HydrogenAudio

Hosted Forums => foobar2000 => 3rd Party Plugins - (fb2k) => Topic started by: tedgo on 2009-04-03 13:22:35

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: tedgo on 2009-04-03 13:22:35
Biography view

A new component from the PSS/ELPlaylist/Library Tree developer
http://foo2k.chottu.net/ (http://foo2k.chottu.net/)

[a href="http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=biographyviewuxjt.png" target="_blank"]
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: qwertz on 2009-04-03 14:38:23
It looks very good, and I concur that Wiki would be nice. It misses a scroll function for longer text though:

(http://xs538.xs.to/xs538/09145/clipboard01474.jpg)

Well it's still a young plug in, so thank you very much, developer.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: tedgo on 2009-04-03 14:49:27
Best would be an option to choose the server the infos should come from.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2009-04-03 14:57:36
don't want to request too much only happy to see this kind of component being developed

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: starchaos on 2009-04-03 16:04:23
I like it
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Black_Over_Bills_Mothers on 2009-04-03 16:13:22
Yet another great plugin from this developer - thankyou 

I realise it's still young but I would like to see;
1) Scroll bars
2) A list of album and a list of artist sources. Selection would be from top to bottom. If no match then move to next source etc.
3) If used as an album art only - could we have the usual scaling\fit options

That's it for now - thanks again.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: novembre on 2009-04-03 16:23:43
Interesting idea!
+1 for scrolling.
Anyway, great component!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: _oao on 2009-04-03 17:39:20
I'd like to see something like that doing it with wikipedia, though
But its a good starting point

Why?
Most of the last.fm biographies are sourced from wikipedia:

Quote
Please read the following before posting:
    * Submitted content must not violate copyright. It's illegal to plagiarise someone else's biography of this artist.
    * You can copy from Wikipedia, or any other GFDL-licensed source, provided that you enter the URL to the source in the sources box below.
    * All submitted content remains copyright of the author, and is licensed under the GFDL.


I also would like to see scroll bars and some sort of option to set a limit size to images or scaling\fit options.

this component seems to work well with the default UI + foo_dockable panels. Many thanks, this is a great component! 
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: tedgo on 2009-04-03 17:49:46
Most of the last.fm biographies are sourced from wikipedia

That's right. But I may like to see the whole biography not only a few lines of it
And with all artists i now tried with this plugin enabled i only got a short "prologue"
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2009-04-03 17:58:15
But I may like to see the whole biography not only a few lines of it

unclick "short description" and you'll get full biography, but then you'll need really large panel as you can't scroll
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: tedgo on 2009-04-03 18:47:28
Ah, thanks.
Haven't seen this option
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Bollerkopp on 2009-04-03 19:52:06
hi,

wow... great component! thank you very much for this.

greets
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: _oao on 2009-04-03 20:32:32
i'm really enjoying this component: album mode also fetches album descriptions!

btw i think i found a bug:
- when the bios/descriptions are big the end of the last sentence gets cut-off by a few words...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: d0ng on 2009-04-03 20:52:04
A well developed but simple plugin +1 also for the scrolling. Great plugin so far.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: tedgo on 2009-04-03 21:00:50
Yes, it is better than i thought.
I played around some time now and i love it!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: TomBarlow on 2009-04-03 21:09:13
I'm not sure it needs scrollbars, just for aesthetical reasons. Everyone is always asking if they can hide them, and now all of a sudden they want them! Maybe a link to the last.fm page (e.g. 'read more...') would work? I think this is the reason it can give a briefer description...

This is a great component though, thanks very much to the developer.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: tedgo on 2009-04-03 21:11:08
No not a scroll bar but scrolling option with the mouse wheel at least!
It works in ELPlaylist so it should also be possible in Biography view

EDIT:
I noticed that it doesn't remembers the opacity value...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: chongy5 on 2009-04-03 21:21:50
This is a fantastic component, great work from the developer.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: lokioki on 2009-04-03 21:51:39
No not a scroll bar but scrolling option with the mouse wheel at least!
It works in ELPlaylist so it should also be possible in Biography view

EDIT:
I noticed that it doesn't remembers the opacity value...


Then what we who have trackball ? 
Good plugin, in use atm
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: tedgo on 2009-04-04 13:05:28
Biography view 0.2 with scroll function (mouse-wheel)
Yes, that's it!
Unfortunately it still doesn't remembers the opacity value...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: novembre on 2009-04-04 13:29:58
Biography view 0.2 with scroll function (mouse-wheel)

yay!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: odyssey on 2009-04-04 13:48:13
1. Would be great if you were able to store specified info in tags once they were downloaded.

2. Would be even greater if it were able to get the tags-cloud and do same as (1) with it
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: tedgo on 2009-04-04 14:08:35
Biography view 0.2.1
(very busy today )
Quote
- opacity to save settings and forget was fixed.(v0.2.1)
(translated with Live Search Translator)

For me its perfect now
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: d0ng on 2009-04-04 17:32:07
Quote
For me its perfect now


Works beautifully. The mouse scroll works better than the scrollbar, didn't come to mind when I thought of that.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: _oao on 2009-04-04 17:54:05
mouse scroll doesn't work with foo_dockable_panels...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: fbuser on 2009-04-04 18:06:21
For me it works with foo_dockable_panels.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: _oao on 2009-04-04 18:34:25
For me it works with foo_dockable_panels.

you're able to scroll text with foo_dockable_panels?
strange, it's not working for me...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: fbuser on 2009-04-04 18:54:51
you're able to scroll text with foo_dockable_panels?
Yes.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: novembre on 2009-04-04 18:56:57
Feature request: since sometimes biographies for certain artists are not present in my language, a fallback to english would be useful
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: metal_termite on 2009-04-04 19:00:07
Something is different with font size in this plug-in. For instance, Tahoma with a font size of 8 does not match the size of Tahoma-8 throughout the rest of foobar. The font size is output a bit smaller in this plug-in.

(http://i41.tinypic.com/10pypz6.jpg)

Top portion is Tahoma-8 output by the biography plugin. Bottom portion is Tahoma-8 output by foo_uie_lylrics, which is consistent with the rest of foobar.

Edit: Ability to enable/disable custom border around artist/album image would be cool.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Yotsuya on 2009-04-04 19:38:53
Thanks for yet another quality component! I added this to a tab stack under PSS and it is working well under wine. Scroll is working fine for me, just put the mouse over the panel and use the scroll wheel.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: _oao on 2009-04-04 20:18:24
you're able to scroll text with foo_dockable_panels?
Yes.

weird, it's not working for me...
what's your foo_dockable_panels version?
mine is Dockable Panels 1.0.7b [Mar 28 2007 - 09:18:48] (running with default UI) with fb2k 0.9.6.4.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: fbuser on 2009-04-04 21:23:46
I didn't tried it with Default UI first, but even with Default UI it is working. I used the same versions as you, both Dockable Panels and fb2k.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: chongy5 on 2009-04-04 21:32:16
Then what we who have trackball ?


Get a trackball mouse with a scrollwheel, I couldn't live without it! 
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: tpijag on 2009-04-04 21:37:53
Or check your options regarding trackball. It has been many years, but memory says you can define a button action / ball movement to mimic scroll.

terry
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: _oao on 2009-04-05 01:30:44
I didn't tried it with Default UI first, but even with Default UI it is working. I used the same versions as you, both Dockable Panels and fb2k.

are you also using XP sp3?
i have no ideia why scrolling doesn't work for me.
i'll guess i have to get used to resize the dockable panel when the text is too long...

btw the bug that caused the last sentence to be cut-off by a few words seems to have been fixed!
thanks
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: fbuser on 2009-04-05 09:02:30
are you also using XP sp3?
Another yes.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Xerion on 2009-04-05 09:24:29
Nice Component. One problem: when using it in album mode, it sometimes gets the album info and sometimes doesn't (on the same album, which does have info on last.fm). Also there is no option for album info text caching (only image) in preferences like there is for artist info.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: s33m33 on 2009-04-05 14:50:33
I realise it's still young but I would like to see;
1) Scroll bars
2) A list of album and a list of artist sources. Selection would be from top to bottom. If no match then move to next source etc.
3) If used as an album art only - could we have the usual scaling\fit options


+1


Great plugin. Takes foobar one step closer to perfection 
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: MasterT on 2009-04-05 15:30:04
Feature request:
A function to change the edge style (None, sunken, grey) of the panel would be very useful.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Nemphael on 2009-04-05 20:06:34
I love this plugin! I've used it to get some album art (folder.jpg), which it is really great at, and it's already replaced my album art viewer! I've noticed how it doesn't handle album names if they have illegal characters (For instance "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" - 0kB file truncated as "The Chronicles of Narnia"). Otherwise - thanks, I love it!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: grounder on 2009-04-05 22:31:55
Quote
if they have illegal characters (For instance "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" - 0kB file truncated as "The Chronicles of Narnia"). Otherwise - thanks, I love it!


illegal characters may fix use
E:\COVERS\Artists\$replace(%artist%,'/','-','\','-',':','-','*','-','?','-','"','-','<','-','>','-','|','-')
and
E:\COVERS\Album\$replace(%album%,'/','-','\','-',':','-','*','-','?','-','"','-','<','-','>','-','|','-')


Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mystNZ on 2009-04-06 01:26:06
 Something amusing: for songs that lack tags (hence "?" is sent), the panel reads  "Mysterious lo-fi punk from Hungary. They use toy instruments and substandard guitars of the communist era. The name of the band is pronounced in Hungarian as ‘Kérdőjel’ which means question mark in English. "  with a funny image of a guy with a sock on his head. My music is tagged properly of course, so this only happens with new pre-library songs 

Great component by the way, thanks to the dev!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: emoryy on 2009-04-06 09:55:59
Something amusing: for songs that lack tags (hence "?" is sent), the panel reads  "Mysterious lo-fi punk from Hungary. They use toy instruments and substandard guitars of the communist era. The name of the band is pronounced in Hungarian as ‘Kérd?jel’ which means question mark in English. "  with a funny image of a guy with a sock on his head. My music is tagged properly of course, so this only happens with new pre-library songs 

Great component by the way, thanks to the dev!


Put
$if3(%artist%,)
instead of %artist% into the artist field in server settings
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: _oao on 2009-04-06 10:07:26
Biography View v2.2 out

Quote
Fixed memory leaks are. (v0.2.2)

(translated with google) 
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: tedgo on 2009-04-06 12:33:06
Full changelog:

Quote
* Added the scroll function.
* Fixed some bugs.Text saved as a cache to worth out of character; the one time, thrown away.
* opacity to save settings and forget was fixed.(v0.2.1)
* Fixed memory leaks.(v0.2.2)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: lokioki on 2009-04-06 13:08:31
Full changelog:

Quote
* Added the scroll function.
* Fixed some bugs.Text saved as a cache to worth out of character; the one time, thrown away.
* opacity to save settings and forget was fixed.(v0.2.1)
* Fixed memory leaks.(v0.2.2)



How does one scroll with trackball where middle-click is not available ? :I
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: TomBarlow on 2009-04-07 22:34:51
That's a good point. I wonder if it would be possible to have clicking and dragging on the text as another way to scroll? I think I'd like that, even though I have a scroll wheel. I guess we have to hope the dev sees this and adds it.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Nemphael on 2009-04-07 22:55:49
Quote
if they have illegal characters (For instance "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" - 0kB file truncated as "The Chronicles of Narnia"). Otherwise - thanks, I love it!


illegal characters may fix use
E:\COVERS\Artists\$replace(%artist%,'/','-','\','-',':','-','*','-','?','-','"','-','<','-','>','-','|','-')
and
E:\COVERS\Album\$replace(%album%,'/','-','\','-',':','-','*','-','?','-','"','-','<','-','>','-','|','-')

I know, but if I'd like to see a workaround implemented. $replace(%tag%,'/','-','\','-',':','-','*','-','?','-','"','-','<','-','>','-','|','-') is cumbersome.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Black_Over_Bills_Mothers on 2009-04-08 18:54:10
Version 0.2.3 out
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: meDveD.spb on 2009-04-08 21:57:44
Version 0.2.3 out

   
Quote
# Fix another memory leak bug (v0.2.3)
# Edge style and set of additional padding (v0.2.3)
# Organize the internal structure (v0.2.3)


//google translate
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ZeeJay on 2009-04-09 03:57:05
Request:
- Ability to cycle through artist's images.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: starchaos on 2009-04-09 15:58:57
Could someone help me with a little problem? I want to save the text and artist image file in the folder from where the song is playing from.

I've tried C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\My Music\%artist% - %album%\%artist%
              C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\My Music\%artist% - %album%\%artist%.txt
              C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\My Music\%artist% - %album%\folder
                                    (I'm letting it download the album art that I don't have for this last one)

But naturally there is some characters that I can't use when naming my folders, so the %artist% - %album% thing isn't working that well. Is  there some other way I can put these files in the folders where the song is playing from?

This would also help with Various Artist folders. :x


Edit: I figured it out, ignore this post.  C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\My Music\%directoryname%\%artist%
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2009-04-09 17:05:59
yeah, you are right it doesn't allows title formatting commands unfortunately, just simple tags
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: qwertz on 2009-04-10 17:35:11
Version 0.2.4

Quote
Artists play tracks, ColumnsUI display album information for the panel. With automatic download features from the net.
More than one image to download the artist, to be switched.
Consider the server load up to five switch on the mouse wheel or click wheel.
(Cache's settings are enabled, Cache not only display the images. If you want to display multiple copies may be better off once.)
Add pseudo-transparent background
Akira Osamu fine.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: hammurabi on 2009-04-10 18:53:47
Version 0.2.4

Quote
...



Thx for the info, qwetz.
This is a great little plugin. Props to the developer.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: bubi jackson on 2009-04-10 19:23:41
Thanky for the info.

I like this plug more and more
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: pee_wee on 2009-04-11 01:18:16
I am enjoying it as well. nice addition.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mystNZ on 2009-04-12 22:42:58
Minor bug / behavior change request: "Stop Search" gets reset upon foobar restart. It would be better if it had a persistent status.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Falstaff on 2009-04-12 23:00:46
testing it in K :

[a href="http://xs138.xs.to/xs138/09150/___untitled2196.jpg" target="_blank"]
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Black_Over_Bills_Mothers on 2009-04-13 07:50:06
This is a great plugin - thanks to the developer.

As well as the artist image and a biography, could we have a discography option please? Perhaps with a few formatting options regarding display of album title and date - I think album image may be asking too much but I would use it!

I believe this would complete this plugin.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Amra on 2009-04-14 14:23:56
Is anyone else experiencing a problem scrolling the text after foobar has been minimized and then restored? I started noticing this after updating to version 2.4 and am experiencing it on two different computers. It could have been happening on prior versions but I never noticed it then.

Just curious... Love the component and still want to use it even with the minor annoyance.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wojtek on 2009-04-14 15:44:16
v0.2.5
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Fractal_Mortality on 2009-04-14 18:51:38
Can someone explain what "load only mode" does?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: emoryy on 2009-04-14 19:40:02
Can someone explain what "load only mode" does?


By the name, it only loads data from the cache, does not search on the server.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: dreadroach on 2009-04-14 19:55:39
can someone help me.. i need correct path for saving album arts in folders from where the song is playing from?

i've only managed to save them in artist folders..not in album folders

tried many variations, but without success ..
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: bowen_tk on 2009-04-14 20:25:23
I think there is a bug :
The description of the beatles is cut . There is some line missing
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: emoryy on 2009-04-14 20:32:00
can someone help me.. i need correct path for saving album arts in folders from where the song is playing from?

i've only managed to save them in artist folders..not in album folders

tried many variations, but without success ..


$replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,)cover

you can replace "cover" with %album%, or your desired image filename, without the extension
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: dreadroach on 2009-04-14 20:46:36
can someone help me.. i need correct path for saving album arts in folders from where the song is playing from?

i've only managed to save them in artist folders..not in album folders

tried many variations, but without success ..


$replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,)cover

you can replace "cover" with %album%, or your desired image filename, without the extension


thanks, but that's not what i ment

that's columnsUI artwork settings, i don't have problems with that.

what i need is path for foo_uie_biography "Album" settings..to fetch covers in folders from where the song is playing.

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/258/20552955.jpg (http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/258/20552955.jpg)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: emoryy on 2009-04-14 20:59:42
thanks, but that's not what i ment

that's columnsUI artwork settings, i don't have problems with that.

what i need is path for foo_uie_biography "Album" settings..to fetch covers in folders from where the song is playing.

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/258/20552955.jpg (http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/258/20552955.jpg)


i am talking exactly about that... either you want to save the album art to or load from there you should put that titleformat into that textbox...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: dreadroach on 2009-04-14 21:07:44
thanks, but that's not what i ment

that's columnsUI artwork settings, i don't have problems with that.

what i need is path for foo_uie_biography "Album" settings..to fetch covers in folders from where the song is playing.

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/258/20552955.jpg (http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/258/20552955.jpg)


i am talking exactly about that... either you want to save the album art to or load from there you should put that titleformat into that textbox...


it works

many thanks! 

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: acmodeu on 2009-04-15 14:38:15
Proxy support is utterly needed! 
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Fractal_Mortality on 2009-04-16 05:24:00
Don't know why, but it took me until now to realize we could cycle through artist images, cool! Another good feature would be for the ability to save a default artist pic, or having biography view remember the last selected. Either way, this plugin is too cool. One of the most fun I've used for foobar in a long time.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: bismuth on 2009-04-16 06:14:18
Don't know why, but it took me until now to realize we could cycle through artist images, cool! Another good feature would be for the ability to save a default artist pic, or having biography view remember the last selected. Either way, this plugin is too cool. One of the most fun I've used for foobar in a long time.


Please tell me how to cycle through artist images? Thanks in advanced 
And I also want the image always appear as "Fit width" , any ways to do that?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Dirhael on 2009-04-16 13:20:18
Don't know why, but it took me until now to realize we could cycle through artist images, cool! Another good feature would be for the ability to save a default artist pic, or having biography view remember the last selected. Either way, this plugin is too cool. One of the most fun I've used for foobar in a long time.


Please tell me how to cycle through artist images? Thanks in advanced 
And I also want the image always appear as "Fit width" , any ways to do that?


Press your middle mouse button to cycle images.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: tedgo on 2009-04-17 20:30:32
v0.2.6
Quote
- I made that you can set border of text and background color.
- Be made to coordinate deployment automatic.(except overlay mode.)
- You want to keep aspect ratio can be selected (right menu)
- Line breaks contiguous text at the end was so removed.
- To add functionality switches automatically if you have multiple images, 15-second units.(Right menu)

(translated with Windows Live Search)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Dirhael on 2009-04-18 00:44:25
Hope there's another update soon because this latest one will crash fb2k (0.9.6.5 b2) instantly if you add a biography panel to your layout.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Aveneu on 2009-04-18 12:00:31
Hm, even if artist artwork already exists, the first time it downloads biography information, it will still retrieve alternate artist images (but not cache them), but after the biography is cached it will no longer retrieve said images.
Also, if it can't find a bio for a particular artist, it'll continue displaying the artist artwork/bio from the last artist it displayed them for, but worse is that it won't change to album artwork view. After a while it'll give up on the biography retrieval and display the image, but it takes a bit. It also doesn't make a cached blank biography, so when you view that artist or switch from album art view to artist/bio again you have to wait forever all over again
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: jeremija on 2009-04-20 07:47:54
it seems to me that the biography text isn't antialiased correctly on my system. take a look at the screenshot.
The text "Released in 1983 Progressive Rock" is the same font, size and style (Segoe UI, 8) as the biography text and it seems like the biography text is uglier.

(http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/1443/foobarv.png) (http://img16.imageshack.us/my.php?image=foobarv.png)

also, i have a feature request:

- a vertical scrollbar that can be enabled/disabled
- make possible to align the whole contents to the top (not center when auto-adjust is disabled) and when you scroll the image should scroll along with text.

+ i have an idea to make this plugin even better:
instead of displaying text info, it should create title formatting variables from last.fm info like this:
%lastfm_bio%, %lastfm_tags%, %lastfm_timesplayed%, %lastfm_similarartists%, %lastfm_albums%

and then we could use the panelsplitter/trackinfomod to display this information as we like.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: EdgedInBlue on 2009-04-21 16:26:50
I love this plug-in...especially with the multiple image shuffle.  It has kept me busy tho, updating most-listened-to artist's bios on last.fm. 
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: pee_wee on 2009-04-22 16:24:42
Would be a nice addition to this plugin to also scan wiki for artist info. I mean last fm came up with the sex pistols bio as

A band featured on guitar hero

LOL wth, one of the greatest punk bands and thats all they had to say.

Edit-Seems last fm is really picky about have "The" in the artist name
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: carmenm on 2009-04-23 12:39:39
hi, First i must say that i love that plugin! It made me go back from songbird to foobar2000!
now i miss one thing, a good panel that allows to see albumart eihter from the a folder,jpg or from lastfm if there is no folder.jpg. the album art view of columns ui does it but it resize algo is not good and the album art quality is bad.

In biography view the image quality is great! So i was wondering, could you add local image as a source? something like folder.jpg, artist.jpg and artist.nfo or txt.

Moreover it seems that the autocycle image setting is not saved

Thanks for that great plugin
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: emoryy on 2009-04-23 13:09:19
hi, First i must say that i love that plugin! It made me go back from songbird to foobar2000!
now i miss one thing, a good panel that allows to see albumart eihter from the a folder,jpg or from lastfm if there is no folder.jpg. the album art view of columns ui does it but it resize algo is not good and the album art quality is bad.
I dont understand completly what you need.
So you want first to display folder.jpg. If this doesn't exist, then the picture from last.fm?
If yes, this is what I do with my Panel Stack Splitter album display (and ELplaylist too)
Biography view can be set to save the downloaded pictures automatically, eg. into an alternative directory. (or can be set to save these as folder.jpg)
So I check first for folder.jpg, then for %artist%-%album%.jpg in this alternative directory, else display nofolder.jpg
Image quality is good in panel stack splitter too.

I dont know that the author would implement a feature like loading alternative local sources for albumart, because basically biography view is not for this kind of function.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: carmenm on 2009-04-23 14:33:25
What is Panel Stack Splitter album display? i dont have that panel here so i cant really talk about it.
About the saving feature of biography. Can you make it so that it checks it cache folder first then if no folder.jpg in this cache folder then it will download one it?


