I seem to have dl'ed the latest git version and the cover fetching is so much better and faster that even 1.4. I think users will be very happy!

I tried using the new comments to developers system (also way cool) but though it opens it error'ed out when sending so here are my initial comments if any of the developers are reading this:

-the display of the highlighted cover needs to be bigger as it's not that much larger then the results display and if the info tab is not filled in the cover text is not readable therefor not usable for determining proper cover.

-the info and notes tabs are great (but of course dependent on source used)

-changing the source in configure doesn't clear the display cache and initiate a rescan, seems the new results are just appended to the display box? when the clear button on search field clicked the results should be too

-Fetching not working for the album "Basie & Zoot" by Count Basie & Zoot Sims, not sure why but minimally a search window should open but doesn't

-it would be nice if there was an option for the cover to be saved in the album's directory

for openSuse users I got it here http://download.opensuse.org/repositori ... .2/x86_64/

google01103 wrote:I seem to have dl'ed the latest git version and the cover fetching is so much better and faster that even 1.4. I think users will be very happy!

Glad you like it

google01103 wrote:-the display of the highlighted cover needs to be bigger as it's not that much larger then the results display and if the info tab is not filled in the cover text is not readable therefor not usable for determining proper cover.

The results and highlight images are set to that size is because the thumbnails fetched are roughly the same size. Making them bigger won't really help; they will be bigger but blurrier. If you right click on one of the results, there is an option to "display cover". The wording should probably be improved but that will get the full size image first and display that, with a dialog that you can zoom in/out with the mouse wheel.

google01103 wrote:-the info and notes tabs are great (but of course dependent on source used)

Yeah, the "notes" only works with Yahoo since only they supply it. Not sure if they are that useful since you can click on the url anyway. I might remove that tab for other sources to avoid confusion.

google01103 wrote:-changing the source in configure doesn't clear the display cache and initiate a rescan, seems the new results are just appended to the display box? when the clear button on search field clicked the results should be too

Yes, the default action is to append. When the source changes it should automatically get more results, but it doesn't clear what's already there. I prefer it that way, there's a clear button for that. Similarly for clearing the search field, that's what it should only do.

google01103 wrote:-Fetching not working for the album "Basie & Zoot" by Count Basie & Zoot Sims, not sure why but minimally a search window should open but doesn't

Hmm, not sure. I tried with an album that has ampersands in its name and artist and the dialog shows up.

google01103 wrote:-it would be nice if there was an option for the cover to be saved in the album's directory

Yep, good idea.

@stuffcorpse

"&'s for me sometimes work just not always, also not working Vidar Busk & His True Believers - I Came Here To Rock

The clear display button, being on the bottom was easily missed - I think it should be on top

If I click the "clear" button then the "continue" I seem to get additional, but different, results. Nothing is changed but the clicking of buttons, seems to act more as a "get more results" button.

On the cover tool, iirc, it used to be that hovering over a cover showed the artist & album at the bottom but no longer, now only the album is highlighted

A couple of times double clicking the selected cover in the results doesn't fetch the cover (just puts me back to cover tool) but repeating the process works

I know it's not gonna happen but Amazon is so much better than the other sources

I don't really see an overwhelming reason to move the clear button to the top. Although I shouldn't object if anyone actually does it.

The results that come in are paged, and clicking the "continue" button really just fetches the thumbnails of the next page. The page number gets reset when the source changes, a custom query is entered, or the dialog closes.

"On the cover tool, iirc, it used to be that hovering over a cover showed the artist & album at the bottom but no longer, now only the album is highlighted"

I don't really understand what you mean here, especially "now only the album is highlighted".

Double clicking an item will attempt to get the full size image first and then save that as cover for the album. The full size fetch can abort if something fails, e.g. url is bad, timeout etc.

Yeah I agree, Amazon has a huge database...

"On the cover tool, iirc, it used to be that hovering over a cover showed the artist & album at the bottom but no longer, now only the album is highlighted"
-- on the bottom of the page where it now says "nn albums (nn without cover)" it used to switch to display "artist - album" over the hovered cover (iirc) or maybe it was a single click. Now it works that way if a fetch window is open and you go back to the "cover tool" window and single click any cover.

"The results that come in are paged, and clicking the "continue" button really just fetches the thumbnails of the next page. The page number gets reset when the source changes, a custom query is entered, or the dialog closes."
-- This page number is an internal counter? I don't see any "page count"

The count is displayed in the window title which I missed because its the window title and I wouldn't think that results/stats from the running app would be there. Could you place it under "finding cover for"?

"Double clicking an item will attempt to get the full size image first and then save that as cover for the album. The full size fetch can abort if something fails, e.g. url is bad, timeout etc."
-- can this be trapped and offer a request to retry?

Request - in the task bar the window title for the fetch window should be "Cover Fetch" or such, now it's "Amarok" (just as the main app) while the cover tool is "Cover Manager".

The problem with cover manager's status text not updating when the cursor hovers on an item is now fixed.

The page number is internal. I don't think there's a need to expose that to the user.

The number of results displayed in the dialog title is an artifact from the old days. Back then only one image is shown at a time and the user needs to click next/prev to get to another image. The number in the title is helpful so the user knows how many images are there in total. Now that they are laid out in a grid that information is not useful anymore.

Now a error box would appear if fetching a cover fails.

@stuffcorpse - thanks for designing and implementing all this - huge improvements!

I note a fair number of amarokXXXXX.slave-socket process running after fetching covers from within "cover tool" (about 20). Could these be from the covers that never opened a window or those that when a cover was selected never actually returned one?

Those would be caching ioslaves. They would be there even after fetching is successful. If say you click "continue" repeatedly very fast, a lot of new kioslaves would be created because the old ones are still running and cannot be reused. Eventually they would finish or timeout but at the moment it is unwise to create so many at a time (they use quite a lot of memory).

Amarok doesn't actually control this, it's all done in the background by a scheduler. There is work being done to improve the schedular and you may want to look at Bug #192625 about this.

Ok now you should be able to save image to disk via right click.

if I have the wrong cover in collection manager and use fetch to correct it, it does not get updated in the collection panel but is correct if I "display" it or add it to the playlist panel

by "collection manager" do you mean the collection browser or cover manager?

sorry meant local collection panel. it's called the collection browser?

Yeah, but perhaps its a jargon which is not apparent from the ui. In any case, the pane that its on is called "Music Sources" and "Local Music" is what we're referring to.

Does your problem with cover happen all the time?

not consistently - I just changed 5 covers and only 1 didn't show properly