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gtkpod - News

December 18th, 2007

gtkpod Version 0.99.12 released on December 18th, 2007.

gtkpod - Changelog

This is the changelog up the the latest official release.

For the latest changes to the development version please consult the Subversion-based changelog and the Subversion-based detailed changelog.

gtkpod V0.99.12

NEW FEATURE: Import and management of photographs on ipods that support them. Update of README to include photo management.

UPDATE: Application requires libgpod version 0.6.0 or higher.

UPDATE: Better icon theme specification compliance.

BUGFIX: Fixes to tomboy script. Thanks to Javier Kohen.

BUGFIX: Issues with display of track length. Inconsistent units used in conjunction with libgpod (Jorg).

UPDATE: Cover art preview window either displays an album cover to its full size or to a size consistent with the user's desktop.

UPDATE: Download of Album Art from the net feature modified to the ability of dragging-and-dropping a .jpg image from a web browser. This has been changed due to licensing concerns over album art. Drag and Drop section of README updated accordingly (Paul).

BUGFIX: Issues on detecting changed local / podcast database. Thanks to Mario Rossi.

BUGFIX: Issues addressed on Details Window.

BUGFIX: Crash avoided when auto-detecting an iTunes database that cannot be read.

UPDATE: Display of error output of scripts (Jorg).

IMPROVEMENT: Configuring and Compilation support (Todd).

UPDATE: New scripts for flac, ogg, mp3, m4a, wav conversion to mp3 and m4a. Thanks to Peter van de Does.

BUGFIX: Model number identified and written to ipod upon loading to ensure libgpod can read the ipod's artwork.

UPDATE: Updates and bug fixes to gapless playback. Thanks to Michael Tiffany.

BUGFIX: When Cover Art Display is widened, covers space out rather than stretch.

BUGFIX: Fixed memory leaks in CoverArt Display and Details window. Thanks to Daniele Forsi.

UPDATE: French translation. Thanks to Éric Lassauge.

UPDATE: Italian translation. Thanks to Daniele Forsi.

UPDATE: Hebrew translation. Thanks to Assaf Gillat.

UPDATE: Swedish translation. Thanks to Stefan Asserhäll.

NEW FEATURE: Added Romanian translation support. Thanks to Alex Eftimie.

NEW FEATURE: Added Russian translation support. Thanks to Matvey Kozhev.

gtkpod V0.99.10

NEW FEATURE: on-the-fly conversion of WAV, FLAC and OGG (as well as MP3 and M4A). Thanks to Marc d[readlock], Simon Naunton and Peter Edwards! Multi-threaded background conversion was added by Jorg Schuler.

NEW FEATURE: editing of TV show metadata and track media type. Thanks to Mario Rossi.

NEW FEATURE: Display of Album Art. Thanks to P.G. Richardson.

NEW FEATURE: Download of Album Art from the net. Thanks to P.G. Richardson.

NEW FEATURE: copy playlists and tracks from within the context menu without DND can simplify life with many playlists. Thanks to Andrzej Palejko for his patch.

NEW FEATURE: preliminary support for calculating gapless playback information (lame encoded mp3 files only). Thanks to Michael Tiffany.

UPDATE: Smart playlists now support the following new fields: album artist, tv show, last skipped, season number, skipcount and video kind.

IMPROVEMENT: Clicking on an item with the right mouse button will select and open the context menu, which is the intended behavior. As a consequence, the interface will remain blocked while the selection is being updated and displayed.

BUGFIX: dragging tracks between two iPods would sometimes not actually copy the file.

UPDATED: Italian translation (thanks to Daniele Forsi)

PACKAGING: Install a .desktop file and icons according to the freedesktop.org specification.

gtkpod V0.99.8

NEW FEATURE: Support of several iPods (currently you need to edit the itdb_* entries in ~/.gtkpod/prefs to add repositories). Each iPod can be loaded/ejected individually. Scripts are called before loading (gtkpod.load) and after saving (gtkpod.eject) with the mountpoint as the first argument. If you need to mount the iPod manually, put the mount command in gtkpod.load.

