Hi there,

first of all: this is my first contribution to rockbox and I tried my best to make myself familiar with the way things work there. I am sure, not everything is where it belongs. Please help me to get things in order :).

second: thanks to the author of Patch  FS#1803  that made this possible.

The purpose of this patch is to watch the tuner reported field strength (estimate) and mute, when it drops below a customizable threshold. Wether muting or not as well as the threshold are customizable in the fm tuner menu. It should not interfere with manual muting and should not affect recording (i didn’t test that yet). THe threshold is specified in pseudo-dBuV.
It also adjusts frequency display to display as MMM.KKK instead of MMM.KK. This is for people who adjust region settings and channel widths.

My testing conditions were limited to the sansa c250.  FS#1803  reports to work on the tuner chips LV24020LP (e.g. sansa c250) and TEA5767. I only tested the first. Please report back possible field strength values you see on devices using these chips.

This code should not break anything. I did a testbuild for some iPods (without tuner) that compiled cleanly. Simulator also works.

Currently only english and german translation are done.

User guide:
This patch conditionally adds 1 or 2 lines to the tuner main window that look like this:

Sig: [-M] -235dBuV
Automute below -555dBuV

The second line is only displayed if automute is enabled. The first line shows the status of the tuner. The 2 characters in the braces exlain as [ab]:

a: either 'O' or '-' 
   'O': current field strength is above threshold
   '-': current field strength is equal to or below threshold
b: either 'M' or '-'
   'M': will mute on or below threshold
   '-': automute disabled.
(both are only updated on field strength change)

The second line should be selfexplaining, same for the menu entries.

Request for comments!

Hi there,

i am currently trying to learn the morse code. I thougt it would be fun to have rockbox as an aid, so i started to write a plugin for that.

This plugin currently has a limited functionality, but the current things are implemented:

1. Morsing of custom texts, typed from the rockbox keyboard
2. Morsing of random chars, till the battery drains (or less ;))
3. Input of own Call and 'morsing' the same
4. selection of speeds from 1-45 WPM in steps of 3
5. selection of chars from 5 mixable groups
   1. letters
   2. numbers
   3. punctuation marks
   4. special chars (KA,BT,AR,VE)
   5. pauses

It would be very nice if someone tested these on some soft-codec targets. I included the source tarball (please add plugin to SOURCES and CATEGORIES if using this), a diff on r17715 and the binary .rock for the sansa c250.

Idd be very happy if, with a little help, this could move upstream. I am new to the plugin api and need some help especially in using the definitions to make this work on different DAPs (avoid building this on targets that don't support some features and so on). Correct me if i am wrong, but his should from my point of view work with all SWCODEC devices with LCD. I tried to write at least readable code and added some comments for the curious.

This builds at least on the c250 and works for me.

Thanks, Joel

Remind me, if i forgot something.

When the wake-up alarm starts up the iPod, you wouldn’t want it to boot the OF, but it will do so if hold is on. This patch makes the bootloader check if the alarm is active and start rockbox regardless of the hold state if it is. Also, if the hold switch is on during start up rockbox would normally reset all settings, but this is inactivated if rockbox was started by the alarm.

Applying the patch:
Besides building the firmware, you will need to build and upload the bootloader to your ipod using ipodpatcher.

Limitations:
The bootloader doesn’t check if the alarm started ipod, it only checks if the alarm is active. If you have set the alarm you will have to use the MENU button to start the OF.

I don’t know if this works on any other iPods than the iPod video, but it will probably work on all of them.

build: r31372-111219

i am using SYLT and USLT tags in my audio files (LYRICS and UNSYNCED LYRICS respectively)

but it seems like lrcplayer does not read the SYLT tag.
it only displays someting if the UNSYNCED LYRICS tag is present

to reproduce:

1. set playback settings–>fade on stop/pause to on.
2. play some music.
3. press the pause button to stop the music, and again to restart it. repeat that a few times, because this bug does not always occur.

you will notice that both “time-displays” sometimes change very to the previous second and then back to the normal one, e.g 3:32, then very short 3:31, and back to 3:32. the progressbar sometimes get smaller for a fraction of a second, too.

maybe i’ll search for the revision which introduced this in the next few days

i asked some time ago why there is the buttontable in general settings –>bookmark. i wondered because the buttons are the same as in other lists. Marc Guay said "the delete button is unique", an i wondered why there is a dedicated delete button… in no other lists exists such a button afaik.

