Euterpe Media Searcher

Version 0.9.2

Released 20011209



Euterpe is a generic media searching/playing Gnome applet. It allows one to easily and quickly open files from an archive using simple search strings. (Euterpe is the speaker icon on the right, in case you hand't guessed. Euterpe isn't very visually interesting.)

Usage:

There are two modes of usage for Euterpe: selection based and explicit query.

To use the selection mode, select some text and left-click on the Euterpe panel button. The current selection will be used as the query string. This is for the common case of seeing a song or group mentioned and suddenly wanting to hear it.
Since typing a song title into a spare xterm and highlighting it is silly, there is also the explicit query mode. Under the context menu you will find a 'Query Dialog' option. It will open a simple dialog with a text field. Enter your search term (song title, group name, whatever) in the text field and click OK.

Euterpe keeps a cache of the contents of the archive directories. This is built on start up and whenever the 'Media archive path' configuration option is changed. You can also force it to be rebuilt via the 'Rebuild Cache' option in the context menu. If the contents of your archive change suddenly, you will have to do this in order for Euterpe to see the changes.

Installation:

Download the tarball.

Open it up somewhere, run 'make'. There isn't a fancy configure script, but as long as you have Gnome installed it should work fine.

Run 'make install' as root. This will put the euterpe_applet binary in /usr/local/bin, euterpe_applet.gnorba in /etc/CORBA/servers/ and euterpe_applet.desktop in /usr/share/applets/Multimedia/.

Now add the Euterpe applet to the panel. You'll find it listed under Multimedia. There may be a slight delay on startup as the archive cache is created.

Configuration:

All configuration is done through the properties option on the context menu.
Media archive path
The paths to the one or more archive directories. Multiple paths are delimited by colons. Changing this value will cause the archive cache to be rebuilt. For larger archives and slower machines, this may be a noticable pause.
Example: /usr/path/one:/mnt/path/two
Initial action
The action to be called (without arguments) before any actions are taken on the search results. This will only get called if the results aren't empty. In the default configuration, this stops the current XMMS playlist.
First result action
This is the action called (with a file argument) on the first result. We differentiate because XMMS doesn't have a 'clear playlist' command line option. To prevent items from showing up multiple times in the final playlist, we 'play' the first result, which effectively clears the playlist, then 'enqueue' the others.
Other results action
The action to be called (with a file argument) on all other results.
Final action
The action to be called (without arguments) after all results have been dealt with. This will only be called if there were any results. In the default configuration, this is empty.
Note: There is no reason Euterpe has to play MP3s. By changing the action properties, Euterpe could play any kind of media files.

Release History:

Version 0.9.2: Bugfix for stupid string munging segfault.
Version 0.9.1: Bugfix for the handling of whitespace in search strings.
Version 0.9: First 'feature complete' release with the addition of multiple archive directories.
Version 0.4: Added query dialog and completed the properties dialog.
Version 0.3: Converted code to use cache of directory contents with regexp searching. Added Reload Cache menu option.
Version 0.2: Added properties dialog, about dialog and session state.
Version 0.1: Initial release. Selection search only.

Dependancies:

The basic Euterpe package is a Gnome applet, and needs the full Gnome environment to run, and the Gnome development environment to be built. The default Euterpe configuration also assumes the presence of XMMS. XMMS-Shell is no longer needed as of version 0.3, which implements its own search functionality.

Random Notes:

Euterpe was inspired by reading too many fanfics with good soundtrack listings. ('Good' is defined here as 'songs in my archive'.) I wanted a simple way to play the songs without changing to the desktop with XMMS, waiting for the file explorer to open and then finding the song.

Euterpe was the Greek muse of music.

Euterpe is maintained by Matthew Dockrey (euterpe@cyphertext.net).