I am pleased to announce beta 4 of Quasar Media Player.
This new version introduces some new features and big improvements in terms of performance and memory-usage.
The previously separate last.fm Audioscrobbler QScrobbler has been integrated into Quasar as add-on.
This release also marks the introduction of the Cover Art Downloader which uses the new open-source katastrophos.net Cover Art search engine to download cover art images for the new Cover Art Flow album browser.

Binaries for the previous platforms (Sharp Qtopia and pdaXrom) along with new binaries for Windows and OS X (universal) are available on the project’s homepage.

It’s been some time since the last update. In my previous post I mentioned I was in the process of setting up a nightly build system. This system has been running silently since May.
I guess it is finally time for me to officially announce the nightly builds of Quasar Media Player:

http://www.katastrophos.net/downloads/quasar/nightly/

Along with the most current sourcecode tarball, binaries are available for 4 platforms:
Windows (win32), OS X (universal binary), Sharp Qtopia and pdaXrom Linux (both for Zaurus PDA)
The Windows version comes in two styles: a generic setup (EXE) and a self-contained portable version (7z archive)

Enjoy and please leave a comment.

First step is to install Wine either as super user or by using sudo:

sudo apt-get install wine

As normal user fire up your X server and your favourite terminal application and get the latest Inno Setup QuickStart pack:

mkdir /tmp/innosetup
cd /tmp/innosetup
wget http://files.jrsoftware.org/ispack/ispack-5.2.3.exe
wine ./ispack-5.2.3.exe

This will start the installer in Wine. Note, for the installation you will need a running X11 server since the installer obviously is graphical. If you have not set up Wine before, the default location C:\Program Files\Inno Setup 5 will install to ~/.wine/drive_c/Programme/Inno Setup 5.

Luckily the Inno Setup compiler offers a command line interface, ISCC.exe, which will run in Wine without the necessity of having a X server running. So it is ideally suited for automated runs.

Here is a simple wrapper shell script called iscc:

#!/bin/sh
unset DISPLAY
scriptname=$1
[ -f "$scriptname" ] && scriptname=$(winepath -w "$scriptname")
wine "C:\Program Files\Inno Setup 5\ISCC.exe" "$scriptname" "$2" "$3" "$4" "$5" "$6" "$7" "$8" "$9"

I installed this script in my local bin directory (~/bin) and added it to the PATH environment variable.
This will allow running the Inno Setup compiler from anywhere and it also makes it very easy to integrate into a build script. You can even feed a script via stdin, e.g. something like:

iscc - < ./myscript.iss

So, I was wondering the other day how to implement a functionality similar to Firefox’s “Open Containing Folder” or OS X’s “Reveal In Finder”.
It turned out to be extremely simple. Here is the Pascal/Delphi-Code:

uses
  ShellAPI;

function RevealInExplorer(const Filename: string; ShowExplorerWithFoldersBar: Boolean = True): Boolean;
var
  Params: string;
begin
  if FileExists(Filename) or DirectoryExists(Filename) then
  begin
    Params := Format('/select,"%s"', [Filename]);

    if ShowExplorerWithFoldersBar then
      Params := '/e,' + Params;

    ShellExecute(0, 'open', 'explorer.exe', PChar(Params), nil, SW_SHOWNORMAL);

    Result := True;
  end
  else
    Result := False;
end;

Here is a simple way to disable or enable whole code blocks with just two slashes:

PHP / C++:

/*
  Block (commented block)
//*/

///*
  Block (active block)
//*/

Object Pascal/Delphi:

(*
  Block (commented block)
//*)

//(*
  Block (active block)
//*)

Alternatively you can use { and } in the Object Pascal/Delphi example.