NEW FEATURE: Support for mobile phones supporting iTunes (see Changelog_detailed for details)

NEW FEATURE: Lyrics are displayed on the iPod when available.

NEW FEATURE: Preliminary (no meta data) support of h.264 video format via the libmp4v2 interface. Thanks to Peter Lieverdink.

NEW FEATURE: Script to sync notes from Tomboy to the iPod. Thanks to Tejas Dinkar.

NEW FEATURE: Support of iTunes iTunNORM tag for volume normalisation of mp4 tracks.

NEW FEATURE: Support of aacgain's replay gain tag for volume normalisation of mp4 tracks (takes precedence over the iTunNORM tag, see http://altosdesign.com/aacgain/)

NEW FEATURE: Support for start time, stop time, skip when shuffling and remember playback position.

IMPROVEMENT: Support for coverart has been improved. You may have to select your iPod model from a list of available models if your iPod cannot be identified automatically, as is the case for iTunes mobile phones or the new 6th generation iPod Nanos. Coverart embedded in the music file (APIC tag) can now also read. Support to read the coverart from specified files is still available though. Please note that at present APIC support only works when adding tracks directly to the iPod. It does not work when you add tracks to a LOCAL repository first and use Drag and Drop to move the track to your iPod.

IMPROVEMENT: Podcasts are marked as unplayed (on the iPod, with a bullet in front of the title) when newly added to the podcast list, and unmarked once they have been played once on the iPod.

IMPROVEMENT: Support to sync thunderbird's address book to an iPod Nano with old firmware that would otherwise only display the first address. This script may be useful to other users as well as it writes out one vcf file per contact instead of just one big file containing all contacts. Thanks to Paul Oremland.

IMPROVEMENT: Handle multiple calendar and task files in sync-evocalendar script. Thanks to Michele C. Soccio

NEW: Spanish translation. Thanks to Alejandro Lamas.

BUGFIX: Pressing 'OK' when syncing directories several times could crash gtkpod. Thanks to dforsi.

BUGFIX: Exporting tracks did not work if the template extensions (.mp3...) did not match case-sensitively, possibly leading to non-exported tracks. Thanks to Mattias Wadman.

BUGFIX: When updating tracks, the filename of the music file and the filename of the thumbnail could be messed up. Fixed.

BUGFIX: The Edit Detail dialog did not handle the 'Year' field correctly.

BUGFIX: When updating tracks, files were not copied to the iPod even if the file was changed.

BUGFIX: Removing playlists could crash gtkpod.

WORKAROUND: Disable sorting of playlist view as this crashed gtkpod.

gtkpod V0.99.4

BUGFIX: Options for exporting playlist files could not be changed.

BUGFIX: Fixed segfault when updating tracks or directories with artowrk present.

BUGFIX: Browse button for "Sync Notes Script" opened a directory browser instead of a file browser.

BUGFIX: Writing ID3v2.4 tags in UTF8 did not always work. Thanks to 't0c' for the patch.

BUGFIX: Context Menus for removing playlists from the iPod were not displayed. Thanks to 'rob/biffhero' for pointing this out.

gtkpod V0.99.2

BUGFIX: Fix segfault when applying preferences.

BUGFIX: Don't require libcurl (not actively used).

UPDATE: Swedish translation catalog

IMPROVEMENT: Allow export of multiple thunderbird address books (by naming the output filename).

gtkpod V0.99.0

NEW: type-ahead search functionality. Thanks to Nick Piper, http://www.nickpiper.co.uk/ -- please note that the list view you want to search in needs to have keyboard focus. Selection of the search column is done by clicking anywhere inside the column.

NEW: Handle Compilations decently. The compilation mp3 tag is read and written, and compilation artists can be grouped into "Compilations" in the Artist filter tab. Thanks to Iain Benson!

