* 4. Configuration:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AMPlay has no built-in configuration editor - it launches a separate
application; AMPlayCfg.

AMPlayCfg has a number of sections dealing with different aspects of
the player, its database etc.

On the AMPlayCfg main window is a Help request button which will open
a text file relevant to the selected options category (these are just
excerpts from the document you are currently reading).

Additionally, the main window buttons have the following effects

Cancel;

- Click Select to close AMPlayCfg, making no changes as it does so.
- Click Adjust to cause AMPlayCfg to ask AMPlay for the its current
  settings. This might apply in cases where you've started AMPlayCfg,
  and then made some changes in AMPlay. Those changes only exist in
  memory, in AMPlay. This brings AMPlayCfg up to date with the current
  AMPlay state. If AMPlay isn't running, this does nothing.

Defaults;

- Click Select to update the AMPlayCfg panes with the default settings.
  These are not saved unless you click Save.
- Click Adjust to revert to the settings that were displayed before you
  select-clicked Defaults. If you haven't done a select click on
  Defaults in this AMPlayCfg session, it does nothing.

Save;

- Click Select to update the options file, saved state, AMPlay itself
  (if it is running), and then close AMPlayCfg.
- Click Adjust to the above, but keep AMPlayCfg open.


If AMPlayCfg is launched manually, or run from within AMPlay, it will
remember its window position, and will remember which pane was selected.
It can also be run as a Configure plugin (on RISC OS 4 and later), and
if run in this way it behaves according to the Style Guide and opens
under the mouse pointer. If run as a plugin, the window positions are
not saved.

________________________________________________________________________


* 4.1 Player:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* 4.1.1 Playback Order:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This has three menus that allow you to explicitly set the playback
order for artists, albums and tracks. This is equivalent to the buttons
on the main window itself.

Total chaos mode (randomly change the playback order each time
something is picked) can also be enabled here.

'Pick items relative to the last history item':

This is a subtle one. If you are in a mode where the selection level is
linear - e.g. Artists:Ignore, Albums:Linear, Tracks:Random/Shuffled,
but the current history position is not at the end of the history, what
should happen if you adjust-click next to force it to pick the next
item now?

If this option is off, it will pick the 'next' item as being the album
that linearly follows the currently playing album.

If this option is on, it will pick the 'next' item as being the album
that linearly follows the last album in the history.

Loop playback:

This used to be a main window icon, but is now just an option (the
repeat icon replaced it on the main window). If set, and the selection
level is linear, then when the last item in the database is reached it
will continue from the beginning. Otherwise it will stop.

If the selection level is random, then this option has no effect as it
never reaches an end as such.


4.1.2 Behaviour:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This allows you to set the auto-next and auto-repeat options. These are
the same as they are on the main window.

If playing, play will:

This determines what the Play button on the main window does in the
case where a track is already playing. You can choose from Pause,
Next, Stop, Ignore, or Restart.

Volume change rate:

This determines how much the volume changes when you click Select or
Adjust on the volume control on the main window.  The default value
is 4, the range is 1-16.

Set Volume, Volume:

This determines whether AMPlay overrides the default AMPlayer volume on
startup, and if so, what to. Range is 1-127.


4.1.3 Player Window:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Main window always on top, Mini window always on top:

These set the default always on top flags for the two window types.

Use mini window by default:

Fairly self-explanatory.

________________________________________________________________________


* 4.2 Display:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

* 4.2.1 Main Window:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Track format, Album format and Artist format tell AMPlay how to
display information about the currently playing track. This uses a
system of macros to encode the information. A macro consists of a %sign,
followed by a few letters to give the macro name.

Macros are covered in detail in section 2.12. There is a button here to
open a quick reference for the macros.

Interactive help can be used to see what the macro would expand to.
This can be used both here and on other panes where a macro can be
entered. AMPlay must be running for useful macro expansion to be done.

For the track, album and artist information displayed on the main
window, there is a further option for each as to whether it should
scroll. Scrolling will only happen if the length of the string in the
current desktop font is such that it would not fit in the icon in
question. Scrolling speed is dependant on the slow refresh setting
described below (scrolling pauses while any event that requires
fast refresh completes).


Timeformat:

This controls the default format of the time display.


Slow update and Fast update:

These allow you to set the refresh rates for the main window, in
centi-seconds.

