Menu Buddy 0.0.2 review

Menu Buddy plugin currently comprises a couple of Python scripts for creating GNOME panel menus from a directory hierarchy of music f

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Austin Bingham

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Menu Buddy plugin currently comprises a couple of Python scripts for creating GNOME panel menus from a directory hierarchy of music files.

These menus can be used to play or enqueue songs in XMMS, as well as pause or skip XMMS.

These scripts are not terribly powerful yet, but there is potential for a signficantly more flexible system of menu-creation that allows automatic construction of many different kinds of menus based on directory hierarchies.

menu_buddy is a small script for scanning a hierarchy of music files and creating a set of Gnome menus that can direct xmms to play those files. Instead of going through the command line or whatever, menu_buddy lets you play/enqueue files in xmms straight from your menu. I find this pretty convenient.

The command line for menu_buddy is as follows:

menu_buddy < source dir > < dest dir >

where:
< source dir >: The top of a hierarchy of directories containing the files
< dest dir >: The top of a directory to write the menu files into

menu_buddy works with the assumption that you have your music stored under one main music directory, using some meaningful hierarchy, and that there's only music stored down there. menu_buddy doesn't do any sort of file-type checking and assumes that everything under is fair game for playing in xmms.

What menu_buddy does it this: it constructs a menu hierarchy that directly matches the hierarchy under such that any directory or tree thereof can be played or enqueued in xmms. Likewise, at the top of the menu structure, it creates menu option which allow you to pause, start, or skip forward/backward in xmms. The interaction with xmms is purely in terms of command line options that you can pass to xmms...there is no special linking or whatever.

So, for example, let's assume you have all of your music in under the directory "/music", with top-level folders for different genres (i.e. /music/rock, /music/polka, etc.). Inside each genre, you have your files sorted first by artist, then by album (i.e. /music/rock/faith_no_more/the_real_thing, /music/polka/the_polka_kings/greatest_hits). The organization you have is really unimportant, but bear with me here.

Further, let's assume that your system lets you create new gnome menus by putting menu files in ~/.gnome/apps (this is how things work on my system, but honestly I've done next to zero research into this topic...it may vary (wildly) on your system, so I suggest you figure it out for yourself). Then, the following command will create a new menu hierarchy in your "favorites" menu called "Muzik" which allows you play/enqueue your music:

menu_buddy /music ~/.gnome/apps/Muzik

That's it. It may take a few seconds to churn through your music files, depending on other system load and how much music you have. You need to be able, of course, to write to the output directory you specify, but since it will typically be in your home directory this should not be a problem.

What's New in This Release:
added GPL stuff to source files