Rompr / Blog: Recent posts

The project homepage has been moved to

https://gitq.com/fatg3erman/RompR

due to continuing unreliability issues with Sourceforge.

Roll up! It's ready! Rompr 1.09 has been a while but it has a heap of great stuff in it. The mobile version has seen some attention, there is an all-new tags-and-ratings manager with more sort and search options. Spotify users now have The Discoverator which will recommend new albums to them based on their listening habits, oh and a host more cool new stuff. Download and enjoy!

The day after releasing 1.06 I found a problem with displaying albums without covers in some browsers, which I fixed. I hope.

A few bugfixes in a few areas. Internet radio has recieved some attention, as has podcast support. Fixed a bug with Spotify search that was causing unwanted entries to appear in the music collection, and a few other things.

It's been a while. But I've been busy. There are a lot of updates in this release and a couple of important things to mention so let's watse no more time:

Important Changes
The first thing to mention is that, because I've done a lot of work on making the album art side of things work better, the first time you load the new version of rompr it will have to update all your albumart and your database to reflect the changes. This will take some time and the page will appear to be not loading. Do not refresh it. Be patient, monitor the process with 'top' if it makes you feel better. eventually it will load.
If you're on a slow machine and your browser times out, wait a bit longer. Retrying the page won't hurt much but a little patience will do you better. It will get there eventually. I don't have a slow machine on which to test so I'm afradi I'm as in the dark as you are.... read more

I cannot remember what's in this release. Unlike some other projects I don't do version control or commit messages, because this is supposed to be fun. Some bugfixes for sure. Something to do with PHP 7 being even crapper than PHP 5 was, or something along those lines. Also a lot of new fonts. Mostly new fonts. The zip file has got much bigger, so probably mostly new fonts. I like fonts. Yeah. Keep it funky.

Another small bugfix release. I'm too tired to remember what, but there were a few problems brought up by the release of Mopidy 2.0, so I hope this addresses them.

Another small bugfix release. There are a few small things that I've fixed, nothing major. Playlist editing is now supported for Mopidy, seeing as Mopidy 2.0 supports it.

0.74 is another bugfix release, most notable for the problem that was reported relating to radio stations with MPD. There are several other small bugs fixed also.

0.73 contains a few bugfixes and a couple of new features, including the oft-requested search box in the National Radio panel that I said I'd never do :) There's also an updated German translation from Frank Schraven. Thanks, Frank. :)

0.71 fixes a few bugs that inevitably cropped up immediately after releasing 0.70. Seeing as I was also working on other things there is a new collection sort option and this version should use a little less memory and load faster than the previous one.

Whatever you do, do it funky.

Mopidy support continues!

Rompr 0.70 is a major update and contains important changes. These have been prompted by recent changes to Mopidy and also my desire to make the code easier to maintain.

Mopidy is still supported, however Rompr now uses Mopidy's MPD frontend. Support for the HTTP frontend has been removed.
The way the Music Collection is built has been completely rewritten, and is actually better now. You can choose which backends you want to build your collection from and it uses far less memory - Low Memory Mode is no longer required.
Mopidy 1.1 or later is required.... read more

Due to recent changes in Mopidy's API I can no longer guarantee correct operation of Rompr with Mopidy. Your Music Collection may fail to build. Other functions should continue to work for the time being but over the course of time, Music Collection support and Playlist support will fail, certainly by the time Mopidy 2.0 is released, and probably before.
Much discussion with the Mopidy developers has failed to resolve this problem. ... read more

A few fixes following a couple of regressions following Mopidy's update to version 1.0.0

This version is also (finally) able to extract track names from radio streams with Mopidy, now that mopidy supports that.

NOTE: The PPA release of this version will be delayed - and may never happen. PPA users who really need this release might prefer to update from here from now on.

A few bugfixes, and an updated Italian translation by Luca Morisi. Thanks Luca!

A new release with a whole swathe of improvements and new features. The docs will get updated over the next few days but here's a summary

New themes, new icons, better looking interface
Updated mobile version is now faster and easier to use
Spotify info panel which for Mopidy users allows browsing of albums and artists, and tracks to be added directly into the current tracklist.
Loads of new Smart Radio options - favourite tracks, favourite artists, favourite albums, spotify reccomendations etc.
Much improved performance, especially with Mopidy
SQLite is now supported as the default Collection backend, meaning everyone can use tagging and rating without having to set up a MySQL server.
'Composer' tags can now be used to sort the Collection
The collection can be displayed by Artist or by Album
The Artists which appear at the top of the collection (previously 'Various Artists') can be configured
The prefixes to ignore when sorting (previously 'The') can be configured, which will make non-English speakers able to sort their collections the way they like
Collection updates are now performed 'in the background' - meaning you can continue adding tracks even while the update is going on
Collection updates can be automated using a cron job
The 'Now Playing' area can show Composer and Performer information as well as just 'Artist', if your tracks have those tags.
Improved Podcasts display
People using the mopidy-podcasts backends will be able to subscribe to new podcasts directly from Rompr
Much better support for some of the more recent mopidy extensions (eg Bassdrive, Internet Archive) which didn't work in rompr 0.52
Loads more keyboard shortcuts

A minor update with a couple of bugfixes.