Fast update is used while fast forwarding and rewinding.
Slow update is used in normal playback, and while paused.
(The window doesn't update at all while stopped)

If you're not interested in keeping the display up to date while fast
forwarding (rewinding is generally instant) then you might increase
the Fast update value. If you regularly play short files (below 1
minute), then you might want to decrease the Slow update value to
update the progress bar more frequently.

Slow update also defines the speed at which scrolling occurs in the
track, album and artist information icons.


* 4.2.2 Database Editor:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This allows you to define format strings for tracks, albums and artists
as displayed in the database editor. This format string is used for the
item selectors in the parent pane, not for things on particular panes
within the editor.

Again, the quick reference for the macros may be useful here.


* 4.2.3 Text Processing:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Show '_' as ' ':

This causes underscores to be shown as spaces in AMPlay windows and
menus.

Show '\' and '/' as '.'

This causes all forward or back slashes to be shown as dots.


LanMan98 Conversions:

This allows files accessed through the LanMan98 filesystem to show
characters that are not allowed in RISC OS filenames.

e.g. if a track name on the server side is;

Artist1 & Artist2 - a duet live@somewhere.mp3

LanMan98 would show this as;

Artist1 ;+ Artist2 - a duet live;=somewhere/mp3

With this option enabled, the trackname would be converted back to the
original for display purposes.

Systems other than LanMan98 may use the same mappings, so it's worth
a try for other things as well. LanMan98 is all it has been tested
with though.


Sunfish conversions:

This is a similar mechanism to the LanMan98 mechanism above, but using
the system that Sunfish appears to use for passing characters that are
not legal in normal RISC OS filenames.

Where an illegal character occurs in a filename on the server, Sunfish
appears to present it to RISC OS as ?xx, where xx is two digits of hex
indicating the ASCII value of the character in question. So;

Artist1 & Artist2 - a duet live@somewhere.mp3

Would be seen via sunfish as;

Artist1 ?26 Artist2 - a duet live?40somewhere.mp3

The Sunfish conversions options reverses this process and allows AMPlay
to display the original name.

As with the LanMan98 conversion, it may be applicable to other clients.


Space before Caps:

This is useful in two circumstances;

- Files have been stored without spaces in them, and you are using
  pathname based naming. (e.g. 01ATrackName/mp3)

- Due to the length limitations in the tag, the tag information has
  been entered with spaces omitted.

In either case, the assumption is that the capital letters in the
string can be used to work out where the spaces should be put back.

The upshot of this is a routine that will convert, for instance;

"01ATrackName(LIVE)" to "01 A Track Name (LIVE)"

i.e. keeping sequences of capitals together, but adding a space
where there appear to be word boundaries.

________________________________________________________________________


* 4.3 Custom:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

* 4.3.1 Custom Buttons:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For each of the three main window custom buttons, you can pick their
button type, and what to do in the event of select or adjust clicks.


Type - This selects the type of button. The available types are;
equ, vis, remote, dir, cmd, file, other. You can also select a type
'off', which disables the button. The button type generally just selects
what icon AMPlay uses for the button on the main window - equ is a
representation of a graphic equaliser, vis is an eye to indicate a
visualisation app, remote is meant to be a remote control etc.

Select and Adjust are writeable, and you can enter the full path to
the file/application/directory you want to run/open. You can also
drag and drop things here from the filer.

Note that you can enter variables like <AMSomething$Dir>, but these
will obviously only work if the variable is expandable at the time you
click the custom button.


* 4.3.2 Iconbar Icon actions:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This has two icons, Event and Action.

Event - Select and Adjust clicks, with all possible combinations of
Shift and Ctrl keys.

Action - The action to be taken when the selected event occurs.

  Possible actions currently;

    Do nothing
    Open Player
    Open Options
    Open Editor (database editor, edittable attributes pane)
    Open Current (databased editor, currently playing information)
    Open Selected (databased editor, selected item information)
    Open Naming (databased editor, naming pane)
    Open Statistics (databased editor, statistics pane)
    Open Search window
    Open Filter window
    Open Export window
    Pause
    Play
    Stop
    Next
    Force Next
    Restart Track
    Restart and unpause Track
    Volume Up
    Volume Down
    Rewind
    Forward

  More actions may be added in future versions.

  Pause, Play etc correspond to select clicks on the corresponding main
  window icon. Force Next corresponds to an Adjust click on Next. Play
  on Play action, and volume increments apply.

