ve uploaded a fix to Debian Unstable and have created a bug-report on launchpad requesting a resync from Debian for Yakkety.

If you are looking to have the latest, I’ve packaged this together and is now available in my Rhythmbox PPA. This PPA contains the existing Ubuntu patchwork – hide on close, support for local and global menu etc. N.B. – I tend to update my PPA as and when I’m investigating what is new in upstream Rhythmbox.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fossfreedom/rhythmbox
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt full-upgrade


Note: sometimes the upgrade doesn’t quite work.  If you get a segmentation fault repeatedly on startup then uninstall and reinstall rhythmbox

sudo apt-get purge rhythmbox rhythmbox-plugins rhythmbox-data librhythmbox-core10
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rhythmbox

 

Rhythmbox Alternative-Toolbar goes dark…

Taking some time-out from budgie-remix matters, I’ve released an update to my plugin for rhythmbox called alternative-toolbar.

For those not in the know, this plugin gives rhythmbox a stylish makeover – introduces a compact bar for most desktops and a headerbar for GNOME based desktops.

In this release the following changes have been made:

• Option for dark theme
• Display Browse Categories horizontally or vertically
• Display app-menu correctly in budgie-desktop
• Updated translations from Launchpad.net
• correctly toggle search button via CTRL+F
• option to force the display of the app-menu if required

For a full list of extras that are available for rhythmbox users via this plugin have a look a the README.

But lets have some pretty pictures to explain what’s new.

Dark-theme – For those that like their media players with a dark-style there is a new option in the plugin-preferences.

Normally Rhythmbox displays its filter options above the music.  For those of us without much vertical space to play with this doesnt allow us to see as much music in the grid-list.  This new option allows for the filter options to be displayed on the left hand-side of the music list making much more use of a normal widescreen display.

For budgie-desktop users you may have noticed that the App-menu was not displayed in the same position as other GNOME apps … well that’s been fixed.

… and as an aside, there is a gsettings value to force the display of the app-menu if required.

The search button is now correctly toggle-able via the CTRL+F keystroke.

This version has also been accepted into Debian – so Yakkety users will see the plugin in the main repo soon.

For all 14.04, 15.10 and 16.04 users this version can be installed via my rhythmbox-plugins PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fossfreedom/rhythmbox-plugins
sudo apt update
sudo apt install rhythmbox-plugin-alternative-toolbar

 

New Rhythmbox 3.3 release for Ubuntu 14.04, 15.04 and 15.10

The official GTK 3.18 release of the Gnome stack of software was last september … but most unusually Rhythmbox never featured with a new release.

Well its here – and its now available for 14.04 (trusty), 15.04 (vivid) and 15.10 (wily) users.

(screenshot taken with rhythmbox 3.3 + my alternative-toolbar plugin)

Thanks to the key Rhythmbox maintainer Jonathan Matthew we have a good release that fixes a whole bunch of crashers and gives us new automatic Android compatibility.

TIP – if you are going to sync to an external card on you phone – rename your “Music” folder on the internal storage, create a “Music” folder at the top-level of your external card. Launch rhythmbox. Using the new android capability, you can automatically find and sync with the Music folder on your external card.

This version contains the following:

Overview of changes in Rhythmbox 3.3

• New plugin supporting Android devices via gvfs-mtp
• Encoding settings are now configurable per device type
• Encoding settings can force lossless files to be transcoded

Bugs fixed:

733830 While extracting music from CDs, information in the “Year” field is lost
748857 Typos in documentation
749015 audioscrobbler: Fix displaying icon for libre.fm
751265 JSON import errors
751630 Sync Preferences Missing
751961 iradio: remove Radio GFM
752433 [PATCH] data: Add various mod files as supported MIME types
753359 Don’t handle RTL icons manually for GTK+ >= 3.12
753767 error: conflicting types for ‘rhythmdb_metadata_cache_purge’
755881 crash when adding files found during startup scan
756992 hangs after handling mod/xm/it (modplug) file when crossfade is enabled
757225 Freezing with crossfade backend and Pulseaudio with GStreamer 1.6.x
760192 commit 85c185d breaks compilation with -Wl,-as-needed
761030 Album-Art caching issue

Stock Ubuntu 14.04 users should definitely benefit for 24+ months worth of bug-fixes and refinements. Note – upstream has bumped the minimum GTK version above that found in Trusty … but don’t worry I’ve backed out those changes – you guys and girls aren’t missing anything vital!

We are not past Debian package import freeze to 16.04 so I expect Debian will upload v3.3 soon and this will make it into 16.04 proper.  Thus, I’ve not this time produced a build for 16.04 users … but may do so with future rhythmbox releases.

If you are looking to have the latest, I’ve packaged this together and is now available in my Rhythmbox PPA. This PPA contains the existing Ubuntu patchwork – hide on close, support for local and global menu etc. N.B. – I tend to update my PPA as and when I’m investigating what is new in upstream Rhythmbox.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fossfreedom/rhythmbox
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt full-upgrade


Note: sometimes the upgrade doesn’t quite work.  If you get a segmentation fault repeatedly on startup then uninstall and reinstall rhythmbox

sudo apt-get purge rhythmbox rhythmbox-plugins rhythmbox-data librhythmbox-core9
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rhythmbox

Grilo is supported just enable the plugin found in the Plugins menu – this will give you the new media sources in Rhythmbox – the key being Jamendo – Royalty free music is just a click away. You also get UPnP & DLNA support as well.

Rhythmbox Alternative Toolbar now in Ubuntu and Debian

I’m pleased to say that Debian has accepted my very first uploaded package rhythmbox-plugin-alternative-toolbar … and for Ubuntu 16.04 users it has also been uploaded!

 

… Straight from the software centre … or from the debian repos …

… or can be installed simply via:

sudo apt install rhythmbox-plugin-alternative-toolbar

Or 1 click:

http://apt.ubuntu.com/p/rhythmbox-plugin-alternative-toolbar

Or AptUrl:

apt://rhythmbox-plugin-alternative-toolbar

Links:

Ubuntu package – Debian Package

 

little things matter…

Little things matter.  Take for example this bug-report from 2003 (!!) – a request to add the ability to move the column order in Rhythmbox.

Lots of discussion, requests, tantrums later … but no-one has taken the proverbial bull-by-the-horns and implemented anything.

Hey-ho – if only I knew C well enough…

Well I do know python – so I’ve added to my “lets improve the GUI” plugin alternative-toolbar just such an ability – you can now drag by the column header in any order you want.

before & after…

Artist has been moved to the more logical position after the title & the genre has been moved from the end to a more prominent position.

Enjoy – happy holidays all!

P.S. – if this has inspired you to fix this properly via a C patch to Rhythmbox – then that would be great 🙂

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To install – install via my PPA or via GIT, instructions here.