NEW: Window for editing of track details.

NEW: Display and setting/removing of thumbnail images. Choose "Edit Details" from the context menu (right mouse-button).

NEW: Automatic adding of thumbnail images when adding new tracks or updating existing ones. See the option on the 'Track Info' page of the preferences dialog for settings about which filename will be used. Any filename is possible, even filenames constructed from the album or artist name.

NEW: very basic iPod video support (you can add Videos but no metadata is filled in). Thanks to Uwe Herman for the input.

NEW: basic podcast support (use e.g. bashpodder or gpodder to download podcasts, then add them directly into the podcast playlist on the iPod).

NEW: script to sync addressbooks in ldif format provided by Sebastien BERIDOT.

NEW: script to sync kNotes (KDE note program) provided by Sebastian Scherer.

NEW: script to sync contacts from a Palm (via jppy http://wiki.zanu.org.uk/jppy). Thanks to Nick Piper, http://www.nickpiper.co.uk/)

NEW: transition to libgpod to read/write iTunesDB. See www.gtkpod.org/libgpod.html for details.

IMPROVEMENT: added comment, category, description, podcast url, podcast rss, subtitle fields and release date to displayable fields.

IMPROVEMENT: Support playcounts on iPod Shuffle as well

IMPROVEMENT: Remember size of 'Edit Smart Playlist' dialog and use scrolled window for the rules display.

IMPROVEMENT: Update smart playlists automatically (on load/display/save) if 'live updating' is set.

IMPROVEMENT: Support for more mp3 file tags: Compilation (TCMP), Podcast URL/Title (TID), Podcast Description (TDS), Podcast Subtitle (TT3), Podcast RSS (WFD), Podcast Release Date (TDR). Mostly reading only because of limited support on id3tag's side.

BUGFIX: 'Check iPod's files' could crash under certain circumstances (thanks to David Mansfield for the patch).

BUGFIX: Lame's Replay Gain was read incorrectly for certain values. Thanks to Chris Brotherton for tracking this down.

BUGFIX: Prevent that all rules in a smart playlist get deleted, which would mess up the iTunesDB.

BUGFIX: Choosing 'Delete' from the menu (not context menu) now works again.

BUGFIX: Copying playlists by drag and drop could confuse smart playlists referencing these playlists. Fixed.

CHANGE: MP3 tags: use 'Band/Orchestra/Accompaniment' (TPE2) as artist if it exists. Otherwise use 'Lead artist/Lead performer/Soloist/Performing group' (TPE1) as before. Let me know if this causes problems for you.

SAFETY: call sync() and flush all buffers to the iPod after writing the iTunesDB -- should minimise filesystem errors caused by people disconnecting the iPod without unmounting.

UPDATED: Hebrew translation (thanks to Assaf Gillat)

UPDATED: Italian translation (thanks to Edward Matteucci)

gtkpod V0.94.0

NEW FEATURE: stable sorting of track view. This allows you, for example, to first sort by title, then by artist. The list will then be sorted by artist, but all titles of each artist remain sorted as well (before the tiles were random). Arbitrary depth and order of stable sorting is possible by clicking the sort columns in the desired order.

NEW FEATURE: define your own ignore list of words that should be ignored during sorting (sort options: ctrl-s).

IMPROVEMENT: improved handling of dangling files (files that are referenced in the iTunesDB but are not present on the iPod).

IMPROVEMENT: use 'eject' instead of 'umount'. Also fixes the bug that 'could not unmount' was always displayed, even if the umount was successful (thanks to Andreas Hauber).

BUGFIX: Some iTunesDB files written by iTunes could not be read because of an error in the parse code (gtkpod would attempt to read beyond the end of the file).

BUGFIX: Fixed compatibility issue with new firmware 3.1 and iTunes 4.9 (only 256 tracks were shown on the iPod, iTunes removed the majority of the tracks from the iPod). Podcasts are still not supported, however, and will be lost when handled by gtkpod.