Added an option to fade in the alarm clock (Mopidy only, sorry mpd people)
Added an option to ignore unplayable tracks when building the Music Collection (only relevant to Mopidy)
Added a German translation by Frank Schraven. Thanks Frank :)

A minor update with a new feature and a couple of bugfixes

1. Fix bug where users of MPD 0.18 could find their Music Collection has strange corrupted entries. If you've suffered from this problem you must delete your rompr database and start again if you're using the SQL backend I'm afraid.
2. The return of the 'Hide Info Panel' option
3. A Rating manager, in the same vein as the tag manager
4. Updated French translation
5. Italian translation by Luca Morisi... read more

Loads of new stuff this time around.

1. Tracks can be tagged and rated. Mopidy users can add ratings and tags to tracks from any backend - including Spotify and SoundCloud; those tracks will show up in the Music Collection along with your local files. This requires installing an SQL server, see the updated installation instructions.
2. For Mopidy users, all enabled backends are now used to create the Music Collection - thus tracks that are in Spotify playlists will now appear there along with Local files, Google Play Music, etc.
3. /rompr/?setup has ben extended to allow SQL server parameters to be configured. Also you can now configure a proxy server.
4. Two new themes and the ability to choose fonts and font sizes keep RompR looking fresh.
5. If you enable tagging and rating you can import your tags and ratings from your Last.FM library. For Mopidy users, doing this will search for tracks on Spotify (as well as locally) and add them to your Music Collection.
6. A major code refactor has neatened everything up. Performance should be improved, especially on mobile devices.
7. File browsing is now supported for Mopidy users, meaning that you can once again use SoundCloud, amongst other things. Note that there is no search facility in Mopidy's browse function, so there is no search box in the files list for Mopidy users.
8. Mopidy users no longer need to have the MPD frontend enabled in Mopidy.
9. Sadly, Last.FM are discontinuing their subscription radio service, so all Last.FM radio functionality has been removed from RompR.
10. Images will no longer be displayed on the Discogs info panel page, since Discogs have now blocked all my nefarious methods of downloading them.
11. Lyrics support has been improved - if your local files are tagged with lyrics then RompR should be able to display them.
12. A French translation has been kindly provided by SourceForge user 'zargloub'.
13. There is an alarm clock which will make RompR start playing at a preset time.
14. Due to some necessary changes to the way favourite radio stations work, you may find you have to delete and re-add some favourite stations. Sorry about that.
15. A few other things too. I'll get around to documenting it all at some point but for now I need a break and just wanted to get this release out.

Lots of good new stuff in this one.

Non-english speakers have a lot to thank Vitaly Ignatov for:

1) Vitaly provided a patch that allowed RompR to use the browser's default language for getting Last.FM info. This set me off on making Wikipedia do it too.

2) Vitaly suggested I make RompR translatable, so I did.

Vitaly also contributed the patches that have finally permitted me to add custom scrollbars to replace the awful old browser default ones, and to make the playlist scroll to the current track.... read more

The next version of RompR will support translations - the interface can be translated into any language. So we're in need of people who can help out, since I only speak English and I'm not even very good at that.. :)

If you'd like to help out, please read the wiki post: https://sourceforge.net/p/rompr/wiki/Translating%20RompR/

Thanks
FGP

It's been a while but RompR 0.40 is ready.

The docs will be updated in due course but until then here's a summary of the changes:

1. New information panels to get info from MusicBrainz and Discogs, and also a File Information panel.
2. Rewritten album art manager now allows drag-and-drop, and will search Last.FM, MusicBrainz, Discogs, and Spotify.
3. Mobile version now has a volume control.
4. Mopidy Users: SoundCloud information panel gets information about the current SoundCloud track (when used with the Mopidy-SoundCloud backend)
5. Users of Mopidy-Beets backend can create an albums list using this backend. This permits RompR to use album art downloaded by Beets, and also to display song lyrics.
6. Support for Mopidy's HTTP frontend - which gives better playlist management and much improved search capabilities (enable by accessing /rompr?setup)
7. Albums can be sorted by Date - but note that date tagging may not produce the results you expect unless you use 'Original Release Date' as your 'Date' tag (Beets can do this for you)
8. Podcast support - stream and download podcast epsiodes. Automatic removal of expired episodes, automatic updating of podcasts, all kinds of stuff.
9. Probably loads of other stuff I've forgotten about

Small bugfix - the search function wasn't working in the Files list. Hopefully it should now. I don't think there are any other changes.

A Small Update

Fixed a small bug in the search

Added the ability to use albumart stored in your local album folders. Simply add the path to your local music in the new field in the preferences panel, and your music folders can be searched for images. I'll update the Wiki with a fuller explanation.

The download is up here on SF.net, Ubuntu users might have to wait some time for me to updates the PPA because I can't be bothered with Linux all that much any more :)

RompR goes mobile! Version 0.30 now has a fully-functional mobile client!

The mobile client will be selected automatically if you access rompr from a mobile phone. I've decided that tablet devices run rompr quite well in normal mode and so these should display the normal rompr.
To force the mobile version just go to /rompr/?mobile=phone
To disable the mobile version just go to /rompr/?mobile=no
All the features of rompr are present in the mobile version - this is not a slimmed down 'lite' version, but a fully functional one that has been tweaked for small screens and touch interfaces.... read more