i changed the manual accordingly.
i also corrected some wrong (?) comments.
i hope i did everything right, at least for the e200 it compiles and works fine.

i would like to get some opinions about it.

to reproduce:

1. start a big (20mb or more) track. delete it immidiately after starting it.
2. let the song play until it stops. i guess it stops at the end of the buffer. as an alternative you can ff to the end of the track (which shouldn't be buffered)
3. now you're not able to play any track. if you select a new one from the file browser or database, the wps will show up, but nothing is played and the progress bar won't progress. ff and rw also don 't work. only rebooting helps. shutting down needs really long (~15s).

if you delete a fully buffered song, everything works as expected (well, the song continues till the end, and the next song starts. some devs call that "expected" :D ).

tested with r24091 and an e200, although i guess that the bug is target independent and occurs in the last few thousand revisions :)

I store the album art by putting a folder.jpg file in the album's directory.
Any WPS on other players shows the cover pictures properly if album art is enabled in the theme.

I am aware of caveats like progressive jpgs, that are not supported by RB.

In the attached zip file, there are four directories with a folder.jpg file and a free opus file for demonstration purposes.

All pictures show up fine on my Sansa E200 (v1) using CabbieV2 or lebellium_Samsung-like.
However, on my XduOO x3ii the pictures are not displayed for the examples 1 - 3, but show for example 4.

None of the jpgs are progressive and I cannot figure out a difference between 1-3 and 4.

I don't know how to debug this further myself, but would be happy doing any furter experiments.

This is true for the current dev builds, e.g. b450707955.

I've started to write a new game, which is similiar to the popular freeware game Icytower. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icy_Tower)
The basic game engine is ready, but there is much work on the adaption to the targets, so that the difficulty is likely.
By now I used just wildcards for the player and the floors, because I'm not talented in drawing something. I hope you can help me with the images.

I'm looking forward for any feedback.

I have started an discussion about the virtual keyboard in the mailing list.

In my opinion the text_editor’s control should be similar to the calculator:
- use the whole screen (no tiny font)
- support for touchscreen (raster map)
- separate characters into categories

I adjust the calculator plugin to show my concept.

Affected versions:
RBUtil V1.4.0
git version 2a2800b528010320ca504a39106806ec21f0220 (2016-10-12)

rbutil fails to build bootloader. Tested for Iriver H1x0 and H3x0 platforms.

Progress window shows:

Adding bootloader firmware file
Error in patching: reading firmware failed

Terminal output shows:

[httpget.cpp:230 INFO] Get URI “http://download.rockbox.org/bootloader/iriver/bootloader-h300.bin”
[httpget.cpp:200 INFO] Request started
[httpget.cpp:148 INFO] Request finished, status code: 200
[httpget.cpp:151 INFO] Data from cache: true
[bootloaderinstallbase.cpp:71 INFO] Downloading bootloader finished, error: false
/tmp/qt_temp.U16458: Resource temporarily unavailable
[selectiveinstallwidget.cpp:195 INFO] continuing install with stage 1
[selectiveinstallwidget.cpp:197 ERROR] Last part returned error.
[selectiveinstallwidget.cpp:214 INFO] All install stages done.
[rockboxinfo.cpp:27 INFO] Getting version info from rockbox-info.txt

Fired up gdb and debugged the git 2a2800b5280103… build:

The failure is in function mkboot_iriver in mkboot.c line 98:
Line 98:

  i = fread(image+16, 1, len, f);

len is calculated as 2636272.
But file size of /tmp/qt_temp.U16458 is only 2621440, resulting in a short read of 2621424 bytes. So error condition “i < len” fires and function returns without building bootloader.

I tested this on two different gentoo systems. It worked on one, but failed on the other. Both are more or less up to date, but have one significant difference: 32bit vs 64bit system.

The system that did compile and run perfectly uses:
gcc i686-pc-linux-gnu-4.9.4 (len=2636272, file size=2637824)
The system that failed uses:
gcc x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-4.9.3 (len=2636272, file size=2621440)

So, the failing rbutil creates a temporary file that is too short. I didn’t debug deeper to find out why.

cu
John

Not sure how long this chronic bug has gone on but at least before the dubious move to git from subversion. I have had trouble on my V2s with freezing (appears like they are loading in the middle of a song but nothing is happening and you can't do anything) while playing and recently freezing when adding tracks to a playlist. I can take the microSD/transflash card out and stick it into a V1 Fuze and there is no problem, it will play forever and never crash. The V2s will crash minutes after playing, sometimes a track will finish, sometimes the same track will get stuck, one time it happened less than a second after beginning to play. No white screen of death, just a soft freeze and a blinking loading indicator. If you fiddle with it it will stop blinking and become utterly unresponsive. Have tried formatting cards, etc. V1 players work fine, V2 players are now junk under this firmware.