________________________________________________________________________


* 4.4 Skin:
~~~~~~~~~~~

The player skin selector will let you choose between skins in the
currently configured skins directory.

You can also edit the skins directory (or drag a directory onto that
icon to set it).

Changing either option requires a restart of AMPlay to take effect.

If the selected skin provides them, a preview bitmap and description are
displayed. (This is a new feature in 2.03 - skins for 2.02 and earlier
will not provide a description or preview unless updated to do so).

Note that AMPlayCfg (and AMPlay) will reject directories that do not
appear to contain a valid skin. 

The skins section is greyed out entirely if AMPlayCfg is run when
AMPlay has not been seen by the filer. This is because the default
skins directory is <AMPlay$Dir>.Skins, and AMPlayCfg may need to
refer to this even if the configured skins directory is elsewhere.

See section 8.5 for details on what is required of a skin and how to
make your own or customise the provided ones.

________________________________________________________________________


* 4.5 Menus:
~~~~~~~~~~~~

* 4.5.1 Menu Formats:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This screen allows you to define format strings for all the menus in
AMPlay that contain artist, album or track names. As before refer to
section 2.12 for details on macros, or use the quick reference button.

Interactive help works as on the Display window, and will expand the
macro on the fly. Again, AMPlay needs to be running for this to work.


* 4.5.2 Other menu options:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Menu block size:

This is a workaround for the problem that although menus are a very
convenient mechanism for choosing an item from a list of items, they
can become unwieldy if the list of items is very long. It's one thing
to offer a menu of 10 tracks, but 10,000 tracks is an entirely
different kettle of fish. Even if displaying 10,000 items on a single
menu were possible, it wouldn't be very usable.

This option allows you to specify how many entries should be displayed
at once. If the menu contains more than x entries, only the first x
will be shown, with an extra entry at the end to move to the next block
of entries. As you move forward in the menu, an extra item at the top
appears to allow you to move back.

This has some advantages - expanding a macro is not particularly time
consuming, but it gets slow if there are a large number to expand. The
All Tracks goto menu for instance may involve many thousands of tracks.
By constraining it to just x entries, much less macro expansion has to
be done, and the menu can be produced much more quickly.

For menus where there is a currently selected item, the menu will
open with the currently selected item in the middle of the initial
block.

AMPlay will try to avoid blocks with just one item in them. For
example, the menu of tracks by the current artist might contain 32
items. If the block size is 30, and we're currently playing track 16,
the menu could display tracks 2-31, with links to the previous and next
blocks. However, each of those blocks would contain only one track, so
rather than take up menu space with the links to the previous and next
blocks, it includes the items in question. i.e. it makes the menu block
longer, if needed, to accommodate single extra items at the start and/or
end.

Block menus apply to all menus that are automatically generated
based on information in the database, where the number of items in the
menu is not fixed. This includes all the goto menus, the history menus,
the search results menu, and the album and artist menus in the database
editor.


Reverse history menu:

This causes the History menus to be generated the other way up.
With this enabled, the most recently played items will be at the top
of the menu. "Clear History" remains the topmost item in either case.


Filtered items appear greyed on goto menus:

This causes the Goto menus to show any items that do not pass the
current effective filter as greyed-out entries. If disabled, such items
are not shown at all.


Dividers between artists out of sort order:

Tricky one to describe, this. It is only likely to be useful if you
are using the raw sort option described later. Suppose you had files
in the database such as:

  ADFS::Disc.$.MP3.Comedy.MontyPython.LifeOfBrian.BrightSide/mp3
  ADFS::Disc.$.MP3.Music.DevinTownsend.Terria.DeepPeace/mp3

When sorted using the raw sort option, they would end up as above,
due to Comedy coming before Music.

When an artist menu is generated, it would contain;

  MontyPython
  DevinTownsend

Here, because of a difference in the path to the artist in the raw
database entry, we have one artist appearing after another but
alphabetically (by artist name alone) it should be before it.

This option inserts a menu divider into the menu whenever it spots
a case like this.

If you are using the sort by name option instead of raw sort, then
the sort is done using the artist, album and track names only, and
anything earlier in the path is ignored. In this case the artist menu
will always be in alphabetical order.

________________________________________________________________________


* 4.6 Database:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* 4.6.1 Naming:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Album-Track separator and Artist-Album separator:

This configures how AMPlay works out the Track, Album and Artist names
from the full filename for tracks that use pathname based naming. By
default both of these are dots, which would imply that the tracks are
in a subdirectory named after the album, and the albums are in
subdirectories named after the artist.

