RE: xPLMediaNet web interface question

["Tony Tofts" <tony@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> Is there a way to have the station logos of
> my shoutcast streams displayed in the way that album covers
> are displayed with my albums?

Hi Bill,

Have broken my reply into 5 sections, quick answer, long answer, a
solution,
a question, a request

The short answer:

Not currenty, but yes you should be able too in a future release

The long answer:

The great things about the 'sources' is that _they_ control the menu's. A
device/web simply tells the source I want a list of items, my first item on
display is 'A' I have n rows available and I want a list or to move around
or select an entry

If a source declares itself as graphical then a device/web can choose to
say
instead I want a matrix of items, my first item on display is 'A' and I
have
x columns by y rows etc etc.

In the first scenario the source simply returns a list of items upto a
maximum of n

In the second scenario the source agains returns the list of items, but
also
a list of artwork

This all means only the minimum amount of data (what's currently on the
screen/web page) has to be found and passed around, and the device/web
never
has to know anything about the source

It's not till getting back to the MVP (which can easily skin the items)
that
your request occurred to me, since skinning 50+ radio stations is a major
task whereas providing the option to provide shoutcasts/queries etc as
graphical sources by-passes the need for all that skinning and means the
web
interface can also support the grpahics without any major change

The solution:

I'm going to expand the support of graphics to sources other than the
jukebox

The question:

How to handle if graphics are available. If I make the shoutcast declare
itself as graphical then all graphical devices (mvp, web server) will want
to display as a matrix - even if artwork is not available

It seems to me the best option is to add graphical support to appropriate
sources (shoutcasts being the most obvious) and have 2 new items in
loader.xml

<settings graphical="y" allowblank="n" />

Where 'graphical' tells the source whether to declare itself as graphical,
so users who don't have images don't just get a matrix of blank squares,
and
the 'allowblank' (already supported by jukebox source) to say if I don't
have a graphic for the item then ignore the item

In the case of shoutcasts I'm thinking the best way for it to hold it's
graphics is:

A) for top level (where you have more than 1 xml list) have a graphic in
the
same folder with the same name as the list

B) for the inidividual items, have a sub-folder (named the same as the xml)
and the graphics with the station titles in these sub-folders.

Queries would be the same, and this could probably be extended to other
sources too though graphic locations would vary - but this is down to each
individual source so not an issue.

Does this seem ok with everyone? Any thoughts?

The request:

Bill, if you have some sample logo's (a fair number if possible) available
please could you zip them up and send them to me offlist to use for testing
please?

Many thanks
Tony