I don't know exactly how long this problem has been going on but it has been getting worse. Before the 30,000th SVN release, perhaps somewhere around 28000, I would be getting crashes occasionally with the V2s but nothing like this. My v2 players will unconditionally crash now after a short time. Rockbox is unusable for me on my V2 Fuze players. A lot of digging may be necessary to get to the bottom of this problem because I think it is buried under a lot of newer modifications.

I will not submit any sample music files (I know you guys always ask), this is problem exclusive to AMSv2 and I am sure by now that some Rockbox developers are aware of some issues that could be attributed to this sort of problem.

I’d like to suggest the following new WPS feature(s):

1. A viewport can be assigned an image as a “backdrop”.

 a. A viewport may be assigned an image dynamically via the WPS tag "%VX<identifier>"
   (i.e. %VXa for image a, %VXZ for image Z, etc.)
  b. As a viewport is being processed and drawn, its backdrop would be drawn "first", followed by any other normal images/characters.

2. Viewport may define FF00FF as a background color, which would then be “transparent”. This would allow overlapping viewports.

3. Fonts drawn in a viewport with a backdrop would automatically be drawn with DRMODE_FG.

Notes on the attached patch file:
+ It was created from the SVN revision 18997 on Nov 3, 2008.
+ Although I stubbed in the new functions for all the LCD drivers, I’ve only flushed out the 16 bit driver so far.

Cheers!

This is the first plugin I’ve ever written from scratch, and well, it was fun. I haven’t worked out how to use bitmaps yet, bear with me, for now it uses coloured rectangles. Still learning :p.

If this were to get committed, please wait until I’ve added better support for more targets, commented as many lines as are possible to help other people new to making plugins, potentially add AI (Although that would kinda ruin it as it would probably force a draw every time), and figured out how to use bitmaps properly.

If people are willing to test this out for me and tell me any bugs, please do so. I have tested this on the H10, the Gigabeat, and, using the simulator, the iPod mini G2 (Which displays it but out of alignment, will work on that soon.

I realize it’s not too exciting, but for my first real bit of work in C I’m happy :p.

It would be nice if the “Generate” menu-option opened a submenu where you could pick which difficulty to generate.

I’ve had a quick glance at the code, and it looks like it’d have to generate until a suitable difficulty is found, but that’s no different from what users have to do now, if they’re after a specific difficulty, except it’d happen automatically.

If I get the time/motivation, I may have another look at it in the next couple of days.

This patch was meant to add a DJ type feature, that would announce each song if a “.talk” clip exists for it. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as calling talk_file() each time the track changes, because that breaks playback because of CPU inadequacy. Works mostly fine for WAV files though.

The solution is probably to halt playback until the clip has been played, but that’s beyond me.

I have not added a settings interface to this, since the feature is really very incomplete. I’d love if someone would pick it up from here though.

If you’re willing to produce a Human voice file (spoken by you or someone you know), this script will be particularly helpful. It expects you to put it in a directory with a subdirectory containing .wav files for all voice strings, named by the contents of the string (this will be problematic on FAT/NTFS, but could be fixed).

When run, it will check to see if all needed strings are available, and if they are, it will generate a voice-file for all targets. If they aren’t, it will print out a list of strings missing (to be recorded and put in the subdirectory). This list will also be put in the file “missingstrings.txt”, one on each line.

This might be suitable for inclusion in tools/

Edit: Script deleted. Will upload again soonish.

Before you get carried away, this is the script that will build talk clips in /.rockbox/talkclips/* for all tags and labels (reading tagnavi.config as well as the database_[0-9]*.tcd files).

The idea is that the database code will then look here for talk clips.

In the long term, the same method could be used for the file browser if desired.

Hopefully someone will help me out with the database code side of things, as I don’t think I’m up to that challenge.

This patch modifies bins.pl, manuals.pl and voices.pl to be smarter, just like the new w32sims.pl, adding a -r commandline switch, allowing the same script to be used for building both daily and release versions.

Using a bootloader from  FS#9955 , a USB connection is not made if Start Screen is set to WPS, and the user boots Rockbox by inserting a USB cable.