I dont really see why it s a bad source, it s just a local source that is often use in many plugins.
Moreover i like to master my album arts and often i dont want those from lastfm. I just want them when i did not download an abum art with AADXUI, or when i am listening to a stream
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2009-04-23 23:04:11
in the latest version (0.2.7 (http://foo2k.chottu.net/)) auto cycle option is remembered (in current session at least)
also there is option to choose what to display if no image can be found (server preferences) either local image path or built-in foobar art reader or what's preferred in list source

+ exclusion filter
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: acmodeu on 2009-04-24 08:49:39
Somebody, tell the author to fix the misprint "enbale" in artist and album preferences tabs. And once again, how about proxy support, because plugin doesn't retrieve anything behind corporate firewall, though others work just fine.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-04-24 15:31:44
I think Biography View use a proxy server configured in Preferences->Networking->use proxy server.

Somebody, tell the author to fix the misprint "enbale" in artist and album preferences tabs. And once again, how about proxy support, because plugin doesn't retrieve anything behind corporate firewall, though others work just fine.

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: acmodeu on 2009-04-27 07:44:10
I think Biography View use a proxy server configured in Preferences->Networking->use proxy server.

Once again:
Quote
though  others work just fine.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: acmodeu on 2009-04-28 06:27:09
It's somehow all right with proxies now, but there is one small glitch - plugin seems not to create folders in patterns like d:\docs\Biography\%artist%\info.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Aveneu on 2009-04-29 02:12:28
Found another bug. Album description will only be downloaded if no album art exists nor the album description/info text file, but it isn't saved, and thus won't be retrieved again unless you delete both files.

Edit: Also, even if a song is excluded, the plugin will still create "base" artist and album info text files, although it won't download any information.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: pee_wee on 2009-04-30 02:22:52
Hm, even if artist artwork already exists, the first time it downloads biography information, it will still retrieve alternate artist images (but not cache them), but after the biography is cached it will no longer retrieve said images.
Also, if it can't find a bio for a particular artist, it'll continue displaying the artist artwork/bio from the last artist it displayed them for, but worse is that it won't change to album artwork view. After a while it'll give up on the biography retrieval and display the image, but it takes a bit. It also doesn't make a cached blank biography, so when you view that artist or switch from album art view to artist/bio again you have to wait forever all over again


I have some obscure bands and this hang up happens quite frequently.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Falstaff on 2009-05-02 16:32:19
@SSENNA :

could you fix the refresh pb on track change please ? in other words, on track change, could you set to empty the panel display, because actually, it keeps the previous artist info until the new artist info is loaded (and with transparency on over a variable background image, it keeps a bad refresh of the bg too)

i've find a way to fix this bg refresh problem, but fixing this pb in your component would be more easy for everyone.

not urgent, just when you'll have time if you can do it (and if you are agree with this request of course)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: jazzy73 on 2009-05-04 02:03:09
nice component!why only 5 images...?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: bismuth on 2009-05-07 16:56:36
I'm using this component in windows 7 RC and the text is not displayed, only images 
Is it just me?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: dreadroach on 2009-05-07 17:05:31
I'm using this component in windows 7 RC and the text is not displayed, only images 
Is it just me?


I also have Windows 7 RC, works like a charm.

Try to fix it in plugin's preferences (adjust color), or upgrade to newer version if available.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: bismuth on 2009-05-07 17:42:45
Really?? I thought it's a problem with Win7

Actually I didn't install foobar normally in Win7

I installed foobar, then copy folder program files\foobar2000 and folder Application Data\foobar2000 from WinXp to Win7,

My foobar looks exactly the same as in Winxp, no need for any adjustment,
only this plugin Biography has problem, only images, no text, (I already checked Show text in prefrence)

Should I try to reinstall foobar and manually setup a new foobar without copying those folders from XP?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: bismuth on 2009-05-07 17:58:20
Ahh now it works 

I just have to disable "Use glow effect to text"

Just can't live without this plugin!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: dreadroach on 2009-05-07 18:11:46
I don't know, I did the same thing a week ago (upgraded from xp to 7), installed foobar and copied all componets, folders ..etc, to their place in "program files/foobar2000"

What version of foobar do you use? I use latest (0.9.6.5).

Works without problems..

EDIT: I see you got it work

EDIT 2: Sorry for double post :S
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: bismuth on 2009-05-08 04:17:42
Thanks for your concern, I feel so stupid, should have checked all the preference before asking
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: s33m33 on 2009-05-09 07:02:55
@SSENNA :
The latest one 0.2.7.6 displayed artist images properly until it came across one it couldn't find. Now it stopped showing artist images for which description exists. A restart of foobar2000 did not solve the problem.

Also, a request, please make it possible to manually specify aspect ratio 1:1.

WinXP.SP2 | Foobar2000 0.9.6.5 | Biography plugin 0.2.7.6
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-05-09 10:09:55
Do you check "enable cache"?
If yes, could you test the disable cache case?

@SSENNA :
The latest one 0.2.7.6 displayed artist images properly until it came across one it couldn't find. Now it stopped showing artist images for which description exists. A restart of foobar2000 did not solve the problem.

Also, a request, please make it possible to manually specify aspect ratio 1:1.

WinXP.SP2 | Foobar2000 0.9.6.5 | Biography plugin 0.2.7.6

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: s33m33 on 2009-05-09 15:06:05
Thanks for the reply.

Disabled cache. Network activity shows plugin downloading from website but fails to display.

Did some further experimenting with settings and found that image shows, but only in "Overlay" mode.
This works with both, cache enabled & disabled.

Also, artist image is displayed when text is turned off (in all modes like overlay, top, bottom, etc).
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: barty on 2009-05-12 15:42:19
Love this component!! Is it possible to have BOTH album and artist lookup?

A lot of time the album info is not found, b/c it's misspelled or whatever, and it'd be nice to have at least the artist info.  So my #1 request is to allow BOTH options be checked.  Then in config, have these choices.  Then display album info if artist not found and vice versa.  If both are found,  simply cycle between them.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: barty on 2009-05-12 16:52:51
I worked around it by just adding another biography panel.  Should've thought of that first before asking.  D'oh!

Love this component!! Is it possible to have BOTH album and artist lookup?

A lot of time the album info is not found, b/c it's misspelled or whatever, and it'd be nice to have at least the artist info.  So my #1 request is to allow BOTH options be checked.  Then in config, have these choices.  Then display album info if artist not found and vice versa.  If both are found,  simply cycle between them.

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: chongy5 on 2009-05-12 17:09:57
I worked around it by just adding another biography panel.  Should've thought of that first before asking.  D'oh!

Love this component!! Is it possible to have BOTH album and artist lookup?

A lot of time the album info is not found, b/c it's misspelled or whatever, and it'd be nice to have at least the artist info.  So my #1 request is to allow BOTH options be checked.  Then in config, have these choices.  Then display album info if artist not found and vice versa.  If both are found,  simply cycle between them.



That's what I was just about to say lol
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: carmenm on 2009-05-14 13:10:58
OK i must also say that the fact that now it looks both locally and on lastfm makes it the most useful plugin for me!
Now seeing how cool it is i have 2 feature requests:

- a way to know which source is used(local or lastfm)
- related to that either an entry on the right button menu to save it directly as folder.jpg or another format. Or even better would be actions on middle click or double click.


Great work!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: TomBarlow on 2009-05-17 09:37:13
I think the only extra thing I would like is the ability to change the layout mode with a button click, please.  I'd like to be able to expand the biography panel from a column to full screen and have it change layout from bottom to left as it does so- I'd like to be able to change it with a PSS button, although a context menu option would work. I'd like to avoid redundant panels.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: bubi jackson on 2009-05-18 19:36:42
@SSENNA

Thx a lot for this Plug.

The new Data in the Properties are awesome. I like the similar artists indicator very much.

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: rx32555 on 2009-05-18 23:01:18
Feature request. Language priority:

First search biography in JP > if not found, search biography in EN language.

Would be great this. 


Thanks!


Sry for my poor english >_>
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: durch on 2009-05-21 01:32:40
Very great plug-in. But I found a bug:

I had an artist named "John Dahlback". But his proper name is "John Dahlbäck" (I hope you can see the character). Last.fm showed the error message: "This is an incorrect tag for John Dahlb&auml;ck". Would be great if this bug could be fixed. Of course, I don't really know if this bug is Last.fm's fault.
(http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/1240/capturet.png)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: dannymichel on 2009-05-21 02:59:35
+1 for scrolling
is there any way to add no limit to the images?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: insnowflakes on 2009-05-21 05:08:55
Ssenna, thank you for the update, font renders correctly now.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: eradumvelhinho on 2009-05-21 09:45:48
Very great plug-in. But I found a bug:

I had an artist named "John Dahlback". But his proper name is "John Dahlbäck" (I hope you can see the character). Last.fm showed the error message: "This is an incorrect tag for John Dahlb&auml;ck". Would be great if this bug could be fixed. Of course, I don't really know if this bug is Last.fm's fault.


That's an automatic message fom Last.fm. Everytime you have an artist that it's incorrect tagged thez show the right tag. You should change the name of the artist for the correct one (with the ä). Then the error is gone.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: dannymichel on 2009-05-22 05:51:01
can we please have the option to configure the text? maybe add some text.
can we please have a link to the last.fm page option in text and pictures?
can we have an option to remove that white border?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Falstaff on 2009-05-22 06:56:06
which white border ??? 

no border at all in Biography view.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: tedgo on 2009-05-22 08:28:30
Maybe he's talking about this:
Right-click in the panel --> Preference --> set "Edge Style" to "None"
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Markiz von Schnitzel on 2009-05-26 01:37:34
it might be that im stupid, but how can i make it store everthing it finds (images and text) localy, so that when i listen to the artist again offline it loads these offline files?

I cant seem to make it work. Im using 0.9.6.5, SP3 and DarkOne 1.5.2.

thanx

BTW, grrrrrrreat plugin!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: bismuth on 2009-05-26 06:56:39
The plugin has cache function

Right click the panel/Server preference/last.fm

In the artist and album tabs check "Enable cache", uncheck "Search cache after online search" and "Disable saving downloaded data"
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Markiz von Schnitzel on 2009-05-26 13:21:14
thanks, it fixed itself.
everyhing was set up as you said it should be, but for some reason, everytime i was offline, nothing was showing.

anyway it's working now, so it's goooood times now!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Hawk on 2009-05-29 06:11:34
Okay, I think I discovered something I think is pretty weird.

After getting an Creative Zen mp3 player I noticed that if I embedded cover images into the mp3 files themselves I could make them show up on the screen of my player. So far no problem.

Then I was introduced to this great Biography plugin. However since I listen to a lot of underground metal bands the fm bio info gets quite a few of them very wrong. 

So Falstaff suggested that I use the 'Core Built-in ArtReader' in the Current source list so that I could use it as an Artist panel.
I gave this code to locate my  artist.jpg in the folder where the mp3 resides that is being played:


$puts(artist.path,$directory_path(%path%)artist.jpg)


After doing that I have been getting mixed results. Some of my newer albums did not show the 'artist.jpg', most of my older albums did.

Weird huh?

Well, it gets weirder. After troubleshooting for a week or so I tried removing the embedded cover image from the mp3's of my recent albums.
And wadda you think?

BINGO! Problem solved!

???

Yes I tried several times and I get a 100% correlation.

Now these questions bug me:

1) What has embedding a cover file in the mp3 file to do with the functioning of Biography Panel/View?

2) Can the developer fix this?

3) Being not a coder I wonder; have I missed something?

Thanks!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-05-29 15:08:07
I gave this code to locate my  artist.jpg in the folder where the mp3 resides that is being played:


$puts(artist.path,$directory_path(%path%)artist.jpg)

Where did you write this?
At least, I think "\" should follow $directory_path(%path%).

"Core Built-in ArtReader" simply receive content of artwork via foobra2000 API.
so, I guess the component is irrelevant to this problem.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: xbullethammer on 2009-05-30 21:56:07
This is a really dumb question...    I saw new data in the properties about similar artists, times played. etc. But how do I *use* 'em? Something having to do with $meta(blah)?

Thanks.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: unabatedshagie on 2009-05-30 23:16:39
I don't think it's silly, I was wondering the same thing myself.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: barty on 2009-06-02 20:31:08
try $info(field_name)

If the field_name has angled brackets < > do not include the brackets.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: unabatedshagie on 2009-06-02 21:20:49
@barty Works for everything else except the information from last.fm
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: durch on 2009-06-05 16:15:12
The new version 0.2.9.0 sometimes takes a noticable time for displaying information, even if the information hasn't changed. I notice this while changing tabs. This is annoying, for you have a white tab background while waiting for biography view. Version 0.2.8.0 didn't have this, so I downgraded.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: durch on 2009-06-05 21:12:37
Can't edit my post, so I have to make a new reply.

I just wanted to add that the older version that I downgraded to, 0.2.8.0 now shows said behavior, too. I have no clue why, because I didn't change anything else in foobar2000 and never had this before. Perhaps it's not Biography View's fault, but I'm not sure.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Dirhael on 2009-06-05 21:21:53
Can't edit my post, so I have to make a new reply.

I just wanted to add that the older version that I downgraded to, 0.2.8.0 now shows said behavior, too. I have no clue why, because I didn't change anything else in foobar2000 and never had this before. Perhaps it's not Biography View's fault, but I'm not sure.


For what it's worth, I'm not having this problem at all. I did however experience it with earlier versions (the same will probably be the case with the latest version as well), until I started splitting my cache files into separate folders. As it turns out, having thousands of files in the same folder will eventually slow things down. What I ended up doing was to sort the files according to the first letters of the artist/band name (...\$left($swapprefix(%artist%),the),1)\...).
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: durch on 2009-06-05 21:30:45
I just disabled cache, but things didn't change. Every now and then a white background with loading delay.
It's not that I explicitly enabled cache before. Cache was checked by default, but I didn't specify any paths, so I don't think anything had been cached before. I did a search on .txt files but didn't find anything on my hard disk.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-06-06 05:13:06
@durch

I have no idea at all.
Could you provide more information.
* OS, CPU
* Is the splitter that contains the biography panel ColumnsUI's tab stack?
* Are you using "Pseudo transparency" ?
* Are you using "Use glow effect..."?
* Are you using oppacity effect? (ie.Are Opacity values smaller than 255 ?)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: durch on 2009-06-06 12:14:15
Windows 7 RC, Core 2 Duo
Tab Stack - Panel Stack Splitter - Biography (nothing else in this Panel Stack Splitter)
No Pseudo transparency
No Glow
No Opacity, but Opacity value is 230
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: durch on 2009-06-11 19:24:09
I have a very good Feature request:
If a song has multiple contributing artists, it would be great if Biography View could give the user a choice, maybe a drop-down menu or, even better, several (appearance-wise customizable) buttons that appear for each artist.
Of course, the first artist's biography should be displayed without user interaction, by default.

Even greater if Biography View could not only recognize the default artist separators (; and /), but also several artist separating strings like many people have in their library like "feat.", "featuring", "ft." (I agree users should use ; instead) and "vs.". The list could get long, so users should be given the option to customize this.

At the moment I use a complicated title formatting string just to filter out the first artist of such strings. Without it, Biography View wouldn't show anything in the current version.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: durch on 2009-06-11 19:25:47
This is the code I currently use:
Code: [Select]
$ifgreater($strchr(%artist%,','),1,$left(%artist%,$sub($strchr(%artist%,','),1)),$ifgreater($strstr(%artist%,'vs.'),1,$left(%artist%,$sub($strstr(%artist%,'vs.'),1)),$ifgreater($strstr(%artist%,' feat'),1,$left(%artist%,$sub($strstr(%artist%,' feat'),1)),[%artist%])))
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: bismuth on 2009-06-14 11:25:59
I have a very good Feature request:
If a song has multiple contributing artists, it would be great if Biography View could give the user a choice, maybe a drop-down menu or, even better, several (appearance-wise customizable) buttons that appear for each artist.
Of course, the first artist's biography should be displayed without user interaction, by default.

Even greater if Biography View could not only recognize the default artist separators (; and /), but also several artist separating strings like many people have in their library like "feat.", "featuring", "ft." (I agree users should use ; instead) and "vs.". The list could get long, so users should be given the option to customize this.

At the moment I use a complicated title formatting string just to filter out the first artist of such strings. Without it, Biography View wouldn't show anything in the current version.


Nice idea, I'd love to have that feature too.
Since using this component, I've been editing all artist tags with multiple artists to 1 artist, and then edit the song title to add "feat..."
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2009-06-14 23:35:51
ssenna, can you look here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=72745&view=findpost&p=641581), and tell what is causing the error?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-06-16 15:52:35
Windows 7 RC, Core 2 Duo
...

I couldn't reproduce the problem, after all.(with Windows Vista)

ssenna, can you look here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=72745&view=findpost&p=641581), and tell what is causing the error?

I don't know the error detailedly because biography view don't deal it directly.
It seems that DNS server returned error response to query for hostname-IPaddress resolution(perhaps when trying to access to Last.fm).
Is biography view working normally when the error appears ?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2009-06-16 17:25:41
I can't notice anything unusual when the error pops. Biography panel is working OK.
It looks like this:

[font= "Lucida Console"][17:54:55] Opening track for playback: "C:\Users\Dejan\Music\Jacques Loussier Trio\Satie- Gymnopedies - Gnossiennes\01 - Gymnopedie No. 1 - Var. 1.ape"
[17:54:57] DNS error (11004)
[17:59:31] Opening track for playback: "C:\Users\Dejan\Music\Jacques Loussier Trio\Satie- Gymnopedies - Gnossiennes\02 - Gymnopedie No. 1 - Var. 2.ape"
[17:59:49] DNS error (11004)
[18:04:06] Opening track for playback: "C:\Users\Dejan\Music\Jacques Loussier Trio\Satie- Gymnopedies - Gnossiennes\03 - Gnossienne No. 3.ape"
[18:08:33] Opening track for playback: "C:\Users\Dejan\Music\Jacques Loussier Trio\Satie- Gymnopedies - Gnossiennes\04 - Gnossienne No. 6.ape"
[18:13:59] Opening track for playback: "C:\Users\Dejan\Music\Jacques Loussier Trio\Satie- Gymnopedies - Gnossiennes\05 - Gnossienne No. 2.ape"
[18:14:04] DNS error (11004)[/font]
[/color]

And because nobody reported this, probably it is something at my side. Maybe some anomalies with my ADSL connection? But I don't see any errors alsewhere, and when I play internet streams there aren't any DNS errors but just with Biography view. How often Biography view is accessing intenet?
Just to mention that I have disabled firewall, anti-virus, mail-client, IM, browsers and anything related to internet connections.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: durch on 2009-06-17 11:11:33
Image Limits greater than 5 from last.fm would be very nice. I'd like to set it to 50 or even more. It's very enjoyable to see many different artist pictures while listening to the music. Please implement this, if it is possible. 
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Falstaff on 2009-06-17 19:38:02
When i open Properties of a track, i can see some extra info from last.fm :

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: foorious on 2009-06-17 23:54:54
I'm using Biography View 0.2.9 with foobar 0.9.6.8 (DUI) and Dockable Panels. Works nice. However, I still can't figure how to activate vertical scrolling for long texts. Mouse wheel doesn't work, and I see nothing else. What can I do ?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-06-19 14:19:04
How often Biography view is accessing intenet?

Biography View will try to access to last.fm when the artist of now-playing track is different from one of previous-playing track.
(suppose that cache function is disabled)

If the error always appear when playing specific tracks, I want to know artist name of these tracks and your server(language) setting.

I'd like to set it to 50 or even more.

The purpose of this restriction is to suppress the load of the server.
I think 50 is too large.
At present, I have no plan to increase the maximum value.

maybe a good add for the next build Ssenna ?

I think titleformat availability of these info can be achieved by tag writing or using metadb_display_field_provider.
I have not decided whether to implement either.
Therefore, I can't gurantee the addtion in the next release.

Mouse wheel doesn't work, and I see nothing else. What can I do ?

Did you test Preferences->General->"Mouse wheel:scroll the object currently below pointer rather than the object having focus" ?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2009-06-19 17:13:09
If the error always appear when playing specific tracks, I want to know artist name of these tracks and your server(language) setting.

Server language is set to English. Cache is enabled and file saving disabled.
But, it really has something to do with Akamai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akamai_Technologies) - i.e. akamai58.ipv4ilink.net which is nonexistent host as I checked right now but googling there are lot of pages describing Akamai DNS errors.

First, as in that other post I mentioned, akamai string was in /system32/nmap-service-probes file, which I deleted
Then I run TCPView and noticed that jusched (java update) process was accessing the same akamai server. I disabled the process and all was good - there were no DNS error messages in console.
But now again I see akamai in PM foobar processes and again DNS errors.
If I close foobar - no more connections to akamai. Also if Biography view isn't loaded - no more connections to akamai.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: foorious on 2009-06-20 08:13:06
Did you test Preferences->General->"Mouse wheel:scroll the object currently below pointer rather than the object having focus" ?

Well, who can say that he/she knows all extensive foobar preferences by heart ? Thanks ssena.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: foorious on 2009-06-20 10:06:04
Oh, and maybe one suggestion : AFAIK with current version, when we are in the "Artist" mode only biographies and artist pictures are queried automatically. For albums we need to right click > Album in order to perform the query.

I would like album pictures to be also queried automatically (with no user interaction even if we are in the "Artist" mode), so all relevant pictures can be cached and viewed later offline if we wish to.

Thank you.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: joelzhao on 2009-06-24 05:42:32
Nice component! Feel good because i can see the biography while listening. It will be nice if the author add the "server(language)"with "cn(china Simplified)",and FB can get the biography from "cn.last.fm".THX!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-06-24 14:35:27
@2E7AH:
At least, biography view doesn't contain any hard-coded "akamai".
I can't figure out what causes this problem.
(Last.fm or your ISP might adopt services provided by Akamai, e.g.cache service.)

It will be nice if the author add the "server(language)"with "cn(china Simplified)",and FB can get the biography from "cn.last.fm".THX!