Double-Slash-Whole-Block-Switching (Object Pascal/Delphi only)

The Object Pascal dialect used in Delphi supports three ways of commenting code, two for commenting whole blocks ( { } and (* *) ) and one for commenting lines ( // ).
We can exploit this feature to switch between two code blocks easily and fast:

Block 2 is in the enabled state:

{
  Block 1  (commented block)
(*}
  Block 2  (active block)
//*)

Note, I am just adding two slashes in front of the first comment block to activate it again – similar to Double-Slash-Whole-Block-Commenting trick above. This will also magically disable the second block due to the way the comment marks are arranged:

//{
  Block 1  (active block)
(*}
  Block 2  (commented block)
//*)

These tricks are probably applicable to other programming languages as well. Please let me know.

void QProcess::writeToStdin( const QString& buf )
{
    QByteArray tmp = buf.local8Bit();
    tmp.resize( tmp.size() - 1 ); // drop the implicit \0
    writeToStdin( tmp );
}

should be:

void QProcess::writeToStdin( const QString& buf )
{
    QByteArray tmp = buf.local8Bit();
    tmp.resize( buf.length() );
    writeToStdin( tmp );
}

Verision 3.3.7-7 includes the latter method, same as the latest Qt 4.3 sources. So, it’s actually a regression in 3.3.x-8. If you require the latest Qt 3 / Q…/Free for your open source application and need to write to some other processes’ stdin, you can just use a wrapper workaround that uses the latter method and directly uses writeToStdin( const QByteArray& buf ) instead of the QString variant.

NOTE: You can skip over this rather technical part, if you’re not interested in the details. You’ll find the workaround below.

This hex value is actually a combination of defined bit flags. After some tinkering I found that the hex value 0×80 will enable font smoothing for the connection.
The file constants.h of the rdesktop sources contains these flags:

#define RDP5_DISABLE_NOTHING	0x00
#define RDP5_NO_WALLPAPER	0x01
#define RDP5_NO_FULLWINDOWDRAG	0x02
#define RDP5_NO_MENUANIMATIONS	0x04
#define RDP5_NO_THEMING		0x08
#define RDP5_NO_CURSOR_SHADOW	0x20
#define RDP5_NO_CURSORSETTINGS	0x40	/* disables cursor blinking */

So, naturally an additional flag constant can be defined like this:

#define RDP5_ENABLE_FONT_SMOOTHING 0x80

The file rdesktop.c would have to be extended preferably with an additional argument that controls the font smoothing.
If you want to use font smoothing with rdesktop now you have to combine the flags (bitwise OR, addition will do too) and specify the result via the -x switch.

Here is the workaround for the three defaults mentioned above:

rdesktop -x 0x8F mywinserver   # equals the modem default + font smoothing
rdesktop -x 0x81 mywinserver   # equals the broadband default + font smoothing
rdesktop -x 0x80 mywinserver   # equals the LAN default + font smoothing

Today I’m releasing QScrobbler: a Last.fm / Audioscrobbler add-on for Quasar Media Player.

As with Quasar, I’ve been using QScrobbler for almost a year now and finally decided it is ready for the public. ;)
For more details please visit the project’s homepage here.

Finally! Almost a year after the first mentioning of my new media player for the Sharp Zaurus and after several development hiati, I’m today officially releasing the Quasar Media Player for SharpROM- and pdaXrom-based distributions.
For more details please visit the project’s homepage here.

• ability to set and control Treble, Bass and 3D stereo sound enhancement;
• ability to set and control various cut-off frequencies supported by the sound chip;
• output source selection (Autodetect, Internal Speaker, Headphone).

These features can be easily accessed via a Qt based mixer control app or directly via a /proc/driver/wm8750 kernel interface.

Both, the driver and the control app are available for Sharp ROM / Cacko ROM and pdaXrom beta 3 / pdaXii13.

Kernel patches are available for Sharp’s Linux kernel 2.4.20 and can be downloaded here:
http://www.katastrophos.net/zaurus/sources/wm8750mixer/
(No kernel 2.6.x support yet. Sorry folks.)

By default the audio driver is compiled into the kernel. Sharp didn’t compile it as module, so it can’t be easily replaced. Same goes for most third party ROMs. You’ll have to reflash your kernel to install the new driver.
In case you don’t want to roll your own kernel, I’ve made pre-compiled kernels available for all supported ROMs and models here:

http://www.katastrophos.net/zaurus/kernels/v55/

The control app and start up scripts are available as IPK here:

wm8750mixer_0.9_arm.ipk – WM8750 mixer for Sharp ROM / Cacko ROM
wm8750mixer_0.92_armv5tel.ipk – WM8750 mixer for pdaXrom beta 3 / pdaXii13

On a side note, we’ve been discussing the extended features of the WM8750 audio chip for quite some while in this thread over at the OESF forums. I have the feeling the driver and the Qt application have received a fair bit of testing. So, that’s why I am officially releasing it today.