This is possibly also true for other values of Start Screen.

Tested on e280, but I expect it’ll likely be the case on other PP targets with USB

This patch will make an e200 present its SD card as an ipod mini 2G when queried by iTunes. It does this by changing a number of things:

1) Responding to SCSI inqueries
2) Using Ipod USB vid/pid and other usb details

The patch also enables logf for the usb_storage.c because I’m in a bit of a hurry.

To use this, make sure you have a partition on the SD card of type 0 (any size should do) and also the appropriate Ipod file structure (can be generated with e.g. gtkpod).

After releasing hold after several minutes of playback with hold enabled, the backlight flickers on and off, if the following settings are enabled:

Backlight on hold: off
Backlight fade in: on
Backlight fade out: on
Caption backlight: on

My theory is that fade-in/out events from the caption backlight somehow get queued up, and happen once hold is released.

Happened as recently as today, with r21438. Reports in IRC said it appeared somewhere between 3.0 and 3.1.

These two scripts will, if you run them appropriately generate a few screenshots in an automatic fashion. Execute it like this, from inside a simulator: ./genscreenshots e200.xte /path/to/output

There are a few pitfalls:
* The simulator window MUST gain focus when it is run. If this doesn’t happen, everything breaks. Horribly.
* The method is rather timing sensitive. I had to put a pause of 250ms between each keypress to make sure they registred (too fast, and the sim/SDL would discard them). 250ms may not be the right amount for your computer.
* Rockbox itself is also timing sensitive. If you “push” a button at the wrong time, it may not register, so use plenty of sleeps to make sure things are settled.

Edit: Oops, the first version had a hardcoded filename. Hopefully of such things.

This patch enables you to control the simulator using a named pipe to provide simulated keypresses, rather than the keyboard.

Unfortunately there is a bug that means that not all events seem to have any effect. On the e200 sim, I can use the scroll buttons to move in the main menu, but neither RIGHT nor SELECT lets me enter any of the entries. I suspect it's related to repeat or hold/release handling, but I'm not sure how to fake that properly.

I downloaded some AAC files from the bbc, using the get-iplayer utility. The files play just fine on the computer, but on my rockboxed Clip+, they seem to freeze up the player entirely. I have to hold the power button for a long time to reset it. I just tried updating to rockbox 3.9, but I'm not seeing any difference with the new firmware.

When I play the file in mplayer, it gives the following info:
major_brand: M4A
minor_version: 512
compatible_brands: isomiso2
encoder: Lavf52.64.2
========================================================================Opening audio decoder: [faad] AAC (MPEG2/4 Advanced Audio Coding)
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 48.0 kbit/3.40% (ratio: 6000→176400)
Selected audio codec: [faad] afm: faad (FAAD AAC (MPEG-2/MPEG-4 Audio))

this patch adds inline settings to the
any menu items are settings it will show a 2nd line for that menu which will show the value of the elected setting, or —→ for submenus/functions.

notes about this
uses too many hacky-tweaks to be considered
doesnt let you disable
item voiceing is probably
doesnt let you change the setting, you still have to enter the setting screen to change it

DONT send this topic off on a tangent like the last UI change tasks, and any requests for resyncs will be deleted. (I’m guessing this will stay here till at least devcon)

Only filetree.c should be allowed to call opendir(), anything that needs to recursively scan directories should be calling ft_load() which can smartly open, scan and close a directory.

The problem with this is that the filename buffer could get corrupted easily if its misused.

as of r18234 the following is using opendir() in the core
filetree.c:133: dir = opendir(c→currdir); ← not recursive
filetree.c:257: dir = opendir(tempdir); ← in ft_load() so ok
filetree.c:259: dir = opendir(c→currdir); ← “” “” “” misc.c:164: dir = opendir(pathlen ? buffer : “/”);
misc.c:1059: dir = opendir(BOOTDIR);
misc.c:1142: DIR* d = opendir(path);
onplay.c:466: dir = opendir(dirname);
onplay.c:817: srcdir = opendir(src);
tagcache.c:4075: dir = opendir(dirname);

the tagcache and the onplay.c ones are dangerous… the 3 in misc.c are not recursive so safe.