As far as I test, if Chinese is selected in the same manner as the other languages, Last.fm returns no text info.
(Threfore, I removed chinese from language list.)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: jeremija on 2009-06-25 11:14:52
When i open Properties of a track, i can see some extra info from last.fm :



I wrote about something like this here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=70955&view=findpost&p=628467)
I'd really like to be able to use the title formatting you suggest!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Jack Schmaltz on 2009-06-25 11:27:47
...I'd really like to be able to use the title formatting you suggest!


its been updated & now this feature is available via %lastfm_bio%, %lastfm_similar_artist% etc.

great work ssenna, really enjoying the component
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: jeremija on 2009-06-25 12:46:42
thanks, it's working now, but how come the lastfm information will be displayed in PSS, but not in the item details panel? i need the item details panel because of it's scrollbar... :/

edit: is it because the lastfm information isn't added on track change, but after it is retrieved from the web?

edit: solved - it works when i restart foobar after adding panel...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: joelzhao on 2009-06-26 04:36:58
Thank your reply,Ssenna.
I still have two questions:
i) Sometimes, the biography will stop refreshing(especially when switch songs that not played to the end), when I close the FB, the program is still staying in the progress! So I have to push"Ctrl+Alt+Del"and force quit the program and start the FB, it can display again, I wonder if it's a bug?
ii) If there is not exist artist.txt, I try to setup a txt, but it can't display. What's the script about the txt?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: joelzhao on 2009-06-26 07:20:02
Add an advice:
Thought there is a "bio" field, if biography can't search the value from last.fm, why not change to get it from "bio", after all, it's easy to add or edit the value of "bio".
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Falstaff on 2009-06-27 12:59:01
v0.3.0.1 released today
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: foorious on 2009-06-27 19:17:22
What's the changelog ?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Falstaff on 2009-06-27 19:34:43
http://foo2k.chottu.net/ (http://foo2k.chottu.net/)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: _oao on 2009-06-28 15:19:08
Feature Request: links to Artist, Album and Track pages on the Last.fm site.
it doesn't need to be anything fancy, maybe a new context-menu option for the biography panel...

thanks
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Light on 2009-06-29 22:07:38
First of all, very nice plugin!

I like to use the auto download function of the album art. But i like to view the discography even more... Now if i select on of both, only that one gets downloaded (so bibliography or album). Can you let it download both, allways?

Just an idea, thank you!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: foorious on 2009-06-30 07:32:07
@Light : I have already asked the same thing in page 6 :

AFAIK with current version, when we are in the "Artist" mode only biographies and artist pictures are queried automatically. For albums we need to right click > Album in order to perform the query.

I would like album pictures to be also queried automatically (with no user interaction even if we are in the "Artist" mode), so all relevant pictures can be cached and viewed later offline if we wish to.

No answer yet, but let's hope we can get an answer soon in order to know if this feature will be implemented or not...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Light on 2009-06-30 09:46:13
My bad

Please, please, please, developer?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2009-07-20 17:34:24
Biography text is resetted on track change regardless if it's same artist/album. Can this be changed?
i.e. I'm browsing/reading some artist text (larger then panel), and on track change text is resetted and I'm back at the top of text

Another thing, "use mbid instead of artist field" is resetted on foobar restart, so you have to manually tick on that option every time you start foobar if you want to use [%MUSICBRAINZ_ARTISTID%]

[Biography View 0.3.2.1]
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: bismuth on 2009-07-21 04:37:34
Most of the time I use the cache function for artist images to save time.

But sometimes I want to redownload the images for just a particular artist. So I hope there will be a right click option for Redownload images.
Thanks in advanced
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2009-07-25 06:13:29
Thanks ssenna

[Biography View 0.3.2.2]
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: durch on 2009-07-26 01:55:50
Feature request: Option to disable ClearType. I'm using Windows XP without ClearType font rendering, and it's ugly if Biography View forces smoothed fonts while the rest of foobar2000's interface doesn't.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: carmenm on 2009-07-27 10:06:24
Hi,
I have a little problem witht the latest version.
The album images are not cached anymore.
here is my album cache path for albums
D:\Martin\My Documents\My music\LastFmData\%artist%_%album%

THanks
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: lokioki on 2009-08-05 16:27:02
I loved this plugin when I used Columns UI, but is there any hope for a Default User-Interface version ? :3
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: grimes on 2009-08-05 17:29:14
I can't recommend this plugin. Severe performance problems and strange bugs for example flickering artwork in NG Playlist (single track in group).
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mystNZ on 2009-08-05 23:58:02
I am not experiencing severe performance problems, but I agree with grimes concerning cover image flickering in NG playlist... ssenna, is there any way to fix this?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: vogliadicane on 2009-08-06 19:02:47
Feature request: Option to disable ClearType. I'm using Windows XP without ClearType font rendering, and it's ugly if Biography View forces smoothed fonts while the rest of foobar2000's interface doesn't.


I´m using it on vista and I would like to have it the other way round (some option to HAVE clear type anti-aliasing)

... because in vista fonts for this panel aren´t clear-typed and somehow jaggy.

BTW great component again, as all yours are, Ssenna!

Edit: Another thing that would be nice, is some scroll option like in lyrics panel: to click and drag the text! - this is so handy when using it with a touch screen system (which I do)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-08-07 16:53:02
Severe performance problems

?Could you explain more detail.

strange bugs for example flickering artwork in NG Playlist (single track in group).

but I agree with grimes concerning cover image flickering in NG playlist...

It seems to be an issue of NGPlaylist rather than Biography View.
?What does "flickering" mean? (sorry, my English is too poor)
?if you are using "Provide artwork to other artwork viewers", please try disabling it.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: grimes on 2009-08-07 17:45:17
foobar is not responding for several seconds during search for pictures and biographies in internet. Better performance with data already saved or in cache, so its only a problem with "new" artists. Maybe the internet connection?

Flickering means, that at start playing a track NGPlaylist tries to load several covers in a very short time (1-2s), don't know the reason, but problem is gone, after deinstalling biography view. I've installed foo_covers if that matters.

Never used "Provide artwork to other artwork viewers".
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-08-07 19:42:47
foobar is not responding for several seconds during search for pictures and biographies in internet. Better performance with data already saved or in cache, so its only a problem with "new" artists. Maybe the internet connection?

strange...
the internet connection is executed in background thread, so that biography view doesn't block the mainthread.
I'd like to know whether there is someone else experiencing this problem.

Flickering means, that at start playing a track NGPlaylist tries to load several covers in a very short time (1-2s),

metadb_io::dispatch_refresh(callded by Biography view) may trigger flickering.
It seems to be an issue of NGPlaylist.
I think Biography view can't do nothing to fix this issue, perhaps.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Falstaff on 2009-08-07 19:49:40
All is fine for me (no freeze, never)

for NG playlist, i don't know, i use ELPlaylist
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: apathy on 2009-08-08 05:15:58
foobar is not responding for several seconds during search for pictures and biographies in internet. Better performance with data already saved or in cache, so its only a problem with "new" artists. Maybe the internet connection?

Flickering means, that at start playing a track NGPlaylist tries to load several covers in a very short time (1-2s), don't know the reason, but problem is gone, after deinstalling biography view. I've installed foo_covers if that matters.

Never used "Provide artwork to other artwork viewers".




I use NGPlaylist and have the same problem, i removed biography view and still have the flickering. So im not sure if its the addon causing this problem?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2009-08-08 19:25:24
I'd like to know whether there is someone else experiencing this problem.

I can confirm flickering in NG playlist, which I didn't know that is caused by Biography view, but disabling the component stops flickering. It's like 2-3 breaks in first 10 sec of playback.
But that only happens if there is one item per group (artwork). I noticed this NG playlist behaviour also without Biography view, with embedded covers and on updating played track (i.e. playback statistics) if that is of any importance.
here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=28647&view=findpost&p=627587) (last quote) musicmusic replies to one flickering problem

I would like to suggest something about image aspect ratio and Biaography view layout:
I think that XML response from last.fm doesn't include image dimension in pixels, but if the info is somehow available, could it be possible Biography view to display more images if they fit in defined layout according to their aspect ratio? Or generaly to display more than one image in one panel?
i.e. My image layout is in some dimension where is better to display 2-3 images then 1 tall image with lots of empty space
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: vogliadicane on 2009-08-08 20:26:13
for me there´s some strange problem with this panel.

Very often the biography info is not updated after some time. If this happens, after one (or many) restarts of foobar there´s nothing displayed at all, or after some tracks the info is appearing after 2 minutes or later.

I´ve tried a lot with different cache settings, but nothing helped. Sometimes everything works like a charm with no problems. I couldn´t find, how to reproduce the problem accurately, the only thing I realized, it´s happening more often in the evening, maybe due to increased web traffic. On the other hand, it´s no problem then, to access the artist page at lastfm directly, which I think is the direct source for biography view.

I´d like to know, if other people have experienced something similar, and if not, what I can do in my settings to avoid this.

edit: for information - this happens also with different language settings... and on different systems (Vista 32bit, Vista 64bit, XP).
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-08-10 15:47:54
for me there´s some strange problem with this panel.

Very often the biography info is not updated after some time. If this happens, after one (or many) restarts of foobar there´s nothing displayed at all, or after some tracks the info is appearing after 2 minutes or later.

well...
Could you try ttp://foo2k.chottu.net/foo_uie_biography_debug.zip
This debug version will output the status to console.
(Please save Console Log using View->Console->Write Log,
and if the problem appears  please send the log file to me.)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: vogliadicane on 2009-08-10 18:49:55
thanks ssenna for the tool.

I thought, I wouldn´t need it because biography view had worked perfectly the last days, until this hang:

Code: [Select]
Opening track for playback: "C:\Users\Public\Music\Fischer-Z\1981 - Red Skies over Paradise\Fischer-Z - (1981) Red Skies over Paradise - 01 - Berlin.mp3"
Biography: prepare query 0 0 [19:34:53:252]
Biography: start query [19:34:53:252]
Biography: start remote_access 0 [19:34:53:253]
Biography: end remote_access 3823 [19:34:54:716]
Biography: start downloading images [19:34:54:716]
Opening track for playback: "C:\Users\Public\Music\Extrabreit\(1981) Welch ein Land! - Was für Männer_\05 - Glück und Geld.mp3"
Biography: prepare query 1 2 [19:35:33:260]
Opening track for playback: "C:\Users\Public\Music\The Sisters Of Mercy\1987 - Floodland\Sisters of Mercy - (1987) Floodland - 01 - DominionMother Russia.mp3"
Biography: prepare query 1 4 [19:36:12:537]
Biography: end downloading 5 [19:36:28:050]
Biography: completion <= 214590152, 0 [19:36:28:057]
Biography: start query [19:36:28:062]
Biography: start remote_access 0 [19:36:28:063]
Location not parsable: "C:\Users\Public\Music\Fischer-Z\Fischer-Z_info.lfml", reason: Unsupported file format
Biography: end remote_access 22873 [19:36:29:161]
Biography: start downloading images [19:36:29:162]

**edit: after this I waited 2 minutes, but nothing changed. endedit**
biography was frozen in the artist before this one.

note, that the last trial to get cache info is from the path of 'Fischer-Z' although this artist was played three tracks before and the current one is 'The sisters of mercy'.

My artist cache path is: C:\Users\Public\Music\%album artist%\%artist%_info


hope that helps.


P.S.: the error of unsupported file format is due to that the debug version is older, right?

edit2: here´s another example starting with opening the last track, that has shown the correct biography.

and I have waited 2 minutes each time before playing a new track.

Code: [Select]
Opening track for playback: "C:\Users\Public\Music\Yello\(1986) 1980-1985 The New Mix in One Go\07 - Yello _ Sometimes (Dr. Hirsch).mp3"
Biography: prepare query 0 0 [19:57:20:654]
Biography: start query [19:57:20:654]
Biography: start remote_access 0 [19:57:20:655]
Biography: end remote_access 3593 [19:57:21:080]
Biography: start downloading images [19:57:21:081]
Biography: end downloading 5 [19:57:24:745]
Biography: completion <= 67420360, 0 [19:57:24:749]
Biography: receive completion_notify <= 0, 0 1509140
Biography: start query [19:57:24:752]
Biography: start remote_access 1 [19:57:24:755]
Biography: end remote_access 0 [19:57:25:028]
Biography: start downloading images [19:57:25:028]
Biography: end downloading 1 [19:57:25:220]
Biography: completion <= 236014888, 1 [19:57:25:220]
Biography: receive completion_notify <= 0, 1 1509140
Location not parsable: "C:\Users\Public\Music\Yello\Yello_info.lfml", reason: Unsupported file format
Opening track for playback: "C:\Users\Public\Music\Various\Very Cool Electric Stereo Jazz\11 - Various - AudioTrack 11.mp3"
Biography: prepare query 0 0 [19:57:30:382]
Biography: start query [19:57:30:382]
Biography: start remote_access 0 [19:57:30:383]
Biography: end remote_access 2249 [19:57:30:909]
Biography: start downloading images [19:57:30:910]
Opening track for playback: "C:\Users\Public\Music\Mouse On Mars\(1999) Niun Niggung\11 - Mouse On Mars - Wald F.X.mp3"
Biography: prepare query 1 2 [19:59:18:769]
Opening track for playback: "C:\Users\Public\Music\Kraftwerk\2003 - Tour de France Soundtracks\06 Vitamin.mp3"
Biography: prepare query 1 4 [20:01:19:747]
Biography: end downloading 5 [20:05:49:994]
Biography: completion <= 236014888, 0 [20:05:49:999]
Biography: start query [20:05:50:002]
Biography: start remote_access 0 [20:05:50:003]
Location not parsable: "C:\Users\Public\Music\Various\Air_info.lfml", reason: Unsupported file format
Biography: end remote_access 12970 [20:05:51:017]
Biography: start downloading images [20:05:51:017]
Biography: end downloading 5 [20:05:53:373]
Biography: completion <= 236017224, 0 [20:05:53:385]
Biography: receive completion_notify <= 0, 0 1509140
Biography: start query [20:05:53:389]
Biography: start remote_access 1 [20:05:53:390]
Biography: end remote_access 0 [20:05:53:666]
Biography: start downloading images [20:05:53:666]
Location not parsable: "C:\Users\Public\Music\Kraftwerk\Kraftwerk_info.lfml", reason: Unsupported file format
Biography: end downloading 1 [20:05:54:112]
Biography: completion <= 236017808, 1 [20:05:54:112]
Biography: receive completion_notify <= 0, 1 1509140
Opening track for playback: "C:\Users\Public\Music\The Cure\(1984) The Top\The Cure - (1984) The Top - 03 - Wailing Wall.mp3"

from here it worked again

[!--sizeo:1--][span style=\"font-size:8pt;line-height:100%\"][!--/sizeo--]Moderation: Added codeboxes.[/size]
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-08-14 16:44:39
Code: [Select]
Biography: start downloading images [19:34:54:716]
Opening track for playback: "C:\Users\Public\Music\Extrabreit\(1981) Welch ein Land! - Was für Männer_\05 - Glück und Geld.mp3"
Biography: prepare query 1 2 [19:35:33:260]
Opening track for playback: "C:\Users\Public\Music\The Sisters Of Mercy\1987 - Floodland\Sisters of Mercy - (1987) Floodland - 01 - DominionMother Russia.mp3"
Biography: prepare query 1 4 [19:36:12:537]
Biography: end downloading 5 [19:36:28:050]
...

Downloading-speed seems to be too slow. But I can't figure out at all...

・What version of foobar2000 are you using?
・Are you using a proxy server?

('Location not parsable' errors may have been reported from Folder-Monitoring feature of foobar2000.)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: vogliadicane on 2009-08-14 18:09:46
Downloading-speed seems to be too slow. But I can't figure out at all...

?What version of foobar2000 are you using?
?Are you using a proxy server?

('Location not parsable' errors may have been reported from Folder-Monitoring feature of foobar2000.)


it´s version 0.9.6.8 no proxy server.

But I have to mention, that there were no problems anymore since the last post, runs perfectly now. Btw I´m still using your debug-version.

Maybe there were other repeated network traffic problems.

I will install the current Biography view again (0.3.2.2) and report in a few days, how it runs.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: vogliadicane on 2009-08-18 12:00:25
works great now!.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: nc30 on 2009-08-20 02:27:53
Is it possible to write the biography to the file? Like a bio field or something
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: hammurabi on 2009-08-20 07:09:59
Is it possible to write the biography to the file? Like a bio field or something


The bio's are pulled from last.fm's wiki.

Simply go to last.fm and edit the wiki yourself
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: NightFox on 2009-08-21 22:26:52
Please add copy text feature.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: chv on 2009-08-23 22:49:13
is there way to drawrect/drawimage or another biography panel over biography panel?

i tried this.

PSS (pseuo transparent)
->Biography(only IMG) (pseuo transparent)
->Biography(only TXT) (pseuo transparent)

$movepanel_c(IMG,0,0,%_width%,%_height%)
$movepanel_c(TXT,0,200,%_width%,%_height%)

but didn't work. 

PSS
->Biography (IMG)
->PSS
  ->Biography(TXT)

didn't work too 

even i tried,

PSS
->Biography(IMG)

$movepanel_c(IMG,0,0,%_width%,%_height%)
$drawrect(0,0,100,200,255-255-255-255,)

but this one didn't work toooo   
i don't know why IMG panel is on the rect...

finally, i wanna show only TXT biography on Drawrect on only IMG biography.
if it's impossible, as a substitute drawrect on IMG biography

is it possible?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: carmenm on 2009-09-03 11:37:53
i have a strange behavior with the cache feature.
Sometimes album covers are not cached. I absolutly dont know why, the cover s name is not special, i see the cover in foobar but the cover is not saved on disk.
I saw it because i read the cover from CAD.

Also in some cases instead of a image i got a directory in the cache folder like:
Marina & the Diamonds_Obsessions
or
Extrawelt_Soopertrack

i use %artist%_%album% as name template
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ZeeJay on 2009-09-04 01:55:44
I don't know if it's supposed to be this way, but for me, Biography Panel takes a lot to load images.
It seems that it's always trying to get the artists pictures (specially) from internet. But, I have the cache folder completely filled up with those pictures.
So, does the Panel get the images from net regardless the cache. If yes, what's the point?!
How can I make the Panel search in cache firstly?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-09-05 03:09:19
Sometimes album covers are not cached. I absolutly dont know why, the cover s name is not special, i see the cover in foobar but the cover is not saved on disk.

humm...  In the following case, cover image is not saved.
(1) the cover image is not found.
(2) the cover image is provided from Core Built-in ArtReader.
(3) cache file path is illegal format (eg. contain illegal characters).

Also in some cases instead of a image i got a directory in the cache folder like:

Does meta-info of these tracks contain ':' , '/', or '\' ?
biography view recognizes these characters as folder-separator.

It seems that it's always trying to get the artists pictures (specially) from internet. But, I have the cache folder completely filled up with those pictures.

well...
Please make sure whether you unticked "Search cache after online-search" in Preferences->Biography Server->Last.fm->Artist/Album tab.
this option should be unticked.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ZeeJay on 2009-09-06 15:34:53
It seems that it's always trying to get the artists pictures (specially) from internet. But, I have the cache folder completely filled up with those pictures.

well...
Please make sure whether you unticked "Search cache after online-search" in Preferences->Biography Server->Last.fm->Artist/Album tab.
this option should be unticked.

It didn't work. The Panel still gets the images from internet, regardless the cache folder.
By the way,  would "search cache after online-search" mean just a simple search in cache folder AFTER a no-result online search? As you've said, I got the opposite.
What I really want is an option like :
"Search first in [dropdown] >Cache/Saved images  >Internet/Online images"
Please add it. It would be really great and make the panel faster.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mystNZ on 2009-09-12 14:08:08
Hi ssenna, using an active connections monitor, I have noticed that the component consistently makes an outbound connection (on playlist item change) -even though the info for that artist is already cached on disk. "Expiry interval of cache" is set at 0, and "Search cache after online-search" is not enabled.

Judging by the speed at which the info is displayed -quickly if cache exists, and a bit slower if its a new artist- it suggests that the component is accessing the cache, but then why make an outbound connection? Hopefully this can be fixed.

Also, small request: Just like "playback statistics", enable the component only for music that's in the library. Thanks
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Sam Stoat on 2009-09-14 14:10:18
Is it possible to remap more than one tag to artist?  If I have, for example, a classical piece with two performers, one composer and one conductor, could I remap all four of them to artist so they appear in the Artist sub menu to select each one?  I understand [<%performer%>] will remap both performers to artist, but I can't see how to add more than one tag.  I'm using the latest version (v0.3.3.2).
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: bismuth on 2009-09-15 19:48:48
Most of the time I use the cache function for artist images to save time.

But sometimes I want to redownload the images for just a particular artist. So I hope there will be a right click option for Redownload images.
Thanks in advanced


Sorry for asking again, can this feature be implemented?

When playing one song, a right click option to redownload images for the artist being played, while cache feature is still on.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: tedgo on 2009-09-19 13:27:41
Is there any way to make the panel switch automatically between multivalue artists?

If there are multivalues in the artist tag the panel allows to switch manually by context menu.
Would be great if we could have an option to switch automatically in a predefined time (for example: track length/number of values).

Is it somehow possible to achieve this?
If not, please take this idea as a feature request .
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: jeremija on 2009-09-22 06:18:17
what exactly does the "show indicator" option do?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2009-09-22 06:47:02
if you use biography view panel as biography text renderer, than if the text is larger than panel up/down triangles will show on bottom and/or top of the panel
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: tedgo on 2009-09-23 17:53:59
I just updated to v0.3.3.2 and have some strange issues now...

foobar2000 freezes every time for about one second the panel updates images.
Sometimes the panel doesn't updates the info (maybe the same problem vogliadicane mentioned before?).

Haven't got these problems with older versions.
I tried with a version 0.3.0.0 i still had in a portable foobar2000 installation and no freezes occured/no info updating problems.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: WilB on 2009-10-03 22:53:35
I can confirm the problem reported by tedgo after updating to 0.3.3.2 - e.g. the channel spectrum briefly freezes when the image changes. 0.3.1.3 worked fine. I resolved the problem by switching to GDI+ font instead of GDI  - unfortunately the GDI+ setting is not saved so the problem returns following a restart.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: tedgo on 2009-10-04 00:24:48
Hey, thanks for the hint.
Its true, switching to GDI+ solves the problem.
And unfortunately its also true that its not restored on startup...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: jeremija on 2009-10-12 18:59:59
is it possible to get the %lastfm_album_info% variable like %lastfm_bio%?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Erich_2 on 2009-10-12 19:54:54
Its true, switching to GDI+ solves the problem.
And unfortunately its also true that its not restored on startup...

