Change behaviour of layout option

Submitted by vectis on Wed, 2017-11-15 21:31

Forums:

Currently, the layout option allows you to switch between the standard view (directory on the left, playlist on the right) and single pane view - either directory or playlist, dependant on which one has focus.
Would it be more intuitive to simply be able to cycle through the three possible variables?
I recently setup a playlist and then switched to playlist view. After closing the moc client and then restarting it some time later, I was temporarily stumped as to why I was unable to switch back to playlist view (this was because the client will default on startup, to having focus on the directory side of the twin panel view)

tomaszg

Wed, 2017-11-15 21:38

I don't really understand what is exactly your problem. You can cycle through your 3 chosen possible layouts. Just define them accordingly in your config file.

Do you mean that you want to add a possibility to remember last used layout after MOC restart? I'm afraid it would raise problems when you have multiple clients active at once.

vectis

Wed, 2017-11-15 21:42

I didn't realize that you could define them in the config file. I simply thought it might be simpler to be able to cycle through all three possible screens by default.

tomaszg

Wed, 2017-11-15 21:46

Maybe to you, but different things are convenient to different people. That's why it is configurable. You can define up to 3 layouts, and also check out the "CanStartInPlaylist" option.

kmws

Wed, 2017-11-15 21:39

Would it be more intuitive to simply be able to cycle through the three possible variables?

You mean like with the "toggle_layout" hotkey?

As for the layout remembering, there were already some suggestions to do that (see thread 306, 603, 900...), but I'm not sure what's the current status, probably jcf could tell more.

vectis

Wed, 2017-11-15 21:47

[quote] You mean like with the "toggle_layout" hotkey? [quote]

No, I mean every time that I press 'l' the layout would change.

default = twin view
first press of 'l' = directory view
second press of 'l' = playlist view
press 'l' again = back to twin view

jcf

Thu, 2017-11-16 09:09

It seems to me that there are four distinct concepts involved here:

  1. Layout:- These are defined in the configuration file and can be cycled through using the 'l' key (by default). The first layout, layout1, is the default layout which will be displayed initially.
  2. Focus:- You can move between the directory and playlist panels using the 'TAB' key (by default).
  3. Persistance:- Where the layout selected is remembered across client sessions.
  4. Initialisation:- Where the focus is set at start.

I think one needs to keep separate the concept of layout and focus. Each layout has both a directory and playlist panel, and being able to switch between the two without disturbing the layout selection is a useful feature.

The problem with persistance, as tomaszg points out, is what happens with multiple clients. It's probably unlikely that a single user switches between layouts with any regularity, and it's also unlikely that many users use a different layout on different clients simultaneously. So setting the preferred layout as layout1 is probably sufficient.

As for initialisation, the CanStartInPlaylist option has already been mentioned, and launching MOC using a playlist filename on the command line will cause it to start with the playlist loaded and in focus.