the following are uses in plugins, havnt checked them so I only know for sure that stats, disktidy and properties are unsafe
plugins/disktidy.c:203: dir = rb→opendir(name);
plugins/disktidy.c:270: dir = rb→opendir(name);
plugins/md5sum.c:78: dir = rb→opendir( path );
plugins/md5sum.c:113: DIR *dir = rb→opendir( newpath );
plugins/md5sum.c:209: dir = rb→opendir( arg );
plugins/properties.c:79: dir = rb→opendir(tstr);
plugins/properties.c:151: dir = rb→opendir(dps→dirname);
plugins/properties.c:276: dir = rb→opendir(str_dirname);
plugins/random_folder_advance_config.c:70: dir = rb→opendir(fullpath);
plugins/random_folder_advance_config.c:165: dir_check = rb→opendir(formatted_line);
plugins/rockpaint.c:740: d = rb→opendir( bbuf );
plugins/rockpaint.c:754: d = rb→opendir( “/” );
plugins/rockpaint.c:915: d = rb→opendir( FONT_DIR “/” );
plugins/sokoban.c:925: if(!(dir = rb→opendir(dirname)))
plugins/stats.c:139: dir = rb→opendir(fullpath);
plugins/test_codec.c:763: dir = rb→opendir(dirpath);
plugins/test_disk.c:356: dir = rb→opendir(testbasedir);
plugins/test_disk.c:359: rb→splash(HZ, “opendir() failed.”);
plugins/test_disk.c:421: if 1) == NULL)
plugins/wavrecord.c:3774: if 2) == NULL)

so,
The bad calls in the core should be changed to use ft_load, and the plugins should either get a new function in the lib to grab some ram and manage the whole thing, or maybe its safe to just call ft_load there also?

or alternatively, we can go on ignoring the issue.

this patch is a WIP to update the bookmark system.

the change is to save “resume points” into the current .playlist_control file and copy that as a .bmark file. Right now it works fine to load and save (And even list the bookmark resume points).

What doesn’t work yet (in bmark.3.diff) is the recent bookmarks menu item.

So far, the only downside I have found is that when you open a .bmark file the current playlist has to be stopped (it gets bookmarked automatically so if you cancel the .bmark it will resume anyway).
I’m hopeing that this isnt a big enough issue to reject the patch.

this is part of a different patch which was changed to use the menu api instead of simplelist so im putting it up here incase anyone decides to make simplelist draw in a viewport.

The patch works (or did last time i tried it) but isnt commited because its not really needed just yet.

this patch adds a setting to choose what to do on a usb connection. default is to connect. options are charge only or connect..

holding *any* button will swap the outcome…

it works, but not perfectly… and the manual patch needs to be checked

The aim of this patch is to make releases as simple as possible... i.e the end goal would be to have someone run “$ ~/rockbox/tools/release/release.sh 3.3” and that would do everything except feed the cat...

the first version just modifies bins.pl to accept a version number which eventually gets passed to the Makefile and used in the source to set the version string in the source to “3.x-rBLAAA”.

This also defines RBRELEASE which can be used in the source to do stuff, for example, remove the debug menu in releases (if we decide to do that...) (RELEASE is defined in speex so had to add the RB prefix...)

Also, this changes the way configure is run to use command line args instead of passing input to it which is Just Wrong (TM) :p

This patch reimplements FS#11541 using the skin engine.

new skin tag %Vx(params) will talk whatever is in the params (unlimited….)..
Params can be any string or other skin tag (no conditionals just yet).
if the first option is - it will shutup anything currently talking. otherwise - is a voiced pause.
otherwise the only special string is the word “text” which says to spell the next tag (used when the value of the tag is usable in a conditional, i.e %cP need talk or you will get “1” or “2” :/ ).

quick examples:
%?mh<%Vx(-, %cl,-, %cM, text, %cP)> ← Talk the current hour, minute, am/pm when hold is toggled.

%?pE(15)<%?It<%Tx(-, %Ia, -, %It)» ← untested but should spell the next tracks title and artist when there is 15s left of the current track

at least in the 16bit lcd drivers, all functions which use transparency (or clear pixels) get the pixel colour from the backdrop image, completly ignoring the bg_pattern.

This isnt a problem except in skins where it is perfectly reasonable to want a background image for most of the screen but a solid colour for one or two viewports.

There is a tiny problem though, bg_pattern is set to LCD_DEFAULT_BG which is a valid colour, so we probably need to add a flag to the viewport struct to say if it should ignore the background image or not.

This adds a very simple way for themers to add some customisability to their themes without requiring the user to actually edit the skin files.