I've changed the font settings to Arial or Tahoma, almost no freezes any more.
The font will be restored on startup.
ResizeQuality "ResizeLowQuality" worked too, but I don't like that poor quality.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: tedgo on 2009-10-12 20:19:28
@Erich_2
Thanks for this
Changing to Tahoma does indeed reducing freezes.
Strange that it depents on the font...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2009-10-12 23:10:21
is it possible to get the %lastfm_album_info% variable like %lastfm_bio%?

I was looking for the same, as it appears in properties as "Album Contents", but probably it isn't mapped to any tag name that I've tried.
As the txt file shows, the available tags are:
%lastfm_bio%
%lastfm_similar_artist%
%lastfm_artist_playcount%
%lastfm_artist_listeners%

I guess ssenna forgot to make that info available
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Fractal_Mortality on 2009-10-26 00:45:17
I loved this plugin when I used Columns UI, but is there any hope for a Default User-Interface version ? :3


I'm wondering this as well... It's actually the only component I use in a dockable panel with the default UI because I love it so much. How hard is it to port components to from columns to default? If it's not an arduous process, I know many users who are on default ui that would appreciate it!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: xbullethammer on 2009-10-26 02:24:55
The main problem is that the API is not there yet. So until Peter releases the DUI API to the masses you won't be seeing lots of 3rd party "UI elements."
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: durch on 2009-11-03 16:52:44
I have 2 feature requests:

1. Option to display a border not just for the text part, but also for the images. The image border doesn't necessarily have to have rounded edges. A simple 1 pixel edge with customizable color and no padding would help a lot to make the panel look better.

2. Option to align pictures to X-Y coordinates (0,0), of course not forgetting padding settings, with full panel width. In my setup I have the picture at the top of the panel and the text at the bottom. But the picture does not hit the panel corners, and when changing pictures the pictures' distance to the panel borders varies. That doesn't look very good and I'd rather prefer a fixed picture distance. (I hope everyone understands that I'm not talking of the padding settings.)

It's also a little annoying that while reading the text the change of images may cause the text to go up and down the screen.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: chongy5 on 2009-11-07 19:57:26
Since updating to 7, I've had a peculiar problem with Biography View. It gets stuck on one artist, and never budges after that.

Tech specs:
Windows 7 64 bit
foobar 0.9.6.9 (same behaviour in 0.9.6.8)
Biography View 0.3.3.3 (same behaviour in 0.2.x.x)

Any idea what the problem could be?

EDIT: still not sure what the problem is, but rolling back to a backup seemed to fix it for now. Shame that.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: random_asdf on 2009-11-14 05:53:01
Did the plugin stop saving artist images to disk? I can't see any, anymore.

I have cache enabled, but they're not saving. Album images are, though.

-edit-
Nvm. Figured out the mistake, made a typo in the path name.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: s.newave on 2009-12-01 06:27:50
Wow, just found this plugin and so far im loving it, great job!!!!!

I would love to see it keep evolving and ideally end up something like MonkeyRok for MM which is a pretty amazing plugin and one of the main reasons i still have MM installed on my pc. Its a great way to find new music and i really havent found anything comparable on any media player.

Anyway keep up the great work!

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: jeremija on 2009-12-01 08:12:12
I loved this plugin when I used Columns UI, but is there any hope for a Default User-Interface version ? :3


I'm wondering this as well... It's actually the only component I use in a dockable panel with the default UI because I love it so much. How hard is it to port components to from columns to default? If it's not an arduous process, I know many users who are on default ui that would appreciate it!


there is a workaround which can be used to show artist biography in default ui. you need foo_textdisplay.dll, under biography server (Misc) set the 'execute query even if no panel exists' and the 'provide artwork to other artwork viewers' checkboxes. Under biography view (Server) you can set the Core Built-in ArtReader to the source list and give it the highest priority (optional, eg. to load the local album images rather than the downloaded from lastfm).

Having set that, you can just use a simple Text Display panel and use the %lastfm_bio% to get the current artist biography. For displaying artist image, select the artist image from the Artwork view context menu.

The only downside is that you can't cycle through the images.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: jeremija on 2009-12-01 08:19:02
Currently available option to manually download artist info is to write it in the file tags. Would it be possible to add the option to manually download the artist info and write it to file (like cache works, but it would download it on mouse click, rather than automatically (artist by artist)).

Also, would it be possible to download the artist pictures from more than one artist at the time?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: xbullethammer on 2009-12-01 16:51:34
Currently available option to manually download artist info is to write it in the file tags. Would it be possible to add the option to manually download the artist info and write it to file (like cache works, but it would download it on mouse click, rather than automatically (artist by artist)).

Also, would it be possible to download the artist pictures from more than one artist at the time?


That would be awesome!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Harm on 2009-12-04 11:52:45
I have a request: wouldn't it be possible to have the scrollbar disappear if not necessary (so if the text fits in the window)?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: TomBarlow on 2009-12-04 20:20:49
I am getting a repeatable crash with foo_uie_biography with the latest beta, it happens whenever I select a .asx that's in a playlist. Here's a crash log
Code: [Select]
Illegal operation:
Code: C0000005h, flags: 00000000h, address: 019B87B5h
Access violation, operation: write, address: FFFFFFFFh

Call path:
bio query thread manager=>bio query thread

Code bytes (019B87B5h):
019B8775h:  EC 8D 7B 01 3B F8 C6 45 FC 03 8D 75 E4 76 0A E8
019B8785h:  A7 0C 01 00 89 7D E8 EB 08 89 7D E8 E8 9A 0C 01
019B8795h:  00 8B 4D 0C 8B 01 8B 50 04 8B 75 E4 8B 12 8D 48
019B87A5h:  04 8B 45 10 50 53 56 FF D2 53 8D 45 A0 50 8B CE
019B87B5h:  C6 04 1E 00 E8 22 CB 00 00 C6 45 FC 04 8B 10 8B
019B87C5h:  C8 8B 42 04 FF D0 8B 55 C8 6A FF 50 8B 42 08 8D
019B87D5h:  4D C8 FF D0 C6 45 FC 03 33 FF 8D 75 A4 C7 45 A8
019B87E5h:  00 00 00 00 E8 42 0C 01 00 8B 75 08 8D 4E 2C 51

Stack (05C7FCC4h):
05C7FCA4h:  7C917E5F 7C97E178 7C917E09 019EA5F0
05C7FCB4h:  01A298B0 0000FFFF 7FFDD000 002564A8
05C7FCC4h:  05C7FCDC FFFFFFFF C7CB0AD3 00000000
05C7FCD4h:  01A2C910 01A27880 05C7FD38 019D4190
05C7FCE4h:  C3921B47 FFFFFFFE 019D1781 019ED900
05C7FCF4h:  01A274C0 00000030 00000040 0000002F
05C7FD04h:  019ED900 00000000 00000000 00000000
05C7FD14h:  00000000 01A2C744 00000000 00000000
05C7FD24h:  00000000 00000000 05C7FCCC 05C7FE9C
05C7FD34h:  019E7B68 00000003 05C7FEA8 019B996A
05C7FD44h:  01A27880 05C7FF00 01A2C910 C7CB0947
05C7FD54h:  00000000 01A2C708 00000003 EE034A58
05C7FD64h:  00000001 804E857E 85F55A58 00000000
05C7FD74h:  85FCC3A0 85DC4838 EE034B3C EE034B41
05C7FD84h:  85DC4838 863B4560 EE034C04 85FDFEE8
05C7FD94h:  85FDFEF8 000DEF88 000DEEA0 EE034A9C
05C7FDA4h:  80567E76 000DF830 85FDFF20 85FDFEF0
05C7FDB4h:  85DC483C 863B4560 00000000 00000038
05C7FDC4h:  00000023 00000023 01A20000 0581FDC8
05C7FDD4h:  01A298B0 0581FD00 01A2015C 019D14AF

Registers:
EAX: 05C7FCDC, EBX: FFFFFFFF, ECX: 00000000, EDX: 01EFA990
ESI: 00000000, EDI: 00000000, EBP: 05C7FD3C, ESP: 05C7FCC4

Crash location:
Module: foo_uie_biography
Offset: 87B5h

Loaded modules:
foobar2000                      loaded at 00400000h - 005BB000h
ntdll                            loaded at 7C900000h - 7C9B2000h
kernel32                        loaded at 7C800000h - 7C8F6000h
COMCTL32                        loaded at 773D0000h - 774D3000h
msvcrt                          loaded at 77C10000h - 77C68000h
ADVAPI32                        loaded at 77DD0000h - 77E6B000h
RPCRT4                          loaded at 77E70000h - 77F02000h
Secur32                          loaded at 77FE0000h - 77FF1000h
GDI32                            loaded at 77F10000h - 77F59000h
USER32                          loaded at 7E410000h - 7E4A1000h
SHLWAPI                          loaded at 77F60000h - 77FD6000h
DSOUND                          loaded at 73F10000h - 73F6C000h
ole32                            loaded at 774E0000h - 7761D000h
VERSION                          loaded at 77C00000h - 77C08000h
WINMM                            loaded at 76B40000h - 76B6D000h
UxTheme                          loaded at 5AD70000h - 5ADA8000h
dbghelp                          loaded at 59A60000h - 59B01000h
SHELL32                          loaded at 7C9C0000h - 7D1D7000h
shared                          loaded at 10000000h - 1002B000h
imagehlp                        loaded at 76C90000h - 76CB8000h
COMDLG32                        loaded at 763B0000h - 763F9000h
IMM32                            loaded at 76390000h - 763AD000h
LPK                              loaded at 629C0000h - 629C9000h
USP10                            loaded at 74D90000h - 74DFB000h
RocketDock                      loaded at 00D60000h - 00D72000h
PSAPI                            loaded at 76BF0000h - 76BFB000h
GameHook                        loaded at 10D00000h - 10D0F000h
lgscroll                        loaded at 10100000h - 1010E000h
MSVCR80                          loaded at 78130000h - 781CB000h
NTMARTA                          loaded at 77690000h - 776B1000h
SAMLIB                          loaded at 71BF0000h - 71C03000h
WLDAP32                          loaded at 76F60000h - 76F8C000h
WINTRUST                        loaded at 76C30000h - 76C5E000h
CRYPT32                          loaded at 77A80000h - 77B15000h
MSASN1                          loaded at 77B20000h - 77B32000h
wdmaud                          loaded at 72D20000h - 72D29000h
msacm32                          loaded at 72D10000h - 72D18000h
MSACM32                          loaded at 77BE0000h - 77BF5000h
midimap                          loaded at 77BD0000h - 77BD7000h
msctfime                        loaded at 755C0000h - 755EE000h
foo_ui_columns                  loaded at 00F40000h - 010B0000h
gdiplus                          loaded at 4EC50000h - 4EDFB000h
foo_playlist_attributes          loaded at 010D0000h - 01114000h
foo_discogs                      loaded at 01140000h - 011A5000h
WININET                          loaded at 3D930000h - 3DA16000h
Normaliz                        loaded at 011B0000h - 011B9000h
urlmon                          loaded at 011C0000h - 012F2000h
OLEAUT32                        loaded at 77120000h - 771AB000h
iertutil                        loaded at 3DFD0000h - 3E1B8000h
foo_cdda                        loaded at 01530000h - 0157D000h
foo_converter                    loaded at 015A0000h - 01610000h
foo_lastfm_radio                loaded at 01630000h - 01678000h
foo_customdb                    loaded at 016A0000h - 01740000h
foo_playcount                    loaded at 01750000h - 01780000h
foo_audioscrobbler              loaded at 017A0000h - 017D0000h
WS2_32                          loaded at 71AB0000h - 71AC7000h
WS2HELP                          loaded at 71AA0000h - 71AA8000h
foo_uie_panel_splitter          loaded at 017F0000h - 01849000h
foo_input_monkey                loaded at 01870000h - 018B8000h
foo_albumlist                    loaded at 018E0000h - 0193C000h
foo_lyricsdb                    loaded at 01960000h - 01990000h
foo_uie_biography                loaded at 019B0000h - 01A03000h
foo_uie_tabs                    loaded at 01A30000h - 01A58000h
foo_rgscan                      loaded at 01A80000h - 01ACF000h
foo_uie_wsh_panel_mod            loaded at 01AF0000h - 01B89000h
Msimg32                          loaded at 76380000h - 76385000h
foo_uie_albumlist                loaded at 01CE0000h - 01D1D000h
foo_vis_shpeck                  loaded at 01D40000h - 01D81000h
foo_fileops                      loaded at 01DB0000h - 01DF8000h
foo_dsp_std                      loaded at 01E20000h - 01E69000h
foo_input_std                    loaded at 01E90000h - 01FDA000h
foo_utils                        loaded at 02000000h - 02044000h
foo_uie_library_tree            loaded at 02070000h - 020C9000h
foo_mouse_gesture                loaded at 020F0000h - 0211B000h
foo_uie_graphical_browser        loaded at 02140000h - 021D4000h
foo_burninate                    loaded at 021F0000h - 02230000h
foo_freedb2                      loaded at 02250000h - 02292000h
foo_textdisplay                  loaded at 022C0000h - 022FF000h
foo_facets                      loaded at 02320000h - 023A1000h
foo_ui_std                      loaded at 023D0000h - 024DE000h
foo_uie_vis_channel_spectrum    loaded at 02500000h - 0253D000h
foo_jesus                        loaded at 02560000h - 02582000h
SXS                              loaded at 7E720000h - 7E7D0000h
CLBCATQ                          loaded at 76FD0000h - 7704F000h
COMRes                          loaded at 77050000h - 77115000h
jscript                          loaded at 3D7A0000h - 3D854000h
xpsp2res                        loaded at 03560000h - 03825000h
wshom                            loaded at 60280000h - 602A1000h
MPR                              loaded at 71B20000h - 71B32000h
ScrRun                          loaded at 735A0000h - 735CA000h
mswsock                          loaded at 71A50000h - 71A8F000h
DNSAPI                          loaded at 76F20000h - 76F47000h
mdnsNSP                          loaded at 16080000h - 160A5000h
Iphlpapi                        loaded at 76D60000h - 76D79000h
rasadhlp                        loaded at 76FC0000h - 76FC6000h
hnetcfg                          loaded at 662B0000h - 66308000h
wshtcpip                        loaded at 71A90000h - 71A98000h

Stack dump analysis:
Address: 019D4190h (foo_uie_biography+24190h)
Address: 019D1781h (foo_uie_biography+21781h)
Address: 019ED900h (foo_uie_biography+3D900h)
Address: 019ED900h (foo_uie_biography+3D900h)
Address: 019E7B68h (foo_uie_biography+37B68h)
Address: 019B996Ah (foo_uie_biography+996Ah)
Address: 019D14AFh (foo_uie_biography+214AFh)
Address: 7C8106F9h (kernel32+106F9h), symbol: "CreateThread" (+22h)
Address: 019ED8B4h (foo_uie_biography+3D8B4h)
Address: 019ED8BCh (foo_uie_biography+3D8BCh)
Address: 019ED8E4h (foo_uie_biography+3D8E4h)
Address: 7C9100B8h (ntdll+100B8h), symbol: "RtlFreeHeap" (+18Bh)
Address: 7C910041h (ntdll+10041h), symbol: "RtlFreeHeap" (+114h)
Address: 019ED8E4h (foo_uie_biography+3D8E4h)
Address: 019ED9DCh (foo_uie_biography+3D9DCh)
Address: 019E8172h (foo_uie_biography+38172h)
Address: 100027A9h (shared+27A9h), symbol: "uPrintCrashInfo_OnEvent" (+B0h)
Address: 019BE42Fh (foo_uie_biography+E42Fh)
Address: 019E5F59h (foo_uie_biography+35F59h)
Address: 019B3386h (foo_uie_biography+3386h)
Address: 019E5780h (foo_uie_biography+35780h)
Address: 019B3349h (foo_uie_biography+3349h)
Address: 019D1489h (foo_uie_biography+21489h)
Address: 019D4190h (foo_uie_biography+24190h)
Address: 019D152Eh (foo_uie_biography+2152Eh)
Address: 7C80B729h (kernel32+B729h), symbol: "GetModuleFileNameA" (+1BAh)
Address: 7C839AD8h (kernel32+39AD8h), symbol: "ValidateLocale" (+2B0h)
Address: 7C80B730h (kernel32+B730h), symbol: "GetModuleFileNameA" (+1C1h)
Address: 019D14AFh (foo_uie_biography+214AFh)
Address: 7813100Ah (MSVCR80+100Ah), symbol: "_set_new_handler" (+0h)
Address: 7813103Bh (MSVCR80+103Bh), symbol: "_set_new_handler" (+0h)
Address: 78131044h (MSVCR80+1044h), symbol: "_query_new_handler" (+0h)
Address: 78131051h (MSVCR80+1051h), symbol: "callnewh" (+0h)
Address: 78131073h (MSVCR80+1073h), symbol: "set_new_handler" (+0h)
Address: 78131099h (MSVCR80+1099h), symbol: "_set_new_mode" (+0h)
Address: 781310D3h (MSVCR80+10D3h), symbol: "_query_new_mode" (+0h)
Address: 781310D9h (MSVCR80+10D9h), symbol: "set_error_mode" (+0h)
Address: 7813113Dh (MSVCR80+113Dh), symbol: "_set_app_type" (+0h)
Address: 78131164h (MSVCR80+1164h), symbol: "_get_app_type" (+0h)
Address: 78131182h (MSVCR80+1182h), symbol: "_setusermatherr" (+0h)
Address: 781316C2h (MSVCR80+16C2h), symbol: "amsg_exit" (+0h)
Address: 78131733h (MSVCR80+1733h), symbol: "initterm" (+0h)
Address: 7813174Dh (MSVCR80+174Dh), symbol: "initterm_e" (+0h)
Address: 7813176Dh (MSVCR80+176Dh), symbol: "get_osplatform" (+0h)
Address: 781317A4h (MSVCR80+17A4h), symbol: "get_osver" (+0h)
Address: 781317E0h (MSVCR80+17E0h), symbol: "get_winver" (+0h)
Address: 7813181Ch (MSVCR80+181Ch), symbol: "get_winmajor" (+0h)
Address: 78131858h (MSVCR80+1858h), symbol: "get_winminor" (+0h)
Address: 78131894h (MSVCR80+1894h), symbol: "get_wpgmptr" (+0h)
Address: 781318CBh (MSVCR80+18CBh), symbol: "get_pgmptr" (+0h)
Address: 78131A3Eh (MSVCR80+1A3Eh), symbol: "exit" (+0h)
Address: 78131A4Fh (MSVCR80+1A4Fh), symbol: "exit" (+0h)
Address: 78131A60h (MSVCR80+1A60h), symbol: "cexit" (+0h)
Address: 78131A6Fh (MSVCR80+1A6Fh), symbol: "c_exit" (+0h)
Address: 78131CC3h (MSVCR80+1CC3h), symbol: "_wgetmainargs" (+0h)
Address: 78131D30h (MSVCR80+1D30h), symbol: "_getmainargs" (+0h)
Address: 78131FF7h (MSVCR80+1FF7h), symbol: "_p__acmdln" (+0h)
Address: 78131FFFh (MSVCR80+1FFFh), symbol: "_p__wcmdln" (+0h)
Address: 78132005h (MSVCR80+2005h), symbol: "_p__amblksiz" (+0h)
Address: 7813200Bh (MSVCR80+200Bh), symbol: "_p___argc" (+0h)
Address: 78132011h (MSVCR80+2011h), symbol: "_p___argv" (+0h)
Address: 78132017h (MSVCR80+2017h), symbol: "_p___wargv" (+0h)
Address: 7813201Dh (MSVCR80+201Dh), symbol: "_p__commode" (+0h)
Address: 78132023h (MSVCR80+2023h), symbol: "_p__daylight" (+0h)
Address: 78132028h (MSVCR80+2028h), symbol: "_p__dstbias" (+0h)
Address: 7813202Dh (MSVCR80+202Dh), symbol: "_p__environ" (+0h)
Address: 78132033h (MSVCR80+2033h), symbol: "_p__wenviron" (+0h)
Address: 78132039h (MSVCR80+2039h), symbol: "_p__fmode" (+0h)
Address: 7813203Fh (MSVCR80+203Fh), symbol: "_p___initenv" (+0h)
Address: 78132045h (MSVCR80+2045h), symbol: "_p___winitenv" (+0h)
Address: 7813204Bh (MSVCR80+204Bh), symbol: "_p__mbctype" (+0h)
Address: 78132051h (MSVCR80+2051h), symbol: "_p__mbcasemap" (+0h)
Address: 78132057h (MSVCR80+2057h), symbol: "_p___mb_cur_max" (+0h)
Address: 7813207Fh (MSVCR80+207Fh), symbol: "_p__osver" (+0h)

Environment:
App: foobar2000 v1.0 beta 3
OS: Windows 5.1.2600 Service Pack 3 x86
CPU: Intel® Celeron® M processor        1.60GHz, features: MMX SSE SSE2
Audio: Conexant AMC Audio
UI: Columns UI 0.3.8.0