If you have a system where all the files are in one single directory,
but named something like Artist_-_Album_-_Track/mp3, then you should
change these to be _-_, or whatever naming system you use.

Name new tracks from:

This determines whether newly added tracks get their naming details
from the pathname, or whether the tag on the file should be read.

Default comment:

For tracks that use pathname based naming, the comment field is empty
(there is no way to pick the comment field out of the pathname). This
specifies the default comment that should be used for such tracks. Note
that it may contain macros.


* 4.6.2 Adding Tracks:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Included Filetypes and Included Extensions:

This specifies what types to add to the database when scanning a
directory or adding a file. The file must match something in both
boxes in order to be included. The boxes should contain a comma
separated list, with no spaces. Filetypes should be specified in hex.
Start the file extension list with a comma to include files with no
extension.

If your MP3 collection is such that there are no consistent settings
for this then you can disable either of these options. However, if
you do disable them, be aware that non-MP3 files could end up in the
database, especially when scanning directories. AMPlay does not
examine the contents of files to determine whether they really are
MP3s.

These checks are carried out when dragging MP3 files or directories
onto AMPlay, and do not apply to loading playlists. Handling double
clicked files will only ever respond to filetype &1ad, but is
subject to the extension check.


Scan subdirectories to a depth of:

Fairly self explanatory - if on, when you drag a directory onto
AMPlay, it will walk the whole directory structure looking for
matching files. Otherwise only the files in that directory itself
will be looked at.

The subdirectory depth option allows you to configure how deep down
the directory structure to go. A value of 0 is a special case, and
tells it to scan all the way down. 1 is just the directory that was
dragged (i.e. same as with scan subdirectories turned off), 2 is that
plus subdirectories etc.


* 4.6.3 Database options:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Default Directory:

This allows you to tell AMPlay where all or most of your MP3s are. This
has no effect on where you can or can't store your MP3s, but does allow
AMPlay to store the path to each file more efficiently. You can drag a
directory onto this icon to set it.

Note that changing this option may cause quite a lot of recalculation
work within AMPlay as it reconstructs the paths for tracks using the
old default directory, and works out which tracks are in the new one.

Uniqueness:

This tells AMPlay how far back in the track history to look when
checking whether something has already been played recently. i.e. it
defines what 'recently' means in that context. It is a percentage of
the tracks available to AMPlay at the time. e.g. if there are 1000
tracks in the database, 100 of which pass the current filter settings,
then if uniqueness is 75%, it will look back through the most recent 75
history entries.

Although it is a percentage, values above 90% are not allowed. This is
because very high uniqueness values, together with large numbers of
available tracks and a large history can lead AMPlay into what I call
the needle in the haystack problem - This is where most of the things
it can pick have to get discarded as having been played too recently.

Dynamic Area limit:

This defines how much address space AMPlay reserves for the database on
startup. It does not claim this much memory, but tells RISC OS that its
dynamic area will not grow beyond this limit.

The default is 32MB which should be plenty for most purposes. (A
database of 100,000 tracks produces a 14MB database, and peaks at 25MB
used while adding the tracks). If you have very large numbers of
tracks, each with a long pathname and using tags (or editted
pathnames), then you might need to raise this.

AMPlay needs to be restarted for this change to take effect.


Sync maximum history with total tracks / Maximum history:

The database tables for tracks, albums, artists etc have clearly
defined limits. They are as big as they need to be to hold the
information about the number of tracks you have.

History is different in that it can just grow indefinitely. Even if you
only have a very small number of tracks, there is no logical limit to
how many history entries you could generate.

So, there needs to be some sort of cap on the history to stop it eating
the entire database eventually. The default setting is to keep a number
of history entries roughly equal to the total number of tracks in the
database. As more tracks are added, the allowed length of the history
grows accordingly. When the maximum history is reached, new items added
to it will cause the oldest items to be removed.

Alternatively, you can set your own fixed upper limit.

________________________________________________________________________

* 4.7 Actions:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* 4.7.1 Events:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Treat unmarked text files as:

This determines what happens to text files that have no marker. (see
the section on file formats for more details on this).