2 new tags are added:
%Sl(name, default, …) to configure a setting named "name" with the default value "default", the … is any amount (up to 32) of strings which are accepted values. The order here is the order to be used with the next tag.

%Sv(name) to get the value. If the users value isnt in the above list, or the setting file is missing the default value will be used… can be used with normal ?<> conditionals or %if() (both number and name should work)

For the user to actually use this he needs to create /.rockbox/wps/skinsettings.txt which has the same syntax as .cfg files. i.e "name: value" and #comment.

This first version is very stupid and loads the .txt file into every skin which has a least one %Sl(), but the final version will do this much smarterer. (Also these settings are static so the values should be loaded at parser time instead of runtime.)

Also a plugin could be made to dump the allowed values for the used theme (or all skins) to disk to make it easier.

Because there is no limit to what the settings could be, I'm hoping that defacto setting names will just happen, the theme site could help with this also. It isnt a big deal if theme A accepts different values for a setting than theme B though.

Lastly, I need to also add a simple way for yes/no type settings %?Sv(show aa)<%Cd> should be able to work… Actually, brain fart time… because the settings are loaded at parse time we could probably use the feature handling code to always only parse the correct branch which would save a bunch of skin buffer and render time.

recent %Tl and %T changes need adding to the manual… didnt want to fiddle with the table.

The change is now that both those tags accept as their first param a label which links them.

%T(foo, 0,50,25,25, volup)
%?Tl(foo, 1)<helllo|goodbye>

So that conditional will only go true when that foo region is pressed. the label is optional on both, if it is missing on the %Tl then it acts as now (timeout since last press on anywhere on the screen)

see http://svn.rockbox.org/viewvc.cgi?view=rev;revision=30461 and http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/Main/CustomWPS#Drawing_the_lists_using_a_skin and bug me on IRC when someone finds the time to add it. hopefully the wiki has enough info though - Jd

This patch does all the UI work needed to add a very nice folder chooser. It saves and loads the search directories from /.rockbox/database.txt.

This is only the UI change, someone else needs to figure out how to make it actually work.

The system changes to searching the entire tree below folders (so no more ignoring some folders and then looking for uningored folders.

this also uses a half done patch to make lists handle indenting, not done for the skin list but if this is actually wanted that can be easily added

in svn settings_apply() is called whenever a config is loaded (after boot) regardless of what is in the file. even an empty one will cause a full settings_apply() (which is slow, causes disk access and will stop music thanks to the buflib users).

This patch will apply settings individually if they have a callback registered, and if no settings without a callback are applied it doesnt bother calling settings_apply().

This uses the same code as FS#12330 but uses it for the random folder advance config plugin instead.

I've nuked the entire plugin so not everything is reimplemented yet but it currently works.

Two problems:
1) it uses the \t code in the lists which isnt great (indented lines which try to scroll don't quite work and it is not implemented for the skinned list yet)
2) It cant be used to select a whole sub tree, so if you have thousands of folders it will be very tedious to select them all.

It’s still a bit rough around the edges, but I’ve written a new game plugin called NBackBox. It’s an implementation of the dual-n-back exercise, discussed in this Wired article: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/smart_software . In short, it’s a game that improves your brain’s working memory. I’ve tried to keep it as close to how the game was described in the original paper.

Any feedback/bug reports/code suggestions much appreciated :)

Joe

This is a new plugin that mimics the open source PC program mnemosyne (http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/), a program that assists with memorizing flash cards. The plugin is fully functional, but it still needs a menu and assumes that the user has setup the folders it needs for storing cards before running (if you don’t create them it will crash). I’ll fix these issues in the near future, but in the mean time any feedback is appreciated :)

According to http://download.rockbox.org/manual/rockbox-sansac200/rockbox-buildch5.html#x8-930005.8 the power button is supposed to exit the recording menu, but when I press it nothing happens. I have to power off the device and power it on again to get back to the main menu.

I’ve noticed that many plugins don’t have the Playback Control menu even though they could. I’m going to have a go at fixing that.

I’ve categorised the plugins which could use the menu like so:

Already have a standard-ish menu (not bitmap), it just needs to be added:
bubbles
chessbox
chopper
minesweeper
reversi
superdom
wormlet
xobox
clock
fireworks
vu_meter

These are the easiest case, it’s just a matter of adding the menu item.