Components:
Core (2009-12-03 21:27:08)
    foobar2000 core 1.0 beta 3
foo_albumlist.dll (2009-12-03 21:25:06)
    Album List 4.4
foo_audioscrobbler.dll (2008-03-09 19:08:02)
    Audioscrobbler 1.3.16
foo_burninate.dll (2009-06-24 19:14:28)
    Audio CD Writer 3.0.1
foo_cdda.dll (2009-12-03 21:25:00)
    CD Audio Decoder 3.0
foo_converter.dll (2009-12-03 21:24:54)
    Converter 1.4
foo_customdb.dll (2009-05-09 19:17:06)
    Custom Database 0.0.9a
foo_discogs.dll (2009-11-20 20:14:03)
    Discogs Tagger 1.22
foo_dsp_std.dll (2009-12-03 21:25:08)
    Standard DSP Array 1.0
foo_facets.dll (2008-11-04 22:10:36)
    Facets 2008-02-25
foo_fileops.dll (2009-12-03 21:24:08)
    File Operations 2.1.2
foo_freedb2.dll (2009-12-03 21:24:14)
    freedb Tagger 0.6.2
foo_input_monkey.dll (2009-05-01 13:40:52)
    Monkey's Audio Decoder 2.1.4
foo_input_std.dll (2009-12-03 21:24:50)
    Standard Input Array 1.0
foo_jesus.dll (2009-11-20 22:41:02)
    Autosave & Autobackup 6
foo_lastfm_radio.dll (2009-02-25 22:05:24)
    Last.fm Radio 0.5.6b
foo_lyricsdb.dll (2009-10-05 12:35:38)
    foo_lyricsdb 0.0.8 beta 0
foo_mouse_gesture.dll (2009-11-28 19:41:50)
    Mouse Gesture Host 0.4.4
foo_playcount.dll (2009-04-29 19:09:32)
    Playback Statistics 2.1.9
foo_playlist_attributes.dll (2009-11-16 19:33:44)
    Playlist Attributes 0.2.2 [Nov 16 2009 - 20:33:31]
foo_rgscan.dll (2009-12-03 21:24:42)
    ReplayGain Scanner 2.0.9
foo_textdisplay.dll (2008-07-08 19:45:26)
    Text Display UI Element 1.0 RC 3
foo_ui_columns.dll (2009-08-30 15:21:36)
    Columns UI 0.3.8.0
foo_ui_std.dll (2009-12-03 21:25:16)
    Default User Interface 0.9.5
foo_uie_albumlist.dll (2009-03-28 15:14:17)
    Album list panel 0.3.4
foo_uie_biography.dll (2009-11-26 00:26:10)
    Biography View 0.3.4.1
foo_uie_graphical_browser.dll (2008-04-20 04:37:54)
    Graphical Browser rev015
foo_uie_library_tree.dll (2009-12-03 00:09:44)
    Library Tree 0.3.2.6b
foo_uie_panel_splitter.dll (2009-11-26 01:03:32)
    Panel Stack Splitter 0.3.8.2(alpha)
foo_uie_tabs.dll (2009-05-13 21:42:26)
    Tabbed Panel Modified 0.2.8
foo_uie_vis_channel_spectrum.dll (2008-05-18 02:02:12)
    Channel Spectrum panel 0.17.2
foo_uie_wsh_panel_mod.dll (2009-11-30 00:58:36)
    WSH Panel Mod 1.2.0
foo_utils.dll (2008-02-08 23:26:58)
    Playlist Tools 0.6.2 beta 6
foo_vis_shpeck.dll (2009-09-28 11:32:16)
    Shpeck - Winamp vis plugins wrapper 0.3.7

Recent events:
Filter Panel - Artist: initialised in 0.050 s
Filter Panel - Album: initialised in 0.112 s
Filter Panel - Title: initialised in 0.103 s
Startup time : 0:01.197772
Watching: E:\More of My Documents\Music
Audioscrobbler: Handshake successful.
DNS error (11001)
Autobackup: Backed up 40 items to autobackup.20091204-195944.zip
DNS error (11001)
the specified file is not available : [url=http://_.lfml]http://_.lfml[/url]
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-12-05 04:08:06
I am getting a repeatable crash with foo_uie_biography with the latest beta, it happens whenever I select a .asx that's in a playlist. Here's a crash log

thank you.
I released fixed version.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: jeremija on 2009-12-15 21:07:53
I am having problems with writing biography tags on more than 15 songs, because it tries to write the tags to many files at the same time, and the whole foobar2000 hangs...

Is it possible to organize it to write the tags one by one, kinda like the foo_lyricsdb when using "get from db" and "apply to all" option on many files.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-12-19 02:55:31
I am having problems with writing biography tags on more than 15 songs, because it tries to write the tags to many files at the same time, and the whole foobar2000 hangs...

perhaps fixed in v0.3.4.4.
thanks for the reporting.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: jeremija on 2009-12-19 10:26:39
Thank you, it works much better now! Just a question: does it fetch the data for each song even if artist is the same for all queries, or does it write from cache?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Black_Over_Bills_Mothers on 2009-12-20 08:31:51
@ssenna
I'm seeing a significant pause (upto 5 secs) in user interface update (spectrum etc) at the start of every track when I enable this plugin.I have tried setting the exclusion filter to: lastfm_bio PRESENT to prevent it fetching text and pics. if the text is already present in tags but it seems to always perform an online search.

Can you please have a look at this because I love the functionality this plugin gives me but not the delay.

Foobar 1.0 b5, Biography plugin 0.3.4.4

Thanks
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Zao on 2009-12-20 15:31:27
Surely this is the kind of thing you can defer to a background thread?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-12-22 17:24:56
does it fetch the data for each song even if artist is the same for all queries, or does it write from cache?

if "enable cache" is ticked, cache is preferred.
otherwise, biography view access to network only if the artist of the current processing track is different from the one of previous.


@ssenna
I'm seeing a significant pause (upto 5 secs) in user interface update (spectrum etc) at the start of every track when I enable this plugin.


well...biography view fetches from network in background thread.
so, it may not block ui-update.
I'd like to know your PC spec (OS, CPU, memory)
In addition, Could you try test version1 (http://foo2k.chottu.net/foo_uie_biography_test1.zip) and test version2 (http://foo2k.chottu.net/foo_uie_biography_test2.zip)?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Black_Over_Bills_Mothers on 2009-12-22 23:54:39
@ssenna
Firstly, thanks for looking at my problem.

I get a 403 forbidden web page when trying to download either of the tests.

FYI my PC spec is;
CPU:Intel i7 950@3.07Ghz
RAM: 6Gb
OS Windows 7 64bit
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-12-23 00:48:46
I get a 403 forbidden web page when trying to download either of the tests..

Sorry, please try saving as file from right click menu on the links.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Hitchhiker427 on 2009-12-23 05:05:22
Hi, I'm experiencing some problems with the "provide artwork to other artwork viewers" feature.  It says that it's unsupported and experimental, so maybe these problems are already known.

Anyways, starting with the latest 1.0 betas (beta 4 & 5), this feature doesn't always work.  It's kind of random, but sometimes it tries to pull artist images and sometimes it doesn't.

When it does manage to search for artist images, there's a ~5 second pause that freezes up the foobar2000 UI.

I need this option enabled because I use the default UI.  If it's not able to be completely fixed, is it at least possible to run the search at a lower priority or something so that it doesn't completely freeze the UI?

My specs:
Intel i7 920
3 GB RAM
Windows 7 x64

I tried the test builds you posted for another user and the problem persists.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Black_Over_Bills_Mothers on 2009-12-23 07:06:01
@ssenna
Not good news!
Test1
LastFM below Core built-in Artwork Reader = 14 secs
LastFM above Core built-in Artwork Reader = 2 short UI updates with freeze between then fully functional UI at 12 secs

Test2
LastFM below Core built-in Artwork Reader = 25 secs
LastFM Core built-in Artwork Reader = 2 short UI updates with freeze between then fully functional UI at 15 secs

Hope this helps
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-12-23 08:33:43
Anyways, starting with the latest 1.0 betas (beta 4 & 5), this feature doesn't always work.

I guess the latest foobar2000 core has changed or removed API of album art.
Therefore "provide artwork to other artwork viewers" doesn't work with the latest foobar2000 and DefaultUI until at least new SDK is released.

@ssenna
Not good news!

Humm... this problem might depend on Windows7 or 64bitOS and I might not be able to fix it.

If possible, could you try using Process Explorer (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx) with test version2 ?
(1) Double click on foobar2000.exe.
(2) Select "Threads" tab.
(3) Which thread is using the highest CPU usage while ui-update is pausing ? (e.g. foo_uie_biography + function_name)
(4) How much is the CPU usage of the thread referred in (3) ?
(5) Double click on the thread (or Press "Stack"). 
(6) Copy and Paste all rows (select all rows and press "Copy").

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Zao on 2009-12-23 13:40:34
ssenna: What priority does your worker thread run at? Normal?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-12-23 16:16:30
What priority does your worker thread run at? Normal?

typically normal.  strictly speaking, same priority as main thread.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Black_Over_Bills_Mothers on 2009-12-23 23:09:44
@ssenna

Thread with highest CPU usage was 0x0. Peaking at 12.42. After pause it was down to 4.5 'ish

Double clicking on thread gave error message - unable to access thread.

Hope this helps.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-12-24 16:36:15
Thread with highest CPU usage was 0x0. Peaking at 12.42. After pause it was down to 4.5 'ish

Could you try test_version3(one potential bug fix) (http://foo2k.chottu.net/foo_uie_biography_test3.zip) and test_version4(low priority version) (http://foo2k.chottu.net/foo_uie_biography_test4.zip).
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Joffi on 2009-12-25 04:03:14
forbidden 403 download links
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Black_Over_Bills_Mothers on 2009-12-25 08:26:47
@ssenna
Sorry to say but similar results to test2.

Not sure if this helps but with this plugin disabled (Last.fm moved to available list) UI is fully responsive and Lyrics Show panel2 manages to grab lyrics from internet with no pause in UI.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Zao on 2009-12-25 15:15:24
Wild speculation, but maybe you're holding metadata locks in your background jobs, blocking some other track change callback?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Hatredcopter on 2009-12-25 15:30:15
Is there any possibility of using last.fm database for tagging metadata of songs? (Title, Genre, Date etc)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-12-25 17:13:01
@ssenna
Sorry to say but similar results to test2.

Thanks for the reporting.

It is too difficult for me to fix this problem without reproducing on my PC.
so, I need the way to reproduce it.

I'd like to know the following.
(1) What about if you change setting in Preferences->BiographyServer->Misc tab.
(2) Are you using the titleformat fields provided by biography view such as %lastfm_bio%, somewhere else (except exclusion filter).
(3) Does it occurr with foobar2000 v0.9.6.9 or not ?
(4) Does it occurr when you have portable installation and add only ColumnsUI + foo_uie_biography, or not ?

In addition, could you try test version5 (http://foo2k.chottu.net/foo_uie_biography_test5.zip) that avoids fetching via foobar2000 core api ?
(note that this version don't support proxy server)
Sorry for asking so many trying tests.

Wild speculation, but maybe you're holding metadata locks in your background jobs, blocking some other track change callback?

Thanks for your suggestion.
metadb_lock/unlock method is used in mainthread before running worker-threads.
I am looking for codes which have possibility of locking main-thread(e.g. critical section),
but I have not found yet.

Is there any possibility of using last.fm database for tagging metadata of songs? (Title, Genre, Date etc)

I considered before.
I think current database of Last.fm is not enough for tagging use.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Black_Over_Bills_Mothers on 2009-12-26 11:07:16
@ssenna
I appreciate your efforts and can understand how difficult it is fixing the problem that you can not reproduce.

I'll try to do as many of the tests as possible.

Trying test5 gave a pause of 41 secs with LastFM selected but below the core built-in reader and 17 secs when it was above the core reader. Repeating the test gave 40 secs no matter which was at the top.

Off to find a PC for portable and v9.6.9 tests. It won't have Windows 7 on it though. All my other PCs are XP - a mixture of 64 and 32 bits.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Black_Over_Bills_Mothers on 2009-12-26 11:20:20
@ssenna
If I de-select 'Provide info as field of titleformat' and still using test5, no pause!

We must be getting close now!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-12-26 12:41:10
If I de-select 'Provide info as field of titleformat' and still using test5, no pause!

Thank you. Good news.

I guess trigger of this problem is calling static_api_ptr_t<metadb_io>()->dispath_refresh()
which notify core and all components that metadata of a track has changed.

I want to clarify whether other components (especially library viewer component) cause the performance degradation.
( Does it occurr when you have newly portable installation and add only ColumnsUI + foo_uie_biography ? )
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Black_Over_Bills_Mothers on 2009-12-26 14:08:32
Further testing:

OS Windows Vista 64bit
Foober2000 1 b5. Portable installation - Default components with Columns UI & biography panel (test5) - no library tree

No pause
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-12-26 17:39:04
No pause

I think this problem may be caused rather by other components .
If you need "Provide info as field of titleformat"(i.e. %lastfm_bio%), please try test by adding your using components one by one.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Black_Over_Bills_Mothers on 2009-12-26 19:02:59
Hi ssenna
I realise you have spent considerable effort on this problem - thanks.

I have taken many plugins out but am no further forward. Then I generated a configuration with all the UI plugins in my original layout with one exception, I didn't use your panel stack splitter. I've used your lastest Biography plugin and don't see any pause. Then with the same set of plugins, I switched to my original config and see the usual long pause.

So you maybe correct about it being another component but at the moment I think it's pointing back to another one of yours - sorry!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mpioner on 2009-12-27 06:37:48
ssenna
plz add save image pattern for "Folder Containing Track"
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Horst Fux on 2009-12-29 13:06:49
@mpioner
+1

Or is there a similar way to save the image to the folder which contains the track? It's possible by the context menu but it's not automatically.
Would be nice!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2009-12-29 16:14:07
plz add save image pattern for "Folder Containing Track"

Please set "Folder Path" in contextmenu->Save Image->Config... to appropriate script like "$replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,)"
then, select Save Image->As...

It's possible by the context menu but it's not automatically.

well...
Is there a reason you don't use "Specify file paths" in Cache File Setting ?

edit: grammar mistake.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Keesface on 2010-01-06 19:20:54
My current saving pattern is:

Code: [Select]
D:\Foobar beta\biography\image\album\$replace(%album artist% - %album%,/,_,:,_,\,_,.,_)


I want to change the first part to a relative path where foobar is located, like:

%foobar_path%\biography\...

How do i do this? (if I check option save to foobar folder i can't use any titleformatting  )
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2010-01-13 15:40:46
How do i do this? (if I check option save to foobar folder i can't use any titleformatting  )

foobar2000 folder: %__foobar2000_path%
user profile folder: %__user_profile_path%
(these fields can be available in cache path setting)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Keesface on 2010-01-13 15:53:17
Thanks
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: joelzhao on 2010-01-15 04:32:21
Firstly, thank you for this awesome plug-in, it's a great work!
I have been using this plug-in for a long time, I still have no idea about some options.

i) There is a option "Lock display type" in the context menu, I don't understand what this option means;

ii) When I'm playing a song, sometimes the console will display: Location not parsable: "Z:\music\Cover\Artist\****.jpg", reason: Unsupported file format.
You know, "Z:\music\Cover\Artist\****.jpg" is where my images locate. But I don't know what this information means, does this means the images located in the disk not match that on the last.fm resource?

iii) The images extension vary from .jpg, .npg to .gif, I don't know in what situation will the file extension be, does this depend on the images on the internet resource? and avoid overwriting the files?

I know these are silly questions, but I'm so curious that I can't help to know, would you mind telling me anything about these, or explaining in the readme.txt? Thanks a lot!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: WilB on 2010-01-16 18:58:08
0.4.0.0 released. DUI support added.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Falstaff on 2010-01-16 19:04:24
WoW!

thanx for the news
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: jeremija on 2010-01-17 20:35:33
the new version crashes on my system while using one of the two context menu options (using foobar v1):
- get artist pictures from lastfm
- get artwork from lastfm

this happens both in xp and windows 7
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: tedgo on 2010-01-17 20:52:28
Confirmed.
foobar2000 crashes immediately when one of these both context menu entries are called.
(Windows 7 64bit, crashes in CUI & DUI)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: cartman(2vd) on 2010-01-18 14:47:04
feature request: last.fm sometimes return biography text with special html chars like "&iacute;" which should be translated as unicode char "í"
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2010-01-18 14:48:46
i) There is a option "Lock display type" in the context menu, I don't understand what this option means;

ii) When I'm playing a song, sometimes the console will display: Location not parsable: "Z:\music\Cover\Artist\****.jpg", reason: Unsupported file format.

iii) The images extension vary from .jpg, .npg to .gif, I don't know in what situation will the file extension be, does this depend on the images on the internet resource? and avoid overwriting the files?

i) Biography view will automatically switch Artist/Album mode if there are no information of the current mode.
The option prevent this behaviour.
ii) This message is sent from foobar2000 core, not Biography view.
iii) depends on internet resource.

the new version crashes on my system while using one of the two context menu options (using foobar v1):

Confirmed.
foobar2000 crashes immediately when one of these both context menu entries are called.

Thanks for the reportings. fixed.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: tedgo on 2010-01-18 15:20:53
Thanks
Its working now.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: odyssey on 2010-01-18 15:32:12
ssenna: Any reason you won't answer my mail? Should I post it here instead?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: sonvolt on 2010-01-18 19:43:38
ssenna  - I'm still crashing , if I play a track and go to UI panel with biography - and i've unfortunately deleted my older 0.3  working DLL. OOps!  Foobar v1
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: joelzhao on 2010-01-19 01:21:43
Thank you for the reply, recently I find the console report have disappeared after install the latest plug-in.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2010-01-19 14:40:05
ssenna: Any reason you won't answer my mail? Should I post it here instead?

Sorry, I was too busy from last August to November, so I have forgotten your message.
(but I hope that you don't expect my reply because I'm not good at English.
In paticular, it is often difficult to respond to feature request, because I can't promise to add it before considering details.)

I think your request sounds good, so I will add it(but I can't promise).

I'm still crashing , if I play a track and go to UI panel with biography

Could you send me the crash report(by mail, PM or foobar2000's crash reporter)?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: sonvolt on 2010-01-19 19:48:14
ssenna,

Nothing created in Crash reports directory  sorry - I  have a CUI tab with Biography & lyrics, if I play a song  Foobar shuts down - If I  rename/remove foo_uie_biography from components it all okay and lyrics work.  Never experienced any crashes on the 3 version tho have not been using it long.

Happy to supply any info you need. If you or someone can guide me.  Appreciate your response and was really enjoing the  2 plugins prior to this.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: odyssey on 2010-01-19 20:04:41
Sorry, I was too busy from last August to November, so I have forgotten your message.
(but I hope that you don't expect my reply because I'm not good at English.

That's okay, I just thought it was lost, so i resent it as a PM

I was excited to see you here, so at least I expected some kind of response.

In paticular, it is often difficult to respond to feature request, because I can't promise to add it before considering details.)

I think your request sounds good, so I will add it(but I can't promise).

I know my request isn't much related to the biography component in general, but the function that uses last.fm API are similar, so I figured it would probably be easy to implement  I hope you will consider it.

Thank you for all your work - It's highly appreciated!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: スラッシュ on 2010-01-19 22:21:25
Thanks a lot for this awesome plugin ssenna! It is my favorite 3rd party plugin for foobar.

このコンポーネントをいただき、ありがとうございました!
これが私のお気に入りのサードパーティのコンポーネントです(笑)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: netvalker on 2010-01-24 12:45:45
In my case, plug-in which caused 20 second lag between songs (no response from Foobar), was "foo_w7shell.dll" version 0.2.9.1. older versions did not check.

Translated with google.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: sonvolt on 2010-01-26 23:00:18
For info , if anyone is curious my prob was an incorrect config setting  which the new version rejected. ssenna assisted me to resolve very quickly, many thanks and keep up the good work
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: pIv on 2010-01-27 02:21:35
Is it possible to add next ability to this great plugin - connect to the Internet through a proxy server?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2010-01-27 02:36:42
good idea, if proxy doesn't understand ICY so you can't use main foobar network settings
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: joelzhao on 2010-02-02 11:43:58
I noticed "run external script" had been added to the "available source list", but I don't know how to setup, could anyone offer an example? Thanks.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: jimbothigpen on 2010-02-03 20:03:03
Running Windows 7, using parental controls for an account -- allowing only foobar2000 and firefox w/last.fm allowed, my biography view panel is empty.  Has anyone else tried this plugin on a Win7 PC w/a profile that's restricted to running only certain apps?  What needs to be in the allowed list?

Thanks!
jimbothigpen
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Soulsykk on 2010-02-11 20:15:07
I can't get this plugin to work.  I can see my album art via the "Built-In Artwork Reader", but I cannot see anything from last.fm. 

I'm using the latest plugin release (Biography View 0.4.0.3). Foobar v1.0.  No proxy.

Where is the data actually being retrieved?  Is it the same as http://www.last.fm/music/%artist% (http://www.last.fm/music/%artist%) ?

Do I need to configure where/what server to retrieve the data from?  I'm not getting any of the bio info.

Sorry for my cluelessness but there's not much documentation on this plugin and any help would be appreciated.

From the Debug version of the plugin:

Code: [Select]
Biography: prepare query 0 0 [15:15:50:328]
Biography: start query [15:15:50:328]
Biography: start remote_access 1 [15:15:50:328]
Biography: end remote_access 0 [15:15:51:296]
Biography: completion <= 16220792, 1 [15:15:51:296]
Biography: receive completion_notify <= 0, 1 2098222
Biography: start query [15:15:51:296]
Biography: start remote_access 0 [15:15:51:296]
Biography: end remote_access 0 [15:15:52:296]
Biography: completion <= 16220152, 0 [15:15:52:296]
Biography: receive completion_notify <= 0, 0 2098222
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2010-02-12 05:47:24
Where is the data actually being retrieved?  Is it the same as http://www.last.fm/music/%artist% (http://www.last.fm/music/%artist%) ?

Do I need to configure where/what server to retrieve the data from?  I'm not getting any of the bio info.

Code: [Select]
http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/?method=album.getinfo&album=<ALBUM>&artist=<ARTIST>

Your files needs to be correctly tagged, and additionaly you can change how thay are sent over in "Search Keyword" located in Biography preferences > Last.fm branch under Artist and Album tabs

If you tag your files with foobar musicbrainz tagger click on "use mbid..." for perfect match

Code: [Select]
http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/?method=artist.getinfo&mbid=<MBID>
http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/?method=album.getinfo&mbid=<MBID>
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Soulsykk on 2010-02-18 12:55:15
Quote
Code: [Select]
http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/?method=album.getinfo&album=<ALBUM>&artist=<ARTIST>

Your files needs to be correctly tagged, and additionaly you can change how thay are sent over in "Search Keyword" located in Biography preferences > Last.fm branch under Artist and Album tabs

If you tag your files with foobar musicbrainz tagger click on "use mbid..." for perfect match

Code: [Select]
http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/?method=artist.getinfo&mbid=<MBID>
http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/?method=album.getinfo&mbid=<MBID>


Bleh, figured out my problem.  I had ws.audioscrobbler.com redirected to localhost in my host file! Knew something wasn't making sense.