Always play on startup:

This determines whether AMPlay should effectively click play once
startup is complete. Note that if AMPlay was playing when it was shut
down, it always starts playing on startup. This option determines
whether it should start playing on startup even if it was stopped on
shutdown.

Force current track on startup:

When AMPlay starts, if it should start playing a track (either because
it was playing one on shutdown, or because the above option is set),
but AMPlayer is already playing a track, this option determines whether
to override what AMPlayer is already doing.

Play newly added tracks:

This determines whether newly added tracks should start playing
straight away.

Queue newly added tracks:

If set, newly added tracks are queued, but not played straight away.

Sort after tracks are added:

This sets whether a sort automatically takes place following track
addition.

Stop playing when the player quits.

If unset, AMPlay will let AMPlayer continue playing the MP3 when AMPlay
quits.

Kill the AMPlayer module when the player quits.

This unloads AMPlayer when AMPlay closes. This is only available if
stop playing when the player quits is set.


4.7.2 Sorting/Boundary checking:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

These options also apply to both the sort process and the boundary
check process that determines where one album ends and the next starts.

- Sort by Name or Sort Raw

  This determines whether the sort is by the name information that
  AMPlay is using for each item (which may be based on the pathname, for
  some of the tracks at least), or by the raw path to file itself. If
  all the files in the database come from the same filesystem
  heirarchy, then these options may be equivalent in terms of the
  resulting sorted order.

  There is one possible useful side effect from Raw sort though - if
  you have a filesystem heirarchy with genre directories above the
  Artist directories, then a raw sort will give you a list with the
  Artists grouped by Genre but alphabetical within that. There is an
  option in the menus page that allows a divider to be inserted into
  the menus at such genre boundaries.

- Case sensitive, or not.

  A case sensitive sort is faster, but means that all the artists
  starting with upper case letters will end up sorted above those
  starting with lower case ones. If your naming system is consistent
  with regard to case, you can probably use case sensitive searching to
  achieve the same resulting order, faster.

- Space sensitive, or not.

  Space sensitive is also faster. If turned off, then before comparing
  two items, all spaces are stripped from them. This means that any
  trailing spaces or hard spaces within the string won't cause any
  sorting oddities or spurious album boundaries, but does have the
  slight risk of two genuinely different albums/artists being
  considered the same. (e.g. 'An Artist' would be considered identical
  to 'A Nartist')

- Ignore leading 'The ' or not.

  This causes any leading 'the ' to be stripped from the artist name
  for the purposes of sorting, and for boundary checking. i.e. "The
  Offspring" will be treated as being identical to "Offspring", and both
  will be sorted under "O".

  Currently, ignore 'the ' only applies to the artist name.

  It also only applies when sorting by name. When performing a raw
  sort, it isn't straightforward to remove a leading 'the ' from the
  artist name (indeed, it may not be present, if the naming information
  is based on the tag, or has been editted).

In the case of "The Offspring" and "Offspring", albums by both of these
will appear under a single artist entry. However, whether that artist
entry is shown with the leading "the" in the menus and on the main
window will vary. What is shown is the artist attribute of the first
track in the artist. So, which one you see will depend on which album
is alphabetically first within the artist, and what artist name its
tracks have.

________________________________________________________________________


* 4.8 State:
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Remember Window positions, Position in track, Pause:

These options control what information, over and above the defaults,
is stored in the state files.


  Window Positions: This stores the window position of the main window,
  the mini window, the search window, the Filter Editor window, and the
  Database Editor window. Note that it doesn't store the stack order
  (i.e. what was on top of what)

  Position in track: This remembers how far through the currently
  playing track it is, and on restart will go to that position in the
  track and continue from there.

  Pause status: Remember whether the player was paused when quit.


Stop track before saving state:

This doesn't affect whether the track is stopped when the player is
quit, just the order in which operations are done. If selected, track
playback is stopped before the state save gets to a point that might
take a second or two. With it off, track playback continues until the
save state has completed.


Keep a backup of state files:

The state is stored in choices:audio.mp3.amplay2.db_xyz, where xyz is
the state format version. If this option is enabled, a backup directory
is created below that. When AMPlay comes to save its state, it knows
what files it is about to overwrite, and copies then into the backup
directory before doing so.

If the state files are corrupted (e.g. by running out of disk space
during a save), this allows recovery to the last successfully saved
state.


Restart if running at shutdown.

If set, then if AMPlay is running when you shutdown RISC OS, it writes
an obey file into the choices system such that it is restarted when
RISC OS starts up. It then deletes the file.