Don’t have a menu that makes sense to add Playback Control to (either they don’t have a menu at all, or they only have a start-menu that can’t be usefully returned to):
flipit
invadrox
maze
robotfindskitten
rockblox
rockblox1d
rocklife
sliding_puzzle
snake
snake2
spacerocks
star
stopwatch
mandelbrot
oscilloscope

These are a mixed bunch. Some could actually use a menu, and some could just have a key assigned to bring up the Playback Control menu. More involved than the first bunch in general.

Already have a menu, but it’s really custom in some way. They either need to be switched to more standard menus, or something special needs to be done:
brickmania
chessclock
pegbox
rockpaint

These will probably be the most work.

Let me know if I forgot any plugins, or if you think it doesn’t make sense to add the menu to a plugin that I’ve listed above.

Attached is a patch for the first bunch. The others will be coming eventually.

I’d appreciate it if you leave this FS entry open until I get to the second and third bunch, even if the first bunch happens to get commited to svn.

space80 is a digital-plate-like reverb effect, i dump it from my soundcard driver and translate it to c code, the original author is stylus02, thanks him for teaching me many things about the dsp theory:)

about the speed:
eats about 21.86MHz cpu on a cowon d2 target

when rockbox startup, a loud popping sound will be produced to the output

if plug off the headphone before startup, and plug in on after startup, the popping sound also produced;

if plug it before startup and hear the popping, then re-plug the headphone will not hear any popping again(until i restart the rockbox)

In my customized rockbox theme, there is a short (half second?) but irritating delay before the progressbar is drawn. This delay is apparent when pressing a button to turn on the backlight, so it doesn’t show up in the simulator. Here is a video of the issue happening: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LAfW8-BjjE

I’ve tried moving the progressbar to the very top of the wps. I also tried changing the wps around to have each icon in a seperate viewport which didn’t help.

I’m using rockbox version 27667.

Hardware: iriver H140, iriver H340, Sansa Clip+

Rockbox version: 3.10 downloaded from http://www.rockbox.org/download/byhand.cgi I have also reproduced bug on official firmwares as old as 3.5.1, and on my own builds.

Settings: 100% default except for enabling EQ and setting an EQ i.e. using graphical EQ to set LS -0.5 at 60Hz or LS +1.5 at 60Hz

Expected behaviour: music track, however loaded, starts in normal way, with no sounds other than those decoded from file. Restarting the track results in the same normal playback.

Actual behaviour: music track starts with an obvious and intrusive click. This happens whether the track is loaded individually, or if it is the first track of an album loaded via .m3u playlist. When using playlist subsequent tracks play normally, without a click. But restarting any track causes the click.

It makes no difference if the EQ Low Shelf Filter settings are a big change from flat, or a tiny difference. To induce the bug it’s enough that EQ is enabled and LS is not set to be flat i.e. just an increment of +/- 0.5 dB is enough, and changing the cut off frequency or the Q factor made no difference.

This bug is noticeable with any track that starts quietly, and especially with tracks from CDs that are not mastered to modern high levels.

The Clip does tend to make its own small click on manual track changes and some button presses; I am not confusing this with the bug I describe. On the irivers I get a single click, while on the Clip I get a very unmusical double click.

I’ve attached my H140 config to illustrate that the config is unremarkable and that apart from the EQ it is at default. If anyone needs me to try stuff or make any changes or try a patch that is fine, but I would prefer it to be on an iriver because the Sansa OF database refresh is so annoying.

Rockbox 3.1.3 on Clip+ (also iriver h140/340. also previous versions of rockbox).

Some HE-AAC files play back at half speed.

Example file info (comment/lyric fields removed as very long):

General
Complete name : Witness_-_The_Khmer_Rouge_take_power.m4a
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Apple audio with iTunes info
Codec ID : M4A
File size : 4.09 MiB
Duration : 9mn 0s
Overall bit rate mode : Constant
Overall bit rate : 63.5 Kbps
Album : Witness
Album/Performer : BBC Radio
Track name : The Khmer Rouge take power
Grouping : News
Performer : BBC World Service
Composer : BBC iPlayer
Genre : News
Recorded date : 2013-04-18T08:50:00+01:00
Tagged date : UTC 2013-04-18 09:07:25
Writing application : Lavf55.0.100

Audio
ID : 1
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile : HE-AAC / LC
Codec ID : 40
Duration : 9mn 0s
Duration_LastFrame : -1ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 62.7 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz / 24.0 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 4.04 MiB (99%)

30 second sample attached (cut with ffmpeg, full metadata)

Forum report http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,43012.0.html

By default, whenever you choose the <All Tracks> option from the database menu, the list of results returned defaults to the standard track name format, i.e. “%02d. %s” tracknum title. What I wanted was to be able to define the format that gets applied to the <All Tracks> option, dependent on the current menu level. So for example, if I had browsed to genre→artist→<All Tracks> it would return the list of all tracks for all artists for the given genre and I wanted the track names to be formated with:

       	"%s %s %02d. %s" artist album tracknum title

and then sorted into order, since I already know what genre the tracks are for.