Thanks for giving me the server addy, without it I'd of been pulling my hair out.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: vogliadicane on 2010-02-27 21:50:24
Ssenna: May I ask for some feature request?

There´s a great scrip out for Library Tree see http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st& p=688168://http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums...t& p=688168://http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums...t& p=688168 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=68552&view=findpost&p=688168) and follow-up posts

The problem (as described there) is, that LibTree view is faster to analyze tags and filters than they are written by Biography View.

A solution would be to write the last.fm tags permanently so the second time a track is played it would work.

Even better would be, if Library tree would allow for some kind of timeout before analyzing certain filters (more complicated to implement I imagine).

Each of both solutions would be great, if you could realize.


P.S. increasing the number of similar artists to 10 would be awsome, too.

edit: typos
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: unclean on 2010-02-27 23:38:23
A solution would be to write the last.fm tags permanently so the second time a track is played it would work.


You can do this with custom_db: 

Fields
(http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/6854/30971528.png)

Actions
(http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/6907/51944469.png)

What you get:
(http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/9800/41758876.png)

You can also right click, Utilities > Get Artist Info to write permanent tags, but it isn't automatic.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: vogliadicane on 2010-02-28 10:09:24
You can do this with custom_db: 


ah ok, thanks. Never tried customdb, maybe I should...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Keesface on 2010-02-28 11:43:04
@unclean:

I tried to set that up but all that shows up in the db is a question mark :/.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: unclean on 2010-02-28 23:38:55
Do you have provide formatting turned on in the bio panel? Otherwise it should work.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Keesface on 2010-03-01 07:05:03
I just discovered a stupid typo I didn't manage to see the last 4 times I checked the string for spelling. Works fine now .
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: nosgah on 2010-03-04 19:20:48
could someone tell me how I can make it use allmusic (http://www.allmusic.com/) instead of last.fm?

I listen to a lot of music from the '60s and '70s and most of the time last.fm doesn't have any info on the albums, whilst allmusic has at least a short review available.

or it would be even better if the developer made it an option in future builds..

other that this, it's a terrific component. thank you!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 321meins on 2010-03-04 20:52:42
hallo,

i have a lot of classic music.

if i play a classic song, i want to see in the biograph panel information about the composer
and when i play a rock song i want to see infos about  the artist

i make somthing like this

$if2($if($or(%genre% IS "Klassik",%genre% IS "Oper"),$meta(composer)),$meta(artist))

but this doesnt work really good, i put in in biography server  in    remap meta
when i play a rock song it shows nothing when a composer and an artist ist tagged (because the panle does not find the composer; unknown mostly) . if it is  tagged only with the artist  its ok

can someone help me. thanks a lot, my english is not good, excsde me

321meins
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2010-03-05 11:39:25
$if2($if($or(%genre% IS "Klassik",%genre% IS "Oper"),$meta(composer)),$meta(artist))

I think you should use "$strcmp/$stricmp" instead of "IS".
e.g. $if2($if($or($stricmp(%genre%,Klassik),$stricmp(%genre%,Oper)),$meta(composer)),$meta(artist))
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: acmodeu on 2010-03-05 12:20:08
For some reason plugin doesn't fetch biography when playing last.fm radio with this plugin (http://www.unkempt.co.uk/fb2k/foo_lastfm_radio.html).
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 321meins on 2010-03-05 14:13:58
$if2($if($or(%genre% IS "Klassik",%genre% IS "Oper"),$meta(composer)),$meta(artist))

I think you should use "$strcmp/$stricmp" instead of "IS".
e.g. $if2($if($or($stricmp(%genre%,Klassik),$stricmp(%genre%,Oper)),$meta(composer)),$meta(artist))



thank you very much. it seems to go, i will test it a little bit

great !!

321meins
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 321meins on 2010-03-10 16:15:07
everything works fine.

super, thank you

321meins
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2010-03-16 21:22:28
new version out: Wikipedia support
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2010-03-16 22:24:52
[1 min late] OK, it seems that whole wiki artist page is fetched but only first two paragraphs are available in biography view panel, and there seems to be no way to getting that info out of component (as TF field)

Same for Album wiki and I'm having problem with disambiguation setting (can see how it works as always same request is sent, no matter what I enter in those fields) so using:
[%album%] '('album')'
as album field, thou sometimes "(album)" appending isn't needed
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wiggedywoo on 2010-03-17 09:25:27
Latest release seems to have a redraw problem for me. Im using my bio panel inside a set of tabs. Switching between tabs or alt tabbing foobar doesnt refresh the panel.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wiggedywoo on 2010-03-17 15:36:47
Latest release seems to have a redraw problem for me. Im using my bio panel inside a set of tabs. Switching between tabs or alt tabbing foobar doesnt refresh the panel.


Issue now fixed for me with 0.4.1.1
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: SkaIsGreat on 2010-03-21 04:35:56
I have a question... I was wondering if I could have biography view cache album art in the folder where the music is playing from. I keep my album art in the same folder as the music as "folder.jpg" I read through the whole thread and nothing really made sense. I'm thinking that it is possible but not sure and I suck at title formatting. Thanks!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: bhupatib on 2010-03-27 04:46:13
could someone tell me how I can make it use allmusic (http://www.allmusic.com/) instead of last.fm?

I listen to a lot of music from the '60s and '70s and most of the time last.fm doesn't have any info on the albums, whilst allmusic has at least a short review available.

or it would be even better if the developer made it an option in future builds..

other that this, it's a terrific component. thank you!


i also wanted biography from allmusic and with the latest version having support to 'Run external script' maybe someone can post the script.

PS - there's a component foo_run.dll which allows searching the current song album/artist details in allmusic. However its a context menu item and displays reults in the browser.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Fractal_Mortality on 2010-03-27 04:54:24
Bugs with removing/sorting/etc. seemed to be solved, great! 
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2010-03-27 05:14:08
with the latest version having support to 'Run external script' maybe someone can post the script.

have any idea how it's supposed to work or does it at all?
i tried "type some.txt" file with standard output and full path to file for file output method, but it does nothing, although "run external script" is in the source list
and it's not mentioned it shipped txt file, so I would guess that it's for future use
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2010-03-30 16:43:19
Run External Script  maybe works. (although I have not tested enough )
"Command line" form needs executable file like "***.exe %artist%".  (e.g. "ping localhost")
"Ouput method" is the way to receive the result of Command line.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: brtkrbzhnv on 2010-03-31 03:34:25
feature request: last.fm sometimes return biography text with special html chars like "&iacute;" which should be translated as unicode char "í"

I second this feature request.
Example of an artist bio with such an entity (&iuml; in this case): http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/artist/khaled/info.xml (http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/artist/khaled/info.xml)
List of stuff that should be replaced: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_XML_a...tity_references (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_XML_and_HTML_character_entity_references)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: rubber soul on 2010-04-10 05:07:35
Would it be possible to implement the following choice:  "Display biography info for selected track" or "Display biography info for playing track" in the panel preferences?

I think this would be a really nice feature and it doesn't seem to be too difficult.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: archetwist on 2010-04-13 00:23:42
Run External Script  maybe works. (although I have not tested enough )
"Command line" form needs executable file like "***.exe %artist%".  (e.g. "ping localhost")
"Ouput method" is the way to receive the result of Command line.

I've been trying to use this feature. I've found this nice little command-line program PageScrape (http://www.webscrape.com/) which allows you to fetch part of a webpage. It accepts regular expressions. Unfortunately, I've been unable to make foo_uie_biography display the generated data. The command I use is
Code: [Select]
"C:\Program Files (x86)\pscrape\pscrape.exe" -u"http://www.discogs.com/artist/%artist%" -e"<div id=\"profile\">(.*)</div>" -i
. Output method is "via Standard Out" but I've also tried the "via File" method with
Code: [Select]
"C:\Program Files (x86)\pscrape\pscrape.exe" -u"http://www.discogs.com/artist/%artist%" -e"<div id=\"profile\">(.*)</div>" -i > %artist%.txt
.

Any thoughts?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: vogliadicane on 2010-04-13 23:39:03
usually you have to put brackets of command lines in foobar in extra quotes like this '('x86')'
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: archetwist on 2010-04-14 01:07:26
usually you have to put brackets of command lines in foobar in extra quotes like this '('x86')'

I don't quite understand. The command and its parameters are enclosed in double quotes.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Purple Monkey on 2010-04-14 03:07:52
The double quotes are for windows parser, the single quotes are for foobar's titleformatting parser where ( and ) are special characters.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: archetwist on 2010-04-14 06:59:01
Thanks for your help. It works with ( and ) escaped, although I realized I would also need something to strip out the HTML tags and I even experimented with wget, grep and sed but I don't like this solution and I think I'll just wait for the author of the plugin to build the page scraping functionality into it  .

Oh, and sorry for the double post. Please remove the previous one.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: joelzhao on 2010-04-16 13:52:41
To avoid the illegal character, I tried to define the artist filename as $replace(%artist%,'/','_','*','_',':','_') in the context menu of the biography view--"save image path configuration", but if I close the FB2K and restart it, the setting will change the original setting.
I'm confused the difference between this configuration and the setting of artist's "image cache path", and biography server can define to $replace(%artist%,'/','_','*','_',':','_').
Would anyone mind telling me the details? Thanks.
Joel Zhao
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: WilB on 2010-04-23 12:58:01
There seems to be a bug in that biography panel colours do not always update when import a new DUI theme file. This applies where custom colour is enabled and at least where the biography panels are in the same position in a tabbed layout in the original and newly imported DUI theme – the themes differing in the colours used by the biography panel. This issue depends on the foobar2000 instance and may disappear following a restart and appear again following another restart. XP SP3.

I would in fact prefer it if there were two options. 1. Use custom font. 2. Use custom colours. This would make it easier to change the font size while retaining use of DUI colours and also enable changing colours with Quick Setup. It is not always practical to change the default DUI font size that is currently used when custom colours is not enabled (e.g.to a large size to enable viewing at a distance as this adversely effects other things).
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: WilB on 2010-04-30 17:34:50
0.4.2.0 released.

- added "Draw Border around Album Art" and "Gloss effect for Album Art".
- fixed some bugs.

Thanks for the bug fix.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: jeremija on 2010-05-03 08:24:19
I didn't update this plugin in a long time and I've just discovered that when I use the "Get Artist Info from last.fm" function, the information is now stored in %BIOGRAPHY%, indead in %BIO% like it used to be. As I have already tagged a large number of my files with the %BIO% tag, could you please make the tag name user-customizable?

Also, this option does not use the source list set up in preferences, is made on purpose (for instance I would like to store the wikipedia information to the %bio% tag)?

And another thing: when I use wikipedia as the only source, there is no arist picture, even if it appears on the wiki page.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: archetwist on 2010-05-03 10:43:55
I didn't update this plugin in a long time and I've just discovered that when I use the "Get Artist Info from last.fm" function, the information is now stored in %BIOGRAPHY%, indead in %BIO% like it used to be. As I have already tagged a large number of my files with the %BIO% tag, could you please make the tag name user-customizable?

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...uide#Copy_value (http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Masstaggers_User_Guide#Copy_value)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: odyssey on 2010-05-03 13:24:35
@ssenna: Did you consider my request, yet?

In paticular, it is often difficult to respond to feature request, because I can't promise to add it before considering details.)

I think your request sounds good, so I will add it(but I can't promise).

I know my request isn't much related to the biography component in general, but the function that uses last.fm API are similar, so I figured it would probably be easy to implement  I hope you will consider it.


I'll post my request publicly here. Maybe someone else could find it useful
Quote
I noticed that you implemented "Get Artist info from Last.fm" in tagging and wonder if you could make it get some track info as well?

I have a music collection of more than 45,000 tracks, which makes it quite hard to find interesting tracks when I build playlists for certain purposes. If I was able to get playcount from last.fm, it would be easier to find popular tracks.

You can get this info easily (even with your existing code, I assume) in last.fm API; "listeners" and "playcount" from track.getInfo

Another thing that's hard to manage on such big collection is genre and styles. Having the tags from last.fm in tags seems reasonable to me and they are easily obtainable from track.getTopTags - However as it's 2-dimensional, it may be difficult to make a proper direct implementation. I've been thinking it could be a good idea to let the user specify a threshold for when a tag should be added to a multivalue field or maybe you have an even better idea... If you could store all the tags along with their respective "count"-value that opens up for the possebility of creating a "last.fm Boffin"-like component/panel within foobar2000, which would be REALLY cool!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: BobMopp on 2010-05-15 23:59:21
Hello everyone,
first of all, kudos to the author for this formidable plugin! Really have a lot fun with it.

I got one problem though: I cannot get the bio viewer to display more than the max count of 6 artist images it downloads automatically.
I specified my personal foobar folder path ..\foobar2000\lastfm\artist\%artist%\%artist% as the cache location, which shall save all artist images in dedicated artist subfolders.
Now I used the manual context command to get Artist Pictures, ended up with 100 fine pieces, but unfortunately they wont be displayed after I saved them within that artist subfolder, still only the first 6 are shown.

Does the plugin only search for the 6 first images? Or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks for any help!

Edit: I'm using the version 0.4.2.0!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: vogliadicane on 2010-05-17 08:06:22
as far as 6 images is the maximum count in preferences, I guess it is not possible to show more, even if they are present in the folder...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: BobMopp on 2010-05-17 23:03:28
that is very regrettable to hear, especially since us is given the possibility to download hundreds of pictures ourselves
Perhaps the author reads this and grants me that wish  *cough* 
Still a very lovable component though.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: joelzhao on 2010-05-20 09:44:17
The component will create an empty biography file -- lfml though there is no information found. So, it's not need to create these files.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: MaKa on 2010-05-23 15:02:55
Can I add a feature request?
Add an option to change the thickness of the border art so it looks like a polaroid photo.
Thanks
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2010-05-23 15:38:12
Put biography view in panel stack splitter or use WSH if you are in DUI

BTW this just reminded me on something I read recently:
Quote
Can you please make a version of Soundtouch that, at intervals specified by you, randomly changes the tempo, pitch and rate? And also have an option to have the intervals randomly changed? It would make for a messed-up listening experience; sort of like a nightmare. I’d love something like that.

sorry, i will not code for that kind of personal preference.

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: MaKa on 2010-05-27 19:57:28
A question - do the titleformat tags like %lastfm_similar_artist% only work when the biography panel is a part of a foobar setup? Because for some reason they dont work for me.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2010-05-27 20:00:06
biography preferences > misc tab: provide titleformat fileds
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: MaKa on 2010-05-27 20:27:10
Had it checked.Only when I put the biography panel up the tags started working.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Bollerkopp on 2010-05-27 20:59:52
Hi,

tick the option "Execute query even if no biography panel view exist" under the "Misc"-tab.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: random_asdf on 2010-06-12 00:58:34
does anyone have problems with this freezing up foobar?
for the time being i've removed it from components folder because it freezes foobar for 5-6 seconds after the track changes
having removed the component, there is no lag/hang time

I'd definitely prefer to continue using this component though. any solutions?

---
nevermind. i think it was because i enabled the experimental option to provide artwork to other components.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: desertsearch on 2010-06-12 09:58:39
hey there, wonderful addon...

1. would be wonderful if we could get another sever option: allmusic.com (album/artist/song even?) i also read that someone was looking for
a discography option.. the allmusic database would be able to supply this info if someone knew how to access it and bring it into foobar

thanks, keep up the good work. peace
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: desertsearch on 2010-06-12 11:28:23
also having trouble with getting album info from lastfm.. artist working fine.. but no album.
cheers
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2010-06-12 11:51:58
check the website to see if there is anything on the album page. as content is user generated, not all albums will have information.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Darkcloud1987 on 2010-06-18 03:11:46
Hi, My problem is, that the Plugin gets my CPU usage to 100% when it gets the biography info from last.fm. This problem only seems to occur when I get the information from last.fm. I have an AMD 6000+ dual core and use the newest version of foobar (1.03) and the newest one of the plugin (0.4.2.0).
Edit: Updated to 0.4.2.1 now it really works better. The CPU usage goes up sometimes but only to 80% or something. But i think it could be an issue when i play games while using foobar. I also can't use the "provide titleformat field option. When I use it the CPU usage goes to 100% for a few seconds.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2010-06-22 01:12:18
Here is yet another variation on a theme - AMG review script for biography view

it requires python of course and can be downloaded from here: http://pastebin.com/apWLwwt7 (http://pastebin.com/apWLwwt7)

example for script named bio_amg.py and placed in script subfolder relative to foobar folder:

(http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/4751/sshot1mm.th.png) (http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/4751/sshot1mm.png)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: garbanzo.bean on 2010-06-22 10:45:16
wow that looks great 2E7AH, just last night i was lamenting the lack of good album write-ups fetched by the default setting.
i'm anxious to try it when i get off of work

does your script save the text someplace or does it fetch it anew for every track?

also, do you know of a similar script to fetch artist bios from AMG?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2010-06-22 13:48:37
No problem, I'll post later tonight

does your script save the text someplace or does it fetch it anew for every track?

That's unfortunately true. I posted the same note for last.fm source year ago: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=647127 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=70955&view=findpost&p=647127) and the case was resolved for next release
So ssenna if you are reading this can you make info available without unnecessary script running when played tracks are from the same album/artist regarding which external script is being used: artist or album
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: garbanzo.bean on 2010-06-22 16:25:12
script works great, but it's quite slow. would it be possible to cache the text as album.txt in the track folder? then when the script runs, first check for album.txt and display that, otherwise go online to get a new one?

i have no idea how this stuff works, so i'm sorry if this is difficult or impossible. just an idea

either way, thank you for sharing this
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2010-06-22 22:47:39
Here is python script for AMG biography: http://pastebin.com/vSnRTTAC (http://pastebin.com/vSnRTTAC) name to liking and call just like previous script (with %album% too) only now in Artist tab

About the speed - it's working reasonably here. AMG biography script retrieves three x ~50K html data and processes it quickly. AMG Review retrieves 2 html data files and + one if review is huge, however I made some changes to previous script and now it retrieves 2 pages in any case; here it is: http://pastebin.com/YMhzXwh9 (http://pastebin.com/YMhzXwh9) and it's basically the same as previous.

Caching, TF, etc seems available only for last.fm and I can't change that nor I will trash your folders with data files. Scripts are there and can be used and changed by anyone to liking
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: garbanzo.bean on 2010-06-23 05:15:50
wonderful scripts 2E7AH, thanks again for sharing!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2010-06-28 11:10:52
So ssenna if you are reading this can you make info available without unnecessary script running when played tracks are from the same album/artist regarding which external script is being used: artist or album

Thanks ssenna for quick resolver 
scripts aren't executed withing same album, thou artist scripts are executed on album change even if artist is same
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2010-07-02 08:09:44
gracenote biography script: http://pastebin.com/u6kaxZnB (http://pastebin.com/u6kaxZnB)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: desertsearch on 2010-07-02 19:50:07
hey there 2E7AH, thanks for this stuff... i have downloaded python and the script but i have no idea how to install this stuff? i opened the scripts in python and the little command line box opens and closes then i open foobar but nothing has changed and there are no extra options in the preferences page?

anyhelp appreciated
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2010-07-02 20:13:46
screenshot on post #318 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=70955&view=findpost&p=710872)  is clear I think. You only need to add "run external source" as first source in biography preferences

you can run it from command prompt also by calling the script with python and adding two arguments: artist and album, so that it will print to stdout
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: aphasia on 2010-07-03 02:20:02
Much thanks 2E7AH for the AMG review script! Working flawlessly.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ssenna on 2010-07-03 03:21:09
First, thanks for the great work.
scripts aren't executed withing same album, thou artist scripts are executed on album change even if artist is same
This is the intended behaviour. The current version checks only whether the command line is the same.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: joelzhao on 2010-07-03 07:59:10
Unfortunately, the image of screen-shot is broken and can't display, would you mind unload another one? Many thanks.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: joelzhao on 2010-07-09 05:46:48
Does anybody Know how to do in the comman line? Thanks.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ledge on 2010-07-09 08:57:22
Does anybody Know how to do in the comman line? Thanks.



Something like...

"D:\python\python.exe" "scripts\amg_artist.py" "%album artist%" "%album%"

...but change the path to python.exe to wherever it is on your computer. Note I found that in windows 7 it wouldn't find "C:\Program Files (x86)\Python\python.exe". Even with the quotes it stopped at the open bracket. Weird.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: joelzhao on 2010-07-09 09:08:52
Thank you for your reply Ledge, I'll to try immediately.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 2E7AH on 2010-07-09 09:23:51
Note I found that in windows 7 it wouldn't find "C:\Program Files (x86)\Python\python.exe". Even with the quotes it stopped at the open bracket. Weird.

You'll have to take care or parentheses as they are special characters for foobar (discussed many times)

@joelzhao: Are you saying that imageshack service isn't available in China? I'll reupload elsewhere if that the problem
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: 321meins on 2010-07-18 16:13:47
i like the plugins very much. Because i have a lot of classic music, i want to have an  composer view    and a  band view  like the biography view. Also in a separate panel.

so my questions: is it easy for you to make them also as a component like the biography view (then i think,  i make an extra panel and it will function)

or

where in the component are the "words" to be changend

Thanks for every answer

michael
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: kabuki on 2010-07-22 13:31:35
screenshot on post #318 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=70955&view=findpost&p=710872)  is clear I think. You only need to add "run external source" as first source in biography preferences

you can run it from command prompt also by calling the script with python and adding two arguments: artist and album, so that it will print to stdout

It seems that i am the only one whose can't make it work... 
I've done everything like your screenshot, but... nope, nothing appears.
Maybe because of my portable installation? Python and Foobar are not in the same Drive.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: kabuki on 2010-07-22 16:48:42
I'm grateful to 2E7AH. He took care of my problem by PM and point me the problem i've got.

For those who might have the same problem:

Python 3.1 doesn't work for this use.
Use ActivePython 2.6.X (http://www.activestate.com/activepython/downloads) instead.


