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Some users like to use the F11 panel in Dolphin as a simple music player, this means one task lesser open and its overall a KISS solution.

Its also more easy to maintain, because all the actions, who interact with the files, especially the database,
happen in Dolphin itself and the implementation in an external music player app becomes redundant with that.

The fundamental code is already written, since Dolphin`s sidebar is already able to play music;

Here are 2 ideas, who set the base for this project:

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364956
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364957

Once they are realized, is a playlist probably the next step.

Its also possible to replace the music player GUI temporary with the preview from other data,
while the user is hovering with the mouse cursor above them and let the music player GUI reappear,
once the cursor points on an empty space again.

I like to underline, that the aim is a simple music player, which is able to play a file, pause it and offer in later versions things like a playlist and lyrics

What do you think about it?

I can see this implemented as a plug-in for those interested. But if I want to use a music player, I will use a music player.

That sounds fine to me, so long as it does the job

And why do you prefer a plug-in?

What do you think about the optional feature, that the music persist to play, when you hover the cursor to another place or file?

And what about a pause button?

Because this is one feature of Dolphin I do not use, and though I can understand the reasoning for an audio previewer, if I wanted anything beyond that, I would use a full-fledged music player, rather than patching in playlist support, equalisers, and all those other features into a file manager. For example, navigating away from a folder while audio is being played would naturally mean there should be a playlist, but adding more songs to the playlist would be unwieldy.

Hence, why I believe a plug-in would be the perfect compromise, because I can't actually think of a use case where I want to use Dolphin as a music player. Perhaps others can, but I prefer a separate application.

My fundamental understanding of KISS is to make an application do one single task really well, not cobble several tasks into a single application. Word processors in Dolphin would be another logical endpoint of your understanding of KISS.

Rewarp wrote: For example, navigating away from a folder while audio is being played would naturally mean there should be a playlist, but adding more songs to the playlist would be unwieldy.

Option 1) Right click > Open with > Add to Dolphins playlist
Option 2) Set "Add to Dolphins playlist" as the default music player

Rewarp wrote: My fundamental understanding of KISS is to make an application do one single task really well, not cobble several tasks into a single application. Word processors in Dolphin would be another logical endpoint of your understanding of KISS.

I really think this definition is very outdated, if ever present at all: Linux does a lot more as "one job" KDE does much more as "one job", same as Qt and a lot of other stuff.

Qt start as a GUI toolkit, today is it a desktop toolkit, including an own programming language, a web rendering engine and so on.

Do you use every single option in Dolphin and each other app?

Should KDE develop everything as plug-in, so that everyone can setup it in a way, so that each feature is really getting used by everybody?

cosmos wrote:

Rewarp wrote: For example, navigating away from a folder while audio is being played would naturally mean there should be a playlist, but adding more songs to the playlist would be unwieldy.

Option 1) Right click > Open with > Add to Dolphins playlist
Option 2) Set "Add to Dolphins playlist" as the default music player

You missed the other stuff. Bringing in equalisers, transcoders, scrobbling, Magnatunes integration, podcast downloading, etc. is what I expect from a music player.

cosmos wrote:

Rewarp wrote: My fundamental understanding of KISS is to make an application do one single task really well, not cobble several tasks into a single application. Word processors in Dolphin would be another logical endpoint of your understanding of KISS.

I really think this definition is very outdated, if ever present at all: Linux does a lot more as "one job" KDE does much more as "one job", same as Qt and a lot of other stuff.

Qt start as a GUI toolkit, today is it a desktop toolkit, including an own programming language, a web rendering engine and so on.

Do you use every single option in Dolphin and each other app?

Should KDE develop everything as plug-in, so that everyone can setup it in a way, so that each feature is really getting used by everybody?

Look. You wanted an opinion and I gave you mine. I am not trying to be argumentative here.

If you want to add a plugin that lets you use Dolphin as a full-fledged music player, by all means go ahead. But if your intention is to add bloatware into Dolphin when it does not need to be there (and note that KDE already has its own official music app, Amarok), I would suggest a fork.