It does not write the file if it is exitted manually before shutting
down RISC OS.

Don't use this if you are running AMPlay on startup anyway.


Use RAMDisc for temp files during load/save:

This option can be used to considerably improve startup and shutdown
times when using a saved state. What it does is to copy the state
files into a RAMDisc before parsing them. If a RAMDisc already
exists, it will use that, and make no changes to it (or leave files
behind in it). If there is no RAMDisc, it will create one, use it, and
delete it when finished.

The RAMDisc is only used during startup and shutdown of the player.

The only circumstances in which this might cause problems are;

- RAMDisc already exists, but either too small or too full to contain
  the state files.

- Insufficient memory to contain the state files (in which case
  you'd probably have trouble even with the option turned off).

The state files are copied as needed into the ram disk, and deleted
once read, so the ram disk only needs to have enough space to contain
the largest single file. When creating a ram disk, AMPlay looks at
the maximum possible file size (the statelist) based on the maxfiles
setting, and rounds that up to the nearest Mb.

This option is of most benefit on machines with disk subsystems that
are quite slow compared to the processor speed (e.g. built in IDE in a
StrongARM RiscPC). On systems with fast disks (e.g. Iyonix and probably
VirtualRPC), the benefit is much less, but still detectable with large
databases (below around 5000 tracks, it doesn't make much difference).

________________________________________________________________________


* 4.9 Other:
~~~~~~~~~~~~

* 4.9.1 Errors:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Report Errors from AMPlayer:

If, during playback, the AMPlayer module detects any errors in the mp3
file it is playing, this error will be reported in the artist
field on the main window.
(Note that current versions of the AMPlayer module can occasionally
report spurious errors when jumping to a point in a file).


Report ID v2 Tag messages:

AMPlayer reports an error if it encounters an ID v2 tag in a file, and
there is no ID v2 tag handler present. AMPlay does not handle these
tags at present. This option allows such errors to be ignored.


Report file not found errors:

This pops up a warning when it tries to play a file from the database,
and can't find it. You might want to turn this off if your MP3 are not
all available at once (e.g. they're on CDs)
  

Try to continue playing after errors:

This tells it whether to try playing another track after a file not
found error.

This is to try to avoid the situation where, say, a network drive is
unavailable, and it would otherwise go through several thousand files,
giving a file not found error on each one...


* 4.9.2 Advanced:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Set AMPlayer buffer to:

This will set the AMPlayer$buffer variable to the specified value on
startup. AMPlayer can be configured with different buffer sizes for
different filing systems, so if you have already configured this
elsewhere, you can tell AMPlay to leave the settings alone.

AMPlay defaults to leaving the buffer alone if there is already one
set, but setting it if there isn't one.

You can do much more useful things with the AMPlayer$Buffer
variables - refer to the AMPlayer module documentation for more
information on this.

Use X modifier to create ext. name block:

This determines how AMPlay creates an extended name block when editting
a pathname based name for the first time. If set, it uses the X
modifier to attempt to strip the leading track number and other
characters from the start of the track name.

This arises because the pathname based name just has track, album and
artist name information, whereas the name block has track name and
track number as separate fields.

See also the FAQ on track numbering (section 6.21).

Prefer single filters active concurrently:

If set, this causes the filters system to behave more like AMPlay 1.5x
did in that select clicks to activate one filter will inactivate the
others. (Adjust clicks will still allow multiple filters to be active
concurrently).


X Modifier special characters:

See section 2.12.5 on Advanced Modifiers for more information about
the X modifier.

This allows you to define extra characters that will cause the X
modifier to stop when it is trimming characters from the front of
a string. All alphanumerics are included by default, you only need
to add any punctuation etc characters here. The default is '([{./\',
which allows any of the left brackets, and the full stop. The '/' is
included to allow for cases where the track name is derived from the
path to the file, and therefore has '/' or '\' characters that get
changed to '.'s later on (if the relevant option is set).

For example, if the full stop was not included, the X modifier might
trim;

02 - ...and justice for all

to;

and justice for all

Whereas with it included you would get;

...and justice for all


Display error messages for:
Display information messages for:

These set how long the particular message types should be displayed for
on the main window.

It is set in is multiples of slow update (see section 4.2.1)

________________________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2008 Mike Sandells, mike@mikejs.com
Last Modified: 30.05.2008