Call for a coder to build an iTunes controller

[sgtevmckay]

to the forums

I must say very well done!

I will get a couple of the folks in the "know" and have them take a look and tell you what they need. I am also sure that elestel will probably ring in here sooner or later.

[dragonmage]

Those are some very useful enhancements. I'm impressed by the talent showing up around here.

[sgtevmckay]

Impressed and grateful

[elestel]

I just started using Rainmeter recently (a couple weeks before the 1.0 release) and have been playing around with elestel's excellent iTunes plugin to try making my own iTunes skin. Since I noticed that there were a few features I'd like to see that weren't available in the plugin (such as the ability to get the rating as a number instead of "xx/100" text), I downloaded the source a couple weeks ago to see if I could modify it to do what I wanted. It's probably been 10 years since I touched C++ but elestel your design made it VERY easy to add new measures! I believe my end result could be useful so I was wondering what the process is to submit my changes for consideration (since I'm not a Rainmeter developer and only have read-only access to SVN and wouldn't want to just pop in new code out of the blue anyway!).

Thank you for the compliment and all this great work!

About the new measure commands, I believe MattKing is in the process of adding new commands into iTunes plugin. Looks like a few commands are the same If I remember correctly.

About the new Bang syntax, I think maybe rainmeter could send all arguments as a string to the plugin. And then the plugin could parse the string to whatever it want. It is more flexible in my opinion.

[technologist]

About the new Bang syntax, I think maybe rainmeter could send all arguments as a string to the plugin. And then the plugin could parse the string to whatever it want. It is more flexible in my opinion.

I agree. Of the various thoughts I had for this I ended up going with the single-argument version for that same reason. It's simple to implement, doesn't make any assumptions about what the plugin might need, and as you said the plugin can then do whatever it wants with that string.

[chuxDLX]

Version of July 27
http://www.mirimo.org/project-itunesplugin.html

Add default artwork image path (must be relative path to Rainmeter.exe) as a parameter of the artwork measure.
Now the artwork meter will display the image if iTunes is not running or artwork is not available.

@ahilton12: my skin update itself per 1000ms. So the time displayed could have a maximum lag of 1000ms. You could simply modify line 3 from Update=1000 to Update=100 or something like that.

@dragonmage: I only add the toggle meter as the info panel in remote.ini. It should work without problem if iTunes is running.

I'm really new to Rainmeter. I downloaded the plugin, but I'm not sure how to install it. I also saw someone say something about the HUD.Vision skin. I was wondering how I'd get that to work with iTunes as well. Help?

[elestel]

I'm really new to Rainmeter. I downloaded the plugin, but I'm not sure how to install it. I also saw someone say something about the HUD.Vision skin. I was wondering how I'd get that to work with iTunes as well. Help?

iTunes plugin is included in Rainmeter official release now. You already have it if you installed Rainmeter 1.0/1.1beta. The HUD.Vision skin mentioned in this thread is my personal modification just for testing purpose. If you want to try it you could copy the Rainmeter\Skins\iTunes folder in zip to your Rainmeter skin folder.

[chuxDLX]

iTunes plugin is included in Rainmeter official release now. You already have it if you installed Rainmeter 1.0/1.1beta. The HUD.Vision skin mentioned in this thread is my personal modification just for testing purpose. If you want to try it you could copy the Rainmeter\Skins\iTunes folder in zip to your Rainmeter skin folder.

I don't see the Rainmeter\Skins\iTunes folder. o.o Is it in the Project iTunes .zip?

[saskwatch]

I have got the cover art mostly working in the skin that I am working on. My only question is... When iTunes is in a stopped state (read: not paused) after playing something, how can I get the cover art to switch back to the default image?

[elestel]

I have got the cover art mostly working in the skin that I am working on. My only question is... When iTunes is in a stopped state (read: not paused) after playing something, how can I get the cover art to switch back to the default image?

It may not be possible by current implementation. Now the plugin use default image only if there is no current track or the artwork of the current track is not available. Since the current track will not change in iTunes when the player is in stop state, the artwork will remain the same in plugin side.