As it stands, Dolphin can't even do file searching very well (Baloo integration bug) and doesn't even do previews of images for videos out of the box. I hope adding stuff that doesn't need to be there won't be too burdensome on top of everything else the Dolphin developers already have on their plate.

That said, there are some use case scenarios where I use Dolphin in a non-standard way, but have found plug-ins a quick download away to patch that use case into it. Personally speaking, Dolphin should aim to be the best file manager first, and everything else can wait.

Particularly for something as common as a music player for Linux.

Rewarp wrote:
You missed the other stuff. Bringing in equalisers, transcoders, scrobbling, Magnatunes integration, podcast downloading, etc. is what I expect from a music player.

I wrote about a pause button and the feature to play music with Dolphin, while you hover and click somewhere else in it.
How does this bloat Dolphin up?

Rewarp wrote:
note that KDE already has its own official music app, Amarok

Amarok was never an official KDE project, you see that by looking at the version number and the support, which it receive recently:

https://github.com/KDE/amarok/graphs/contributors

You are able to count the commits since Februar 15 on both of your hands while the very first distribution which switched to Plasma 5, did that back then
and there are not much more commits if you look back until 2014..

It get hosted by KDE`s svn/git and make use of the KDE Libs/Frameworks, thats it.

So there is no official KDE music player. Juk is also dropped, same as KsCD.

In my opinion is it time for a proper replacement, which is easy to maintain.
And Dolphin is already nearly ready for that propose.. ^-^

I had an idea like this time ago. But it was more generic: Dolphin not only for files. I mean that starting Dolphin with certain parameters could make it oriented to a certain type of contents, like music, movies, photos and games.
For music there would be a side panel with current playlist plus controls.

Btw Amarok is an official KDE project, what you probably meant is that Plasma's default music player is Juk.

Also, there are works in progress for a QML and Baloo based music player.

cosmos wrote:In my opinion is it time for a proper replacement, which is easy to maintain.
And Dolphin is already nearly ready for that propose..

I am supportive of any effort you may have to add new features to KDE. But I leave it to your better judgement to get it right.

alex-l wrote:For music there would be a side panel with current playlist plus controls.

The side panel and some of the controls are already here.

alex-l wrote:
Btw Amarok is an official KDE project, what you probably meant is that Plasma's default music player is Juk.

Why do you think, that Amarok is the official KDE music player?

It gets ZERO support from the community since years and it does not get released as part of the KDE Applications 5.
Again: Look on the version numbering.

And Juk is deprecated. https://quickgit.kde.org/?p=juk.git

cosmos wrote:

alex-l wrote:For music there would be a side panel with current playlist plus controls.

The side panel and some of the controls are already here.

alex-l wrote:
Btw Amarok is an official KDE project, what you probably meant is that Plasma's default music player is Juk.

Why do you think, that Amarok is the official KDE music player?

It gets ZERO support from the community since years and it does not get released as part of the KDE Applications 5.
Again: Look on the version numbering.

And Juk is deprecated. https://quickgit.kde.org/?p=juk.git

You seem to be making troubling assumptions that seems to paint Amarok as an unsupported software project. While I understand the desire to pull down another project so you can promote your own, this is not desirable for community cohesion.

That said, sometimes a project is just mature enough that there is really no more need to add anything more. Personally, I prefer Clementine, which is based on Amarok 1.4. It does everything I ask of it, and that is all I need.

So until you manage to get a working example of your Dolphin music player working, it would do well for you to stop denigrating other projects.

Rewarp wrote:
You seem to be making troubling assumptions that seems to paint Amarok as an unsupported software project. While I understand the desire to pull down another project so you can promote your own, this is not desirable for community cohesion.

That said, sometimes a project is just mature enough that there is really no more need to add anything more. Personally, I prefer Clementine, which is based on Amarok 1.4. It does everything I ask of it, and that is all I need.

So until you manage to get a working example of your Dolphin music player working, it would do well for you to stop denigrating other projects.

Amarok is unsupported software, it is still not fully ported to kf5 after years of the initial release of the new frameworks.
There is no maintainer and very few commits in the past years.

I will not push this project down, these are facts and i underline them with sources.