Topic: Repeat + Shuffle [Repeat One, Repeat Album, ideas for Shuffle]

Ok, so we've added a nice shiny button and a menu for the FOUR new repeat states; Repeat none, one, album, and all. However, I'm trying to come up with the behaviour for each of these modes when shuffle is enabled. Here are my thoughts:

Shuffle off:
  Repeat None: It goes through the playlist in order and stops.

  Repeat One: It repeats the same song. If you hit next, it stays on the same song.

  Repeat Album: It repeats the album. After the last song in the album, it goes on to the first song in the album.

  Repeat All: It goes through the playlist in order, goes back to the start and keeps going.

Shuffle on:
  Repeat None: It goes through the playlist in a random order, and stops once all songs have been played.

  Repeat One: It repeats the same song. If you hit next, it stays on the same song. If you otherwise start playing a new song, it becomes the new repeated song.

  Repeat Album: It repeats the album in a random order. Hitting next will jump to a random song in the album. If you double click or otherwise start playing a song out of that album, it plays the new album in a random order.

  Repeat All: It goes through the playlist in random order, once through, it picks a new random order and keeps going.

Re: Repeat + Shuffle [Repeat One, Repeat Album, ideas for Shuffle]

Sounds great to me!  Makes intuitive sense and seems logical.

While we're on the topic of Shuffle, one question:  I know you're planning to redo the Shuffle code.  Will we be able to step backwards through the last few shuffle picks without disrupting the process?  Sometimes I'm busy while listening -- say, if I'm washing dishes -- and would like to find out what the last few songs were without causing the shuffle algorithm to reinitialize.

Re: Repeat + Shuffle [Repeat One, Repeat Album, ideas for Shuffle]

Re: Repeat + Shuffle [Repeat One, Repeat Album, ideas for Shuffle]

Re: Repeat + Shuffle [Repeat One, Repeat Album, ideas for Shuffle]

Here's something else about Shuffle. (mentioned long ago)


If Shuffle is on, and you double-click another song, you will now be at whatever point of the shuffle order that that song is at.

As in, if that song just so happens to be the last song in the shuffle order, well, too bad, after that song, playback stops. (or if that song is near the end of the shuffle order, then a few more songs and Cog stops)


This has happened to me.

I have a huge playlist of many, many songs. I turn on Shuffle, then as it's playing, I jump to a certain song. But then after the song, Cog stops. I was like, "What the heck? This playlist is huge! How could it be finished that fast??!"

Just because I was unlucky and chose the last song. I hope there'll be a way to get around this issue.


What Winamp does is, I believe, to completely ignore that song, as in after that song is done, it'll resume the shuffle order.

This way, you won't accidentally jump to the end or near the end of the shuffle order.

Not saying this is the best way, but it's at least one solution.

Re: Repeat + Shuffle [Repeat One, Repeat Album, ideas for Shuffle]

Our current solution is that if you want to keep on going indefinitely, just hit Repeat All. It will just go on shuffling until the world explodes. If you then by accident hit the last song in the shuffle list, it'll just keep on trucking.

Re: Repeat + Shuffle [Repeat One, Repeat Album, ideas for Shuffle]

just a suggestion, with no knowledge of how the shuffle order is stored etc, but...
how about when you double-click a song, it is moved (inserted) into the current place in the shuffle order, from wherever it was originally? so when it finishes, cog moves onto the song it was originally going to play next, but this way (unlike the winamp-style ignoring that remain mentioned) the double-clicked song doesn't still exist elsewhere in the order - so there's no chance of you hearing the same thing again a couple of songs later smile

Last edited by hippy dave (2008-02-24 07:45:11)

Re: Repeat + Shuffle [Repeat One, Repeat Album, ideas for Shuffle]

Re: Repeat + Shuffle [Repeat One, Repeat Album, ideas for Shuffle]

I think I may have proposed a long, long time ago something like what hippy dave described. (although he described it in probably half as many words but twice as comprehensible than what I wrote XD )

It makes a lot of sense (and does prevent repeated tracks unlike the "ignore" method)... but now that I think about it, it can get complicated if you consider certain cases.

For instance, what happens if in Shuffle mode, you pass, say, song #5, but later, you double-click song #5?

Do you return to song #5's position in the Shuffle? (which I think would be bad)
Or is song #5 moved from its original position in the Shuffle to the "current" position?? (kinda weird, but... at least you don't end up at an "earlier" location)

Re: Repeat + Shuffle [Repeat One, Repeat Album, ideas for Shuffle]

Perhaps I've misread, but i think the following is a more correct behavior based on user interacting with cog:


shuffle on &&  repeat one:  hit next -> the  NEXT song should be the one repeated rather than the current song.

When you hit "next" and nothing different happens, that implies user input is being ignored or a 'buggy' interface.

Re: Repeat + Shuffle [Repeat One, Repeat Album, ideas for Shuffle]

Re: Repeat + Shuffle [Repeat One, Repeat Album, ideas for Shuffle]

Re: Repeat + Shuffle [Repeat One, Repeat Album, ideas for Shuffle]

Re: Repeat + Shuffle [Repeat One, Repeat Album, ideas for Shuffle]

Re: Repeat + Shuffle [Repeat One, Repeat Album, ideas for Shuffle]

Hi all. Nice work on Cog, it's become my main Mac music player.

As to shuffle in Cog 0.07 (r635) I see how broken it is because I'm someone who plays music 24/7. I have almost 2000 songs in the playlist, and yet shuffle mode winds up playing a fraction of it.

There's a couple of extra features that would be nice, I'll drop the ideas here. If I get some time maybe I'll download the source and try my hand at Xcode (I'm a software developer, I've just never had the pleasure/displeasure/whatever of using Xcode before).

One thing would be a "reset shuffle" button, making Cog reshuffle the entire playlist.

Another really useful feature would be to be able to -see- the shuffling it does. Maybe a "sort by play order"? Audion used to allow this in their playlist (though it was kind of broken) and I found it extremely useful to re-randomize the list and then see how it randomized the list.

If you are delving into plugins, being able to affect the shuffle order by plugin (assuming you can read genre information from the plugin) would be awesome.

Again, thanks for some great open source work.

Re: Repeat + Shuffle [Repeat One, Repeat Album, ideas for Shuffle]