@2E7AH, I've already told you by PM, but twice is better than never : Thanks mate.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Nachash on 2010-08-03 22:14:21
Is there some way to extract automatically the artist image from last.fm to the artist folder on the pc?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2010-08-04 01:43:08
have a look at the "server" preferences. i believe you can specify the location where it caches files using title formatting.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Nachash on 2010-08-04 01:59:50
have a look at the "server" preferences. i believe you can specify the location where it caches files using title formatting.

it worked, thanks.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wasmachien on 2010-08-04 18:48:33
2E7AH, is it possible for the AMG review script to look up albums using the 'artist' tag instead of 'album artist'? I tried editing the command line but that doesn't help. Thanks.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: watercolor on 2010-08-07 05:48:17
There is some idea.

1. Support Multiple Value in Run Enternal Script
I use following command.
cmd /c manualinfo.bat "%artist%"
But this work only $meta(artist,0).
I set "%<artist>%" to remap meta.

2. Blacklist image function
Some time, bad image(e.g. too small, not relation etc.) downloaded.
Please limit image downloading by filesize, imagesize, blacklist.

3. Up max download image count(20-30?) or accumulation chache support.
4. Support Multiple Value in "Get Artist Picture from Last.fm" menu.
5. Load Image from custom folder.
Core built-in artreader not support multiple value.

Thank you.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2010-08-09 20:18:45
Script for Biography view accessing foo_lyricsdb db seemed funny to me so I made this little script which automatically displays lyrics in Biography view panel:

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: durch on 2010-08-14 20:34:02
I'd like to raise the limit for server pictures from 6 to 100 or even more. Is that possible? Please, more pictures! 6 is not enough. It's so great to have a slideshow from pictures you haven't seen before.

And it would be great if there's an option to left- or right-align the pictures. Maybe customizable anchors for all 8 directions. (Top, Top-right etc.).
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: durch on 2010-08-14 22:35:27
I noticed that you can't align both text and pictures perfectly. In my example, both text and pictures have borders and the same "y" padding:
(http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/8425/toprz.png) top

(http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/4383/bottomi.png) bottom
The top align is perfect, but the bottom align has a difference of 1 pixel. I tested with several different images, so I don't believe it has something to do with the test images.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Fractal_Mortality on 2010-08-14 23:37:59
Feature Resquest (and a fairly simply one, I think):

The option to open the displayed picture through an external image viewer in full resolution.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: durch on 2010-08-15 14:56:57
Question:

In Biography view's options, I  found a "Remap meta" field for "Artist" that contains
Code: [Select]
[%<artist>%]

What is that supposed to do? I never saw title formatting like this and didn't find any hint in the official title formatting reference. I am tempted to replace it with $meta(artist,0). Is there a difference?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: watercolor on 2010-08-15 15:19:15
Question:

In Biography view's options, I  found a "Remap meta" field for "Artist" that contains
Code: [Select]
[%<artist>%]

What is that supposed to do? I never saw title formatting like this and didn't find any hint in the official title formatting reference. I am tempted to replace it with $meta(artist,0). Is there a difference?


It expand multiple value.

If %artist% value is A;B;C,
Biography view recognize tag value separately.(A,B,C)

It is useful on multi artist tracks.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: durch on 2010-08-15 15:21:52
So does it search for artist A first, and if nothing is found for that artist A then it searches for artist B?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: watercolor on 2010-08-15 16:19:29
So does it search for artist A first, and if nothing is found for that artist A then it searches for artist B?


No. You can change artist by context menu.
I think Biography view is not kindness for anonymous artist.

You can set artist info text manualy.
Put text file some dir.
after, you make simple script that load this text content.
Finally, config "Run External Script".


sample bat script:
@echo off
type %~1.txt
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: durch on 2010-08-15 19:08:18
Thanks.

Another problem: I have the problem that foobar2000 "hangs" for a second when the biography view is about to switch images. The music doesn't hang, but the navigation. Browsing through tabs, clicking through playlists - a short time of about 1 second foobar2000 is totally unresponsive. Happens every time a new picture is drawn even when the biography view has its own tab that is not focused. Is this bug known? I use Windows 7.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: MDMA on 2010-08-17 23:58:35
Hello. I would like to make a custom script request if possible. Would someone be able to create a script that fetches the full list of releases for an artist from discogs.com and rolldabeats.com (yes I am a drum and bass enthusiast!)

Many thanks in advance!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: FormerlyDFox on 2010-08-22 06:11:50
If people are really following this post closely over the Bio plugin, I found a bug with the latest version, maybe someone can help out with.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=83119 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=83119)


THANKS
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: watercolor on 2010-08-28 13:26:57
Feature Resquest
Switch artist/album mode by TF or exist data.

If artist text not found, switch album mode.
if TF return 1, then, switch album mode.([%album_mode%], $if($strcmp(%artist%,various artist),1,) etc.)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: manudevil on 2010-08-31 20:42:00
This component is awesome !
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: atlantic on 2010-09-11 21:13:24
Hi,

Can you think of an automated way to create a playlist which would contain one song for each album and each artist? That way it would be easy to mass fetch artwork for your whole library by playing the whole playlist in the background or at night.

The playlist would have to include one song from each album in order to get all the album artwork and each song from a multi-artist compilation in order to get all artist artwork.

Or can you think of another as easy method to mass fetch album and artist artwork for the whole library?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: atlantic on 2010-09-12 15:26:11
Hi,

Can you think of an automated way to create a playlist which would contain one song for each album and each artist?


Oh man... This turned out to be so simple it's embarrassing .

For album covers: Just make a playlist of your "all music" and sort them with TRACKNUMBER column in NGplaylist for example
For artist artwork: Make a playlist out of your ALBUM ARTIST=VARIOUS ARTISTS songs (assuming that's how you've set your meta data) and sort the playlist with ARTIST column

Hopefully this will help someone in a similar braindead state of mind as I apparently were in
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: dimi_ghost on 2010-09-13 01:27:14
hi!

i've recently discovered and enjoyed foobar a lot. biography view seems to be amazing plugin to use with it. still i am lost in how do you show up the plugin? in foobar i don't have any biography view panel and don't understand the way to enable it...

foobar 1.1
Biography View 0.4.2.2
i don't have foo_dockable_panels installed

thanks for help
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: musicnerd on 2010-09-16 18:12:47
This is a tremendous component! I'd love to be able to have *two* biography panels, one with Last.fm source and one with external script source (allmusic.com).

Hence (feature request): Do you think it would be possible to make the server preferences "per-panel", rather than global in the main preferences? This way, you could have several instances and configure both the layout and the server preferences individually for each panel. Would make the component more flexible and powerful.

Thanks for considering this!

Keep up the great work,
Musicnerd
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: free30 on 2010-09-21 16:10:13
Thanks for a great plugin, this has helped me drop songbird and start learning how to make Foobar2k work just the way I want it.

Can someone help me to be able to save the %last fm...... information to the tags of the song and not save as a .lfml file?
I've looked and looked but just can not see it, just a pointer in the right direction would be great.

Many thanks 
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Fractal_Mortality on 2010-09-21 16:17:05
Feature Resquest (and a fairly simply one, I think):

The option to open the displayed picture through an external image viewer in full resolution.


Going to bump this. I think it could also be done with a script, but I'm not sure how to make one.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: free30 on 2010-09-21 21:19:09
Just thought I'd share this string for idiots like me.
This saves the info or cover art to the same folder as the file and removes any illegal characters which would stop the file being created.
Leaving a file named the same as the artist with the prefix 'Artist info - '
Took me an age to work out but that's learning. 

$replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,)$replace(Artist info - %Artist%,'/','-',':','-','*','-','?','-','"','-','<','-','>','-','|','-')

Still love to be able to save the Last FM comment  to the files tag.  Anyone?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: harumscarum on 2010-10-07 13:45:26
let me ask 2 questions
1. i use latest  version of plugin but foobar freezes for 2-5seconds when playing starts (even swich tracks)... is it common problem, anyy way to solve it?
2. is it possible to make whis plugin automaticly save albumart in album playing folder?

thank you for great plugin
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: free30 on 2010-10-07 20:05:15
2. is it possible to make whis plugin automaticly save albumart in album playing folder?


I can answer this bit for you.
Go to >Preferences, Tools, Biography Server, Last.fm,  then the Album tab
then in the image: space put this
$replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,)Albumart

That will remove the file name form the full path and add 'albumart' to the name it will save with.

And for the first problem you might try unticking 'Provide titleformet fields...' in the Misc tab of >Preferences, Tools, Biography
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Glory on 2010-10-11 16:07:22
.......
1. i use latest  version of plugin but foobar freezes for 2-5seconds when playing starts (even swich tracks)... is it common problem, anyy way to solve it?
.......
thank you for great plugin


I have freezes too, but try uncheck
"Provide artwork to other artwork viewers (unsupported, experimental option)"
in Preferences -> Tools -> Biography Server  ----- "Misc" Tab

now work without freezes

Quote
And for the first problem you might try unticking 'Provide titleformet fields...' in the Misc tab of >Preferences, Tools, Biography


not fix problem to me
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: sonvolt on 2010-10-14 21:36:56
I have rebuilt after a disk crash and oops my config backups were not saved beside my music.  Art is not downloading .. I'm using

$replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,)%artist% in image field in last.fm section of biography view  cache is enabled and

file path is set to $replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,)

I'm missing something stupid i'm sure but can't get what ... Cheers
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: free30 on 2010-10-19 19:44:50
Guess you mean the file path in the save image option page.  Have you set a File name on that page? Have you tried resetting page? Doseit work if you use foobar folder etc.  Bit more infor would help as it all looks right...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: sonvolt on 2010-10-19 22:29:23
Yes to file path in save image option. File name is set to [%artist%] for artist and [%artist% - ][%album%] for album. Will  try other suggestions later and  reply cant power on my NAS at the moment.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: sonvolt on 2010-10-20 19:48:57
Tried resetting page and using Foobar folder nothing at all ..Very strange
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: sonvolt on 2010-10-29 15:04:23
Deleted cfg completely and redefined from scratch as pr previous posts and now okay.  Don't know what was amiss ..
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ledge on 2010-11-19 20:14:55
Is it just me or are the amg scripts no longer working?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: MDMA on 2010-11-22 01:47:45
Hello. I would like to make a custom script request if possible. Would someone be able to create a script that fetches the full list of releases for an artist from discogs.com and rolldabeats.com (yes I am a drum and bass enthusiast!)

Many thanks in advance!


Bump 
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: matav on 2010-11-28 06:51:47
i have just started using this component and it's pretty good. i really like it's use.
but i have certain general issues with this component.

> firstly, the bio change rate is very slow.
> secondly, when playback is changed, the bio should become empty and wait to load the bio for the current artist playing. And when playback is stopped, the bio should disappear and become empty. (like Lyrics Show Panel 2 or the official last.fm scrobble application)

are these issues resolvable?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: thuan on 2010-11-28 09:10:48
@matav: Not a fix for this component but you might wanna use my wsh panel mod lastfm bio and artist art panels (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=84592&hl=). It's these features you want. If you have any question post there.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: matav on 2010-11-28 09:12:44
@matav: Not a fix for this component but you might wanna use my wsh panel mod lastfm bio and artist art panels (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=84592&hl=). It's these features you want. If you have any question post there.

sweet. i will check it out.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: djphatic on 2010-12-04 19:50:00
Would it be possible to implement the following choice:  "Display biography info for selected track" or "Display biography info for playing track" in the panel preferences?

I think this would be a really nice feature and it doesn't seem to be too difficult.


Would also appreciate a way to set the bio to display for only the playing track.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: nickdc on 2010-12-06 13:34:39
I think there's an issue here, the biography is ended but is not completed, you can see the screen
http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/6069/catturaaa.jpg (http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/6069/catturaaa.jpg)
is there any limit with the numbers of characters?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: nickdc on 2010-12-10 21:33:49
up
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2010-12-18 11:43:21
vbscript update for AMG reviews:

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Decalicatan_Decalicatan on 2010-12-18 13:16:43
vbscript update for AMG reviews:

download link: http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=YgXKSFUV (http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=YgXKSFUV)

Enjoy


Awesome!

Do you think it is possible to update for AMG Biography?

@ssenna,
I guess it has already be asked and maybe it is just not possible to implement it, but to add the possibility to change on demand (w/o changing manually the order in the preferences) the server for Biography panel and/or to specify a server for a particular biography panel in the layout would be great.
Hence we could have a specific Biography panel for Last.fm, another one for wikipedia or for AMG...

Thanks anyway,
Decalicatan Decalicatan
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: j conky on 2010-12-20 19:32:43
vbscript update for AMG reviews:

download link: http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=YgXKSFUV (http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=YgXKSFUV)

Enjoy


Thank you so much for this script.  It works perfectly.  I would also like to know if there is a way to have it pull the artist biography instead of the album review.  I know nothing about this sort of thing, so any help you could provide would be great. 

Jason
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2010-12-21 07:15:08
AMG biography VBScript update download link: http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=i1RfTb9M (http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=i1RfTb9M)

Usage: cscript //Nologo scripts\foo_allmusic_b.vbs "%album artist%"

Problem can emerge when there are more artists with the same name. Typical example, pop artist "Air", and returned result for jazz artists from 70s. Right now, first match is returned that matches artist name (played in foobar), and although options exists for "relevance" or "significant" parsing, that doesn't solve possible issue, as I quickly checked. So keeping the script simple and fast I won't add another page request to check artist discography for match. However if more users demand it, I'll do it

My only issue when I was writing first script was that I couldn't find a way to parse HTML page as XML/XHTML instead using regular expressions. I wraped it in XHTML but MS XMLDOM couldn't see it. If someone has idea how to parse HTML as XML in VBScript please let me know.

Quote
I know nothing about this sort of thing, so any help you could provide would be great.

If you compare both scripts you can see that it isn't that hard to pull arbitrary data from allmusic. Maybe I should have commented the code, but it seem silly to do so for such small script.

Edit: Minor issue corrected. Line 31: "<div id=""bio""> to "bio"">

Link updated
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: joelzhao on 2010-12-22 00:39:59
They work well and rapidly, thank you. One problem, if there is no result by the script, "no match for:" display. How can I to do then if I want to search by last.fm or wiki in turn?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: j conky on 2010-12-22 17:17:26
Romor,

Thanks again for the script.  It works perfectly.  It would be great if you could have it check artist discography in the event of multiple matches, but I understand the desire to not want to do that unless really demanded.  I also do not know the impact of that additional check on the speed, as the script as written returns results very quickly, which is great.

Thanks again for you efforts.

Jason
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: joelzhao on 2010-12-23 08:13:42
I'm always listening online streams by FB2k, some of the radio supply dynamic track sources, is it possible search the artist/album info by run exterior script?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wdekler on 2010-12-23 16:45:14
Thanks for the script romor!


Do you have any idea why this query works:

cscript //nologo foo_allmusic_r.vbs "amos lee" "supply and demand"


But this one gives an error that no review was found (which obviously isn't correct)?

cscript //nologo foo_allmusic_r.vbs "amos lee" "last days at the lodge"


thanks!

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2010-12-23 17:45:05
Apparently because of two paragraphs, meaning CRLF wasn't covered by regex pattern. I remember I considered this, but maybe forgot something at some point.

You can change last part of line 32: ([\S ]+) to ([\s\S ]+), or re-download from here: http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=1PvmetSv (http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=1PvmetSv)

Please post such issues in future also

About allmusic biography script, I'll consider discography search for multiple artists matches when I have time for vbscript
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wdekler on 2010-12-23 20:17:21
Thanks for the quick fix!      I'll will report any further issues if I encounter them.


By the way someone earlier reported that sometimes the text in foobar was incomplete.

I just encountered an example with the bio of Ryan Adams. After  a couple of sentences the text in Foobar abruptly ends with an H

However, when I ran the script manually, the complete bio appeared in the command prompt but the problem obviously is with the ü which should have appeared after the H (of the band Hüsker Dü).

Next I tried directly retrieving the bio of Hüsker Dü and it worked fine....

So there's a problem somewhere with these kind of characters, is that a known issue with the bio plugin itself?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2011-01-11 19:34:41
I uploaded Amazon review vbscript here: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=86092 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=86092)

Artist's Biography is not available through this webservice

I plan *later* to merge allmusic scripts in one and extend it with classical music reviews feature, that's why I'm not posting extension for allmusic biography with discography match
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: joelzhao on 2011-02-11 04:43:02
It feels not good to scroll with middle button of mouse if there's a long biography, it'll be nice to scroll it with "page up" and "page down".
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: imatree on 2011-07-30 05:03:48
This plugin is pretty great, and I see alongside the biography text it also holds "similar artist" information? (At least... I assume it is this plugin.)

However this information isn't shown anyone and I can't figure out a way to use it... is there no titleformatting that would allow me to grab the information stored in Similar Artists/bio?

eg: Like so...?

(http://i.imgur.com/KZjKD.png)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: antonellocaroli on 2011-07-30 08:38:32
AMG biography VBScript update download link: http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=i1RfTb9M (http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=i1RfTb9M)

Usage: cscript //Nologo scripts\foo_allmusic_b.vbs "%album artist%"

Problem can emerge when there are more artists with the same name. Typical example, pop artist "Air", and returned result for jazz artists from 70s. Right now, first match is returned that matches artist name (played in foobar), and although options exists for "relevance" or "significant" parsing, that doesn't solve possible issue, as I quickly checked. So keeping the script simple and fast I won't add another page request to check artist discography for match. However if more users demand it, I'll do it

My only issue when I was writing first script was that I couldn't find a way to parse HTML page as XML/XHTML instead using regular expressions. I wraped it in XHTML but MS XMLDOM couldn't see it. If someone has idea how to parse HTML as XML in VBScript please let me know.

Quote
I know nothing about this sort of thing, so any help you could provide would be great.

If you compare both scripts you can see that it isn't that hard to pull arbitrary data from allmusic. Maybe I should have commented the code, but it seem silly to do so for such small script.

Edit: Minor issue corrected. Line 31: "<div id=""bio""> to "bio"">


thank you!

you can get information discography?
I do not know anything about scripting ....



Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: nickdc on 2011-08-18 17:34:56
AMG biography VBScript update download link: http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=i1RfTb9M (http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=i1RfTb9M)

Usage: cscript //Nologo scripts\foo_allmusic_b.vbs "%album artist%"

Problem can emerge when there are more artists with the same name. Typical example, pop artist "Air", and returned result for jazz artists from 70s. Right now, first match is returned that matches artist name (played in foobar), and although options exists for "relevance" or "significant" parsing, that doesn't solve possible issue, as I quickly checked. So keeping the script simple and fast I won't add another page request to check artist discography for match. However if more users demand it, I'll do it

My only issue when I was writing first script was that I couldn't find a way to parse HTML page as XML/XHTML instead using regular expressions. I wraped it in XHTML but MS XMLDOM couldn't see it. If someone has idea how to parse HTML as XML in VBScript please let me know.

Quote
I know nothing about this sort of thing, so any help you could provide would be great.

If you compare both scripts you can see that it isn't that hard to pull arbitrary data from allmusic. Maybe I should have commented the code, but it seem silly to do so for such small script.

Edit: Minor issue corrected. Line 31: "<div id=""bio""> to "bio"">

Link updated

a quick guide on how to use this script?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2011-08-18 18:50:03
file>preferences>tools>biography server. add run external script to the current source list. highlight it and move it to the top of the list.
back in the left hand pane, select run external script and add this new command

Code: [Select]
cscript //Nologo scripts\foo_allmusic_b.vbs "%album artist%"


now i'm not sure if the scripts folder here is relative to the user profile folder or the main foobar folder so you'll have to work that out for yourself. save the script from the pastebin website using the same file name.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2011-08-18 20:43:32
as i was bored, i tried looking at fixing the vbscript so that line breaks in the AMG bio are retained but it was beyond me. 

so i bodged in a little jscript to handle that. the script is here....

http://pastebin.com/XFNQTesT (http://pastebin.com/XFNQTesT)

note this uses a different file extension and must be saved/called accordingly.

Code: [Select]
cscript //Nologo scripts\foo_allmusic_b.wsf "%artist%"


(i prefer %artist% over %album artist% but that's just a personal preference)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: nickdc on 2011-08-19 10:48:12
thanks, but doesn't work here, don't know why...just create a folder called "Nologo scripts" and put foo_allmusic_b.wsf in that...

ps, Is it possible to keep album review from allmusic?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2011-08-19 11:01:16
nologo is a command line switch - not part of the folder name. i even put the folder name scripts in bold...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: maXelo on 2011-08-20 21:25:39
I love this plugin....but my only problem is with the "AC/DC" name, I use the following file path to save the last.fm data on my pc:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________
Metadata: C:\Users\maXelo\AppData\Roaming\foobar2000\lastfm\artist\$swapprefix(%artist%,A,The,Los,El,La,At The,As I,At The)
Image:    C:\Users\maXelo\AppData\Roaming\foobar2000\lastfm\artist\$swapprefix(%artist%,A,The,Los,El,La,At The,As I,At The)

Artist:
Folder path: C:\Users\maXelo\AppData\Roaming\foobar2000\lastfm\artist
File Name: [(%artist%,A,The,Los,El,La,At The,As I,At The)]

Album:
Folder path: blank
File Name: [%artist% - ][%album%]
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________

But somehow I can't save the AC/DC last.fm data, any ideas?...thanks in advance
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2011-08-20 21:51:02
try

$replace(%artist%,'/',-)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: maXelo on 2011-08-20 22:05:54
I'm sorry but where exactly do I put that string?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2011-08-20 22:17:04
in place of each instance of %artist%
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: maXelo on 2011-08-20 22:23:43
Thank you so much!!!....I have been using fb2k for about 4 years now, for little things like this, is that is simple the best player out there.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wdekler on 2011-09-18 19:23:48
I just found a simple fix for the problem with incomplete texts from allmusic when an accent is in the text: set the character code of the external script to UTF16. 
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Quitch on 2011-10-02 22:45:47
Only just been introduced to this plugin and I must say that it rocks.