BUGFIX: Fixed On-The-Go playlist handling (thanks to "Todd").

UPDATE: Hebrew translation catalog. Thanks to Assaf Gillat!

gtkpod V0.93.1

BUGFIX: When changing the mountpoint, the change was not written to the preferences file correctly.

BUGFIX: 'Copy from iPod' just failed in offline mode instead of giving meaningful error messages -> fixed.

IMPROVEMENT: 'Copy from iPod' is now 'Export from Database' and allows to export from the local database as well. This is useful, e.g., if you want to rename files in a consistant manner.

gtkpod V0.93

Complete rewrite of reading/writing the iTunesDB. The code for reading and writing the iTunesDB (and other iPod/Shuffle files) is completely self-contained (itdb*.[ch]) and can easily be used in other projects. 

NEW FEATURE: Support of 'local database' containing tracks on local harddisk. The contents of the local hard disk can be browsed in the known gtkpod-fashion: by artist or genre or album etc. Tracks and entire playlists can be dragged over to the iPod or Shuffle database. By using smart playlists with defined size in MBytes, the Shuffle can be filled effectively.

Drag and drop also works in the opposite direction: drag tracks or entire playlists from the iPod/Shuffle database into your local database. If necessary, the tracks are copied to your harddisk automatically.

NEW FEATURE: sync-abook.sh and sync-webcalendar.sh scripts provided by Daniel Kercher.

NEW FEATURE: sync-thunderbird.sh script provided by Clinton Gormley.

IMPROVEMENT: support MP3 disc numbers (thanks to Leigh Dyer)

IMPROVEMENT: Use of GTK filechoosers instead of fileselectors (thanks to James Ligget)

IMPROVEMENT: sync-notes.sh now also works on directories (thanks to Thomas Perl)

UPDATE: use 'iconv' instead of 'recode' in the provided export scripts. Thanks to Alexey Dokuchaev.

UPDATE: All translation catlogs updated (French, German, Italian, Japanese and Swedish)

BUGFIX: display and reading of compilation flag fixed (thanks to Julien Oster for the patch)

BUGFIX: don't hang when parsing playlist files with empty lines (thanks to Mattias Wadman)

BUGFIX: When exporting from the iPod: if the original filename of a track was available, the track was not copied from the iPod but from the original location on the user's harddisk. Had the original file been removed or the export was done on another computer (where the original file was not present), the export failed.

gtkpod V0.88.2

IMPROVEMENT: Added '%p' (current playlist) identifier when exporting tracks.
BUGFIX: DND in playlist view did not work.
BUGFIX: scripts sync_evolution, sync_evocalendar and sync_notes were not included in standard distribution.

gtkpod V0.88.1

BUGFIX: Should now work with the shuffle -- forgot to change a version number in the iTunesDB file :-(

gtkpod V0.88

NEW FEATURE: Support for iPod Shuffle. Thanks to Steve Wahl.
BUGFIX: In smartlists star rating better supported. One star is "1" and not "20".

gtkpod V0.87

NEW FEATURE: Support for smart playlists.
NEW FEATURE: Added scripts sync_evolution, sync_evocalendar and sync_notes to synchronise Contacts, Calendar and Tasks from Evolution and to synchronise Notes with anything in the folder ~/ipod_notes.
BUGFIX: drag and drop was only implemented for mp3 files, not for m4a, m4p, m4b, and wav files (thanks to Chris Micacchi for pointing it out and supplying a first fix).
BUGFIX: Category playlists "for each year" did not work.
BUGFIX: Invalid charset conversion could hang gtkpod.
IMPROVEMENT: Support for iTunes' "checked", filedescriptor (kind), and grouping fields.
IMPROVEMENT: When sorting ignore 'the' and similar at the beginning of the title (thanks to Chris Micacchi)
IMPROVEMENT: Use statvfs() instead of a call to the external command "df" to determine the free space on the iPod (thanks to Steve Jay)
IMPROVEMENT: The fields "time_modified/played/created" can now be edited from within the track view.
IMPROVEMENT: Creation of playlists for each rating (Unrated, and Rated 1..5).
UPDATE: Swedish translation catalog
UPDATE: Italian translation catalog