Similarly, if I simply browsed to genre→artist→album→<All Tracks>, it would return the list of all tracks for the selected genre and artist, but I want the track names to be formated with:

"%s %02d. %s" album tracknum title

so when it’s sorted, I get the tracks grouped only by album and tracknumber, since I already know what artist the tracks are for.

This patch attempts to address this issue by allowing users to define custom <All Tracks> formats in the tagnavi_custom.config file. Thus, sort order can be controlled by how you format the track names, just as it works in base Rockbox.

The premise behind the code is that if the <All Tracks> menu option is chosen, Rockbox will look for formats with a certain naming convention defined by concatenating the tag names of the parent menu levels with “.” characters and finally appending an “.All” identifier. So in the first example above where we had browsed to genre→artist→<All Tracks>, Rockbox will look for all formats called:

"genre.artist.All"

and then cycle through them to see if the appropriate clauses defined on the format are met. Similarly, for the second example where we had browsed to genre→artist→album→<All Tracks>, Rockbox will look for the format called:

"genre.artist.album.All"

As in base Rockbox, it will cycle through all applicable formats and apply the first format it comes across that meets all the clauses defined on the format. One minor change I had to make to get the relevant tags loaded for the search results was to add the tags defined in the clauses of all matching format names to the tagcache search, but not add the clauses themselves.

So now, in the tagnavi_custom.config file to illustrate the first example, I have defined 4 formats called “genre.artist.All” to format the final display name based on whether the artist/album tags are actually defined on the mp3’s in the database.

%format “genre.artist.All” “%s - %s - %02d. %s” artist album tracknum title ? artist !~ “<Untagged>” album !~ “<Untagged>” tracknum > “0” %format “genre.artist.All” “%s - %02d. %s” album tracknum title ? album !~ “<Untagged>” tracknum > “0” %format “genre.artist.All” “%s - %02d. %s” artist tracknum title ? artist !~ “<Untagged>” tracknum > “0” %format “genre.artist.All” “%02d. %s” tracknum title ? tracknum > “0”

The downside of this approach is that in order to have this style of functionality for every <All Tracks> menu option, I defined a lot of formats. As such, I had to increase the maximum number of formats from 32 to 96 in order to cope with my formatting schemes. I also increased the maximum number of tag filters from 4 to 8. Now this obviously increases the amount of memory allocated for formats, which will have an impact on available audio buffer size. The attached tagnavi_custom.config file shows the various “All” formats I’ve added and it’s pretty comprehensive in the way it handles missing tags, so technically, if your music library is properly tagged, you should never need all of the formats so you could easily reduce the maximum number of formats.

My principal concern with this patch is in terms of the memory usage of increasing the maximum number of formats and number of tag filters allowed. I’m not aware of a memory profiler for cygwin, but then I hadn’t used cygwin before playing with Rockbox - so any pointers would be helpful.

The second piece of functionality I wanted was in the handling of the “strip” functionality. Base Rockbox has an all or nothing approach; if the global format found for the list of tracks contains a strip modifier, then it applies the strip to ALL track names, even if the subsequent formatting of the track does not contain a strip modifier. I wanted Rockbox to only strip tracknames if a strip modifier was defined on the format that is applied to the track. This patch fixes this problem.

This works fine on my Sansa e280 with a full 8Gb drive and a full 2Gb micro-SD card. It’s formatted close to 1000 tracks with no noticeable difference in processing time, and I’ve not come across any out of memory errors on my e280, but I haven’t tested it on any other mp3 player so I would recommend you test this first using the appropriate simulator.

Note that this patch incorporates the year album patch  FS#8051  as the code is all tied up in the same files.

Some collections (such as ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/games/amusements/life/dblifelib-2.tgz) use an extension of “.l” instead of “.cells” for what appears to be the same file format (same comment character and same characters for dead and live cell).

This patch just adds an entry to viewers.config so that Rockbox will treat .l files as supported and open them with Rocklife.