6
votes
Seek and you shall find — A list of recent updates that make Ready Player a better media player and manager for Emacs
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Seek and you shall find
- Published
- Sep 7 2024
- Word count
- 1038 words
Project's repository: https://github.com/xenodium/ready-player
I tried Ready Player a few weeks ago as a curiosity, but it was pretty bare-bones (like the blog mentions). It's nice to see the project receive so many usability features in such a short period of time.
Forgive me if this is perhaps coming from a place of ignorance, what exactly is the point of integrating media playback in Emacs? I understand not wanting to alt-tab between windows when its unnecessary, but isn't media playback more of a "set it and forget it" type of thing?
I think you'll drive yourself crazy if you look too hard for a "point" to software like this. Instead of "why?", the real question is "why not?". Some people just want to use Emacs for everything (and along the way they sometimes end up inventing some of the best interfaces to ever exist).
To generalize though, building things in-and-for Emacs is fun and convivial. It's an enjoyable programming activity for many. Building something like Ready Player, and then being able to use it and apply it to a workflow or use case that you have, even if those could have been fulfilled by other software, is a gratifying activity. It scratches the itch in the hacker's brain.
Also, the author does sort of hint at why they initially wrote Ready Player:
So that use case is very much not one of "set it and forget it". I would imagine they were constantly playing and replaying audio files while taking notes. Having the audio player just be another Emacs buffer that they could easily split (meaning keep on one half of their display) and instantly hop back and forth between it and their notes would be very convenient.
I also happen to know that Álvaro/Xenodium uses macOS (because they're also the author of some awesome iOS apps) and I'm not sure splitting windows on macOS and constantly hopping from one window to another directly from the keyboard is very easy. (Seriously, being able to focus a window with a keyboard shortcut, and then immediately start typing in that window, without having to use the mouse, is a superpower.)
I honestly believe that crazy amounts of easily available customization is an objective "plus". That is hard to convey to someone unfamiliar with Emacs and Elisp.
Some tasks, I would say, are a little forced on Emacs. Not that one. Emacs has complete file management built-in. It can access mpv with ease. There are really few disadvantages for the use case. I would probably use Emacsclient to quickly create Media Player windows (edit: and keep the songs running in the background...).
If you look at a program like foobar2000 you'll soon realize that playing local media files is not set and forget to some. In that context, Emacs provides an unparalleled level of customization, as is the case for most things done with Emacs.
This is far from the first Emacs media player.