gtkpod V0.85.0

BUGFIX: when clicking onto the column header of the track treeview three times and moving sidewards with the mouse at the same time, gtkpod crashed. Crashing was due to a bad workaround of a bug in the GTK+-library. Removed workaround and instead submitted a bug report against GTK+. The bug has been fixed in version 2.5.4 of the GTK+ library.
BUGFIX: When using "block display during updates" the display was still updated during import. Fixed.
BUGFIX: The menu item "Check iPod's Files" was not reliably activated. It's now always selectable when not in offline mode.
BUGFIX: when writing tags to file the track tag was deleted.
BUGFIX: special sorttab: sorting according to "time modified" and "time created" did not work.
BUGFIX: handling of orphaned tracks that had been added to the ipod again are now handled correctly.
BUGFIX: fixed case-sensitivity issue while handling orphaned tracks.
BUGFIX: fixed bug that caused gtkpod to hang when activating duplicate detection without having the list of duplicates displayed (must have been around ever since duplicate detection was introduced...)
BUGFIX: gain tags written by mp3gain were never read correctly. Normalization using mp3gain was therefore impossible. Didn't anyone ever use that feature?!
BUGFIX: when copying track to the iPod, the free space indication became bigger and bigger during the process.
BUGFIX: Ascending and descending were interchanged in the sort window.
NEW FEATURE: Implemented Michael Rolig's patch/idea to access mserv data for the rating. Still needs testing as I don't use mserv.
NEW FEATURE: added "randomize current playlist" (only the menu entry without actual code was present so far).
NEW FEATURE: support for On-The-Go Playlists. They will show up as "OTG Playlist 1" etc.
NEW FEATURE: export of PLS or M3U file including meta data.
NEW FEATURE: registering playcounts when tracks are played on the local machine is now possible (actually it was already possible in V0.80, but now the README explains how to do it).
NEW FEATURE: Swedish translation provided by Stefan Asserhäll.
IMPROVEMENT: Speeded up writing of iTunesDB. For me it is now between 1 and 15 seconds instead of between 20 and 40 seconds before (for security I'm using the iPod as a non-buffered device). A back-upped version of the iTunesDB is now always written to ~/.gtkpod.
IMPROVEMENT: Speeded up display of sorted views. Thanks to Stefan Asserhäll for the idea and valuable input.
IMPROVEMENT: Moved some options from the preferences dialog to the file chooser dialog where you need them. gtkpod now requires GTK2.4 to compile.
IMPROVEMENT: Added "Time Created" support to special sorttab, track display and iTunesDB. (Before only "modified" and "played" were supported.)
IMPROVEMENT: All information stored in the iTunesDB about tracks is read and written, even if the information itself is not used by gtkpod itself.
IMPROVEMENT: Added new track information fields: iPod_Path, creation time, soundcheck, samplerate, "BPM"
IMPROVEMENT: Volume normalizing: when importing mp3 the replay gain is read and the soundcheck field set accordingly. Use the "soundcheck" feature of the iPod to have the volume normalized during playback. If no replay gain tag is set, use the "Normalize" as usual to have mp3gain write a replay gain tag.
IMPROVEMENT: The extended information database now also contains the iPod filename. This allows to find a certain track even on systems not running gtkpod/gnupod/iTunes etc.
IMPROVEMENT: Some fixes for compilation under solaris. This also led to the introduction of the environment variable "GTKPOD_DF_COMMAND" that can be used to customize the df command called to probe the free space of the iPod.