I have a few of questions:

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: taxstin on 2011-10-08 22:34:53
The foobar2000 skin I was using used to show "Related Artists and Listeners" in the biography section as seen here

http://browse.deviantart.com/customization...rder=9#/d2ivwfv (http://browse.deviantart.com/customization/skins/media/foobar2000/?order=9#/d2ivwfv)

But all of a sudden it doesn't show that anymore. It just disappeared. Does anyone know if this is bc of an outdated component or something? I don't get why it would disappear like that.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Quitch on 2011-10-17 09:46:17
I have two panels, one for album and one for artist. Every so often the album panel switches to artist instead. This seems to occur when both LastFM and Wikipedia fail to turn up results (though using Built-In Artwork is my third and final server option).

Anyone else seen this?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: WilB on 2011-10-17 12:23:55
Try right click menu > options > lock display type
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Quitch on 2011-10-17 13:16:32
Thanks, I'll give that a whirl.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: matav on 2011-11-09 11:34:53
@ssenna
hi,
i love your component and have been using it ever since i switched to foobar.
i just hope you are still checking this thread and are open to feature requests.

my biography panel is set up properly.
i save
1. artist info and pic to x:\lastfm\%artist%\%artist%
2. album info and pic to x:\lastfm\%artist%\%album%\%album%
i use a columns UI text viewer to display the playcount and similar artist list by %lastfm_similar_artist% and %lastfm_artist_playcount% provided by your component.
everything is great!

i'd like to request a few features and improvements (though they have been requested previously) but anyways...
Kindly:

1. Add support for retrieving tags from last.fm (the top 5 tags). It will be same method as it was for playcount and similar artist.

2.Do something about the delay in refreshing the display
It takes a very long time to change. it will still display the artist i played half an hour ago!
I have noticed this happens when:
> it's downloading high resolution images from last.fm so it kinda clogs your component.
example: say, i play a new artist and the 3 images on last.fm are 10+mb. your component begins to download it but in the meantime, i play another artist but the display will not refresh until it downloads the previous artists images.
> this also happens when my network is overloaded and i haven't kept aside any speed for normal browsing

3. When search cache after online search is unchecked, the component should check local cache first and...
> if the cache exists then no need to request the online source at all
> if cache exists but cache is old then (stop display: if it causes locking issues) and download the latest info.
> if cache doesn't exist, then request online sources (obviously)
The problem here is, i believe it checks the online source even when local cache exists and is up to date.

sorry for the trouble
hope you get my message


EDIT:
oh! one more thing.
in server preferences > last.fm | Artist > "Artist picture criteria", the option "Popurarity" is misspelled. It should be "Popularity"
but it's no big deal.

--
foobar2000 v1.1.9 | Columns UI v0.3.8.8 | Biography View v0.4.2.4.2
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2011-11-12 19:33:15
I'm using the review script generously provided in post #387, and it seems to work very well a great deal of the time, but probably one out of ten albums I receive the reply of "No review was found for..." for an album and album artist combination that I can verify is reviewed at allmusic.  I don't think I've done anything incorrectly in my script call because everything works perfectly the other 90% of the time, and I believe that I have properly tagged my file and accurately passed the proper album artist and album tags to the script, based on what the script returns and what I find at allmusic.  I have the character codes set to UTF8.  I also treid UTF16 but nothing changed for the missing reviews.

Example albums that fail for which there are reviews at allmusic but no review found by the script:

Peter Gabriel's Security
Pink Floyd's Animals

For both Peter Garbriel and Pink Floyd, the script successfully returns reviews for other albums.

any suggestions?  thanks
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2011-11-12 22:54:11
Both albums:

http://allmusic.com/search/album/animals (http://allmusic.com/search/album/animals)
http://allmusic.com/search/album/security (http://allmusic.com/search/album/security)

have multiple releases. Script tries to find first match for Artist and Album and they does not have review, so this thing can happen on such popular albums, which is no good.
Script can be changed a bit to crawl all matches for review if multiple matches are found, and I'll try that when I boot in Windows in near future
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2011-11-25 11:08:15
A belated thanks for looking into picking a match that has a review.  On a related note, I notice frequently when the script does pull down a review from allmusic, the bottom of the review is incomplete.  It seems to be related to allmusic's habit of only displaying part of a review and forcing a user to hit a "read more" button on their site to display the full reivew.  This also happens with the related allmusic script for pulling down artist biographies.  If there is a way to tweak the allmusic script in post #387 and the related script for artist information to simulate hitting that button or working around it, that would be great.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Morality124 on 2011-11-27 18:05:38
Biography view works great for me, but I confirm that it is incompatible with foo_w7shell (http://wintense.com/plugins/foo_w7shell).  Guess I'll use the system tray instead.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: culinko on 2011-11-30 07:39:01
hi guys. i have to say that this is an awesome plugin! but i just switched from an old version to current version and have one simple question. is it any possibility to hide the scrollbar? didn't find it anywhere, big thanks.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2011-12-01 18:38:07
In case this helps any script developer, I just noticed that the allmusic bio of Loreena McKennitt ( http://www.allmusic.com/artist/loreena-mckennitt-p104319 (http://www.allmusic.com/artist/loreena-mckennitt-p104319) ) displayed by this component exhibits a behavior I had not noticed before in this component (doesn't mean it hasn't been happening - I don't consider myself the most observant person by a long shot)

- The scripts posted in #387 and #395 both deliver text beyond the "read more" limit
- Both scripts chop the text at the same point: after the letter "c" in the first instance of "fiance"

Doing some counts, this point represents 285 words, 2012 characters not including space or line breaks, 2401 characters with spaces and paragraph breaks (and includes a count of three for the three paragraph breaks recognized by script from post #395).  Hope that means something or otherwise helps.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2011-12-01 20:51:25
OK, sorry it took me so long to boot in Windows

This rev. will resolve problems on popular releases as Pink Floyd - Animals: http://pastebin.com/jNNg3g5G (http://pastebin.com/jNNg3g5G)

Here is diff: http://pastebin.com/t6Y0uMc9 (http://pastebin.com/t6Y0uMc9)

regex pattern slightly changed to defend from possible garbage, and simple indicator added for crawling reported problematic releases.

About your last post, I guess it's something to do with character encoding and I hope it's nothing to do with this script. Best, try to change encodings in biography setting and see if it will resolve

Cheers
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: culinko on 2011-12-01 23:25:46
about hiding the scrollbar issue in #415, sorry, the option was there right in front of me... didn't see it the first time lol
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2011-12-02 01:11:14
Great job, Romor - thanks very much!  Reviews for popular albums are now being found, and switching to ANSI dealt with the e with grave at end of "fiancè" that I should have noticed.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: culinko on 2011-12-02 02:31:08
just two more questions/requests:

is it possible to not to write the file, if no %album% tag is found? (for the album option)
is it possible to clear the panel if you switch to a new song? because now the previous info is still displayed for about 5-10 secs

many thanks
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2011-12-02 03:04:25
here is more sane script, without naive indicator: http://pastebin.com/4iNt6zXb (http://pastebin.com/4iNt6zXb)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2011-12-02 18:28:21
Not being knowledgeable of scripting beyond some very simple things, if the new script was intended to just return one review result instead of concatenating several reviews, then it works as you intended!  I'll probably keep both versions because sometimes seeing the different reviews can be interesting.

Related to my scripting deficiencies, I've tried to tweak your script for something and I've failed.  I have lots of albums with parenthetical information in the album title, like "(Disc 1 of 2)" to ensure I have unique album names for each disc I ripped, but because the review sites don't care about such matters, my album names with such text don't return review results.  There is probably a regular expression to ignore parentheses and the contents within in an album tag, but it's beyond me.  If you get some time it would be great to add the ability to ignore such text in the album tag, or tell me what to put where to mod it myself.

If there is another way to do this with existing functionality that I missed without creating a new tag, please let me know as well.  Thanks!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2011-12-02 19:40:59
Yea, Godrick that was the problem :-[ That indicator needed to be reset, or you'll get all reviews for particular ARTIST - ALBUM combination. And indicator wasn't really needed as main 'For' loop can be exited from anywhere and there was a perfect place for it. I should have thought this in first version but I didn't noticed possibility for this problem.

If you want to tweak things to you preference here is VBS reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d1wf56tt.aspx (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d1wf56tt.aspx) or better here: http://www.w3schools.com/vbscript/vbscript_ref_functions.asp (http://www.w3schools.com/vbscript/vbscript_ref_functions.asp)

About you problem, look at line 12 in script:

ALBUM = ARGS.Item(1)

You can strip string part in brackets by replacing simple regex pattern "\([^\)]*\)", but here is different way (replace line 12 with it): http://pastebin.com/MUaLELky (http://pastebin.com/MUaLELky)

You can use other functions, like instead more general Mid() use Left() etc.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2011-12-02 23:39:49
Romor, thanks again.  I like your suggested script insert because it's far easier to follow and remember than the regex pattern.  For quite a while tonight I thought I screwed up entering the few lines, but it appears that the garbage results I was viewing in the component using my test album was a result of garbage among the reviews of Pink Floyd's The Wall on allmusic.  I entered echo lines to confirm script values to ensure I knew what the script was returning and I found the VBS links very helpful.  I can now get reviews for many albums that I could not get before, and I recommend it for anyone who has parenthetical information in their album names.  Awesome job!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2011-12-05 09:07:36
Updated allmusic script: http://pastebin.com/FCtBZvrs (http://pastebin.com/FCtBZvrs)

As mentioned long ago I merged allmusic Review and Biography (with discography match) in one script. It's interesting that I could get both fields in one pass (either Biography from Review and vice versa), but no use in practice as component must execute each separately.

Assuming script is in scripts folder relative to foobar folder:

Artist tab: cscript //NoLogo scripts\foo_allmusic.vbs "%album artist%" "%album%" bio
Album tab: cscript //NoLogo scripts\foo_allmusic.vbs "%album artist%" "%album%"

Double click on biography panel toggles display

Here is what's changed for those that are interested:

Most important - how to ensure that it's right artist in case of multiple artists with same name or in general. I think best way is to find current playing album in allmusic's artist discography and that's what I did like this: there is relevant chance that album name is different than the one on artist's allmusic discography, which is not connected neither with Discogs nor with MusicBrainz so using simple string match like InStr() will make thing worse for all artists instead resolve anything, and yet another regex is used this way - allmusic' album name and user's album name are stripped from non alphabetic characters then user's album name is matched inside allmusic album name; if true, biography is echoed if present otherwise not.
In case this feature is not wanted just comment lines 93 and 111

Similarly for review, album name is checked even if it's not 100% relevant (currently >= 90%) in which case script will additionally echo artist/album combination and relevancy. If it's 100% artist/album is not echoed, but just review.

Also ActiveX object is changed to more general (Microsoft.XMLHTTP) so it should work on Linux too (in Wine) without problems

And there may be issues as I just merged it, and tested on couple of releases. It looks fine to me, but if there are problems do report
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Emerelle on 2011-12-05 12:49:21
One question about versions:
I just checked the online troubleshooter and for biography view it tells me to download the latest version but the version at the page is exactly the one I have installed 
Can anyone shed light on this?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2011-12-05 13:26:16
Romor, new script works well.  I tried to tweak lines 56 and 103 to recognize line breaks in the original text, but my tries failed, and these may not even be the lines I needed to tweak for that.  Any suggestions appreciated, and thanks again for your efforts.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2011-12-05 14:38:59
There does seem to be different behavior with the new script concerning character decoding.  Although selecting ANSI decoding worked with the prior script to display characters like the grave e in fiance, the current script displays a comma instead of the final character in fiance with ANSI decoding.  I changed between ANSI, UTF8 and UTF16 in the component options but could not get fiance or words with other special characters like the (temperature or angle) degree character to display properly.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2011-12-06 09:52:46
To avoid fragmentation, script can be viewed here: http://db.tt/erPq5XpB (http://db.tt/erPq5XpB) and downloaded from here: http://db.tt/RnrNrwQ3 (http://db.tt/RnrNrwQ3)
Any further changes will reflect there without using pastebin

Thanks godrick (and others reporting problems) for helping me make script better for all of us
I corrected the problem, and additionally extended discography match for biography part and commented main parts in the script to be easier to tweak things.

godrick, I don't know why you have problems with character encodings. What OS do you run? Try to run it on command line and see if there is some problem, maybe global CP for Windows shell can affect things? I can't see problem here and further more I didn't change anything that could affect character encodings.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2011-12-06 22:10:16
Very puzzling.  I don't know what you mean by "global CP for windows shell" or "try to run it on command line" means, but I'm willing to try anything.  I'm running Windows 7.  The only aspect of my Foobar2000 or computer confguration that I am aware of changing since Dec 2 is changing this allmusic script and going from Foobar2000 1.1.0 beta 2 to the released 1.1.10. 

I uninstalled and reinstalled Foobar2000, did the same for the bio component, reverted back the old alllmusic script from mid November 2011, and reverted back to 1.1.10 beta 2.  No effect.  Rebooted my computer a few times, no effect.  Tried to change the "run external script" output of the new allmusic script from "via standard output" to "via file", but never could get any file result from the bio component.  Tried changing among the various character codes again, no change in the ANSI output or anything readable with the other codes.  Tried the script with and without the extra code to ignore parenthetical info, no effect.

The problem remains constant across the various config changes I mentioned above.  In a little more detail, when character mode is set to ANSI with the new script, special characters echo as gibberish, and thus the strings being passed to allmusic are gibberish and not returning hits.  The rest of my computer, the rest of Foobar2000 and the rest of hte bio component that does not use this allmusic script correctly display the special characters.  For example, the wiki source that comes with the bio component correctly reads, ecos, and passes on the correct characters to the wiki site and gets hits and returns correct results in the bio component.

An example with screenshots for the album Dúlamán, echoing the value for ALBUM right after ALBUM = ARGS.Item(1) in the script:

returned by the wiki source (a correct result):  http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/485/wikis...turnedbybio.jpg (http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/485/wikisourcereturnedbybio.jpg)
returned by allmusc script set to ANSI (a bad result): http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/6650/al...cereturnedb.jpg (http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/6650/allmusicsourcereturnedb.jpg)
screenshot 1 of my album script call: http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/4725/al...bscriptpic1.jpg (http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/4725/albumtabscriptpic1.jpg)
screenshot 2 of the rest of my script call: http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/8544/albumtabscriptpic2.jpg (http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/8544/albumtabscriptpic2.jpg)

Romor, if things look good on your and others' ends then I am doing something wrong, but I can't figure it out.  Sorry to bother you with something so minor compared to the great advances your scripts have taken, but any ideas welcome!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2011-12-07 06:36:40
godrick, it has nothing to do with foobar version or script changes, it's just the way how Biography View component works with stdout (not that I know how). Option "via file" reads file instead executing command, so you don't need that

By command line I meant: press "Win+R" - type "cmd" then hit Enter - "CD" to folder where the script is located - execute script `cscript foo_allmusic.vbs some_problematic_artist some_album`
If you see output problems, check global CP in shell by typing "CHCP", then try setting unicode by executing "CHCP 65001" and running script again (on command line) You also need appropriate console font like Lucida Console

OTOH, from you screenshot letter "ú" is misinterpreted, although it is represented by same bytes in both UTF-8 and ANSI and I don't know why that could be.

Try setting script execution in Biography View like this:

Code: [Select]
cscript //U //Nologo foo_allmusic.vbs %album artist" "%album%"

and set character set to UTF-16 and see if that solves anything

I have no more ideas what to suggest if above does not resolve things
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2011-12-07 12:59:26
Problem appears solved by adding the //U option and setting character code to UTF16!  Prior to trying the //U option, verything looked fine when I ran the script from the command line.  My code page was set at 437 and the special characters displayed correctly.

thanks again!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2011-12-08 14:04:11
I updated script (link on post #428)

New feature is song review, which is triggered if additionally %title% argument is passed to the script.
Example:
(http://i.imgur.com/1FEKIs.png) (http://i.imgur.com/1FEKI.png)

It's not so common feature, only ultra popular artists have song reviews on some of their top singles
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2011-12-13 04:07:48
Romor, if I can impose on you again for some thoughts:

In general, your latest script works great, but in a few cases it misses reviews that your version from a few weeks ago picked up.  I think it's because of how you've tweaked the regular expression (RE)  to look for matches, but I'm not up to speed yet on RE to figure out exactly what is happening and what to tweak some more. 

For example, your script from a few weeks ago that contained the following RE looking for matches is able to pick up 4 matches for Suzanne Vega's 99.9 F° and display a review:

RE.Pattern = "title=""100%""[\s\S]*?<td><a href=""(\S+)""[\s\S]*?<td>([\S ]+)</td>"

But with the RE looking for matches in the latest script, it returns zero matches for the same artist and album:

RE.Pattern = "title=""(100|9.)%""[\s\S]*?<td><a href=""(.*?)"">(.*?)<[\s\S]*?<td>(.*?)</td>"

I tried to crudely swap out each of the RE components in the new pattern (one at a time) with the old pattern component to see if I could narrow it down, but no joy.

It could be a situation of tradeoffs where the new pattern is more robust overall but there will be a few cases that slip through that matched before, and if that's the case, then that's OK, but if if there is something obvious that could be tweaked to pick up cases like my example album without compromising other matches, that would be great.

For what it's worth, none of the issues regarding character codes I was having is a factor as far as I can tell - all characters echoed appropriately in all cases.

thanks again.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Bob9999 on 2011-12-14 17:55:35
Please forgive my clueless-ness. I have character encoding set to UTF-16 and run external script at the top of the bio component preferences, however bio panel always shows the following.

Usage: cscript //U //Nologo scripts\foo_allmusic.vbs "%album artist" "%album%" ["%title%" | bio]

I am using romor's latest script and have it installed in C:\Program Files (x86)\foobar2000\scripts
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2011-12-14 22:01:40
godrick you are welcomed  as well as others that might have problems with the script

Issue with your example seems like this:

Script requests literally "http://allmusic.com/search/album/99.9+f°" but last special character is discarded by MS XMLHTTP object. There probably is a reason why it does that, although there are no problems generally with UTF-8 strings. Because of this, response is taken from "http://allmusic.com/search/album/99.9+f" where highest available relevance factor is 88% while script accepts >= 90% (and older version strictly 100%). So if you change "(100|9.)%" to let's say "(100|8.)%" (which I don't recommend) you'll get results

@Bob: that output is if you don't pass required arguments to the script
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Mman on 2012-01-09 03:16:31
Currently I have my music set up like this:

Artist/Album/...

I have this formatted to use with XBMC which allows me to export NFO files for all artists and albums, so each Artist folder has an artist.nfo file that contains a bunch of information about the artist formatted in XML.  The biography information is contained within the tags <biography>...</biography>.  What I would like is to run an external script to pull this information, that way my foobar biography is an exact copy of my XBMC biography.  Can anybody help?  Thanks in advance.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2012-01-15 23:47:23
Romor, I've encountered a few types of Allmusic script searches that fail to find album review hits in the component, but when repeated in a browser, return hits:

1) albums where the album artist is "various artists".  Two examples of such searches are "The Breakfast Club" and "Red Hot + Blue: A tribute to Cole Porter".  The Breakfast Club is a soundtrack, but i don't thank that attribute is contributing to the problem based on my tests.
2) albums with a "/" in the album title. 

The cause and solution to the first type is a mystery to me.  The cause of the second is obvious, but I don't know how to tweak the script yet to ignore or replace occurrences of "/" in the album title.  I suppose the same type of issue also occurs when "/" is present in an artist or album artist tag, but I don't have AC/DC albums in my library  .  As always, any help appreciated.

A tweak to consider as well regarding artist bios: currently I've entered two calls for your Allmusic script to execute for the Artist tab in the Biography component, with the first call using "album artist" and the second using "artist", such that when I encounter a compilation album with album artist = "various artists", the first script essentially fails to find anything and second script then runs and looks for a bio on the track artist.  This works just fine, but perhaps a more elegant solution would be to pass both artist and album artist to the script and use the artist tag when album artist = "various artist".  Again, I'm completely happy with my current approach for album artist and artist bios, but this tweak would be slick.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: gattofix on 2012-01-27 05:03:13
Updated allmusic script: http://pastebin.com/FCtBZvrs (http://pastebin.com/FCtBZvrs)

And there may be issues as I just merged it, and tested on couple of releases. It looks fine to me, but if there are problems do report


I am a complete newbie when it comes to foobar customization and using scripts, I came across this forum and biography view because in my foobar v1.1.10 "Run Service -> AllMusic Album" only brings up the home page of AMG, not the artist or album page.

Concerning biography view the last.fm info works, but if I choose "Run external script", after having put the script in a scipts folder and added the path, I always get an error message in the biography view panel saying that (I am translating, as my error message is in German because of German Windows XP): "Input Error. The script file C:\Programme\foobar2000\scripts\foo_allmusic.vbs" could not be found."

But the script is in that exact folder, the script name has not been changed, either.

Any ideas what might be wrong?  I have tried everything, checked the path several times, put the scrips folder in the hidden user folder on C:, as well, but the error message stays the same.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2012-01-27 13:53:05
1) to fix run service>allmusic album, go to preferences>run services, select "allmusic album" among the services, and enter the following under "path" (insert everything between the double quotes but don't enter the double quotes): 

"http://www.allmusic.com/search/album/$replace(%album%, ,+)"

2)you only have one double quote at the beginning of your error message and two near the end, so I'm not confident exactly what your error message really was, but check that you've entered double quotes around your script path and around the album artist and album tags, with the path and tag references separated by spaces, per:

cscript //Nologo "C:\Programme\foobar2000\scripts\foo_allmusic.vbs" "%album artist%" "%album%" bio
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: gattofix on 2012-01-27 17:14:53
Thanks a lot, Godrick!

Unfortunately, only the run service works now.

As for the script problem, I actually forgot one double quote in the translated error message.
In the script execution command I in the preferences menu I used "cscript //Nologo scripts\foo_allmusic.vbs "%album artist%" "%album%""
Now, after your help, I pasted your "cscript //Nologo "C:\Programme\foobar2000\scripts\foo_allmusic.vbs" "%album artist%" "%album%" bio"

The error message, however, has not changed a bit.

It still complains that the script "C:\Programme\foobar2000\scripts\foo_allmusic.vbs" was not found. (Even though it definitely is still in the scripts folder).

Never mind, I realize that this is a problem that is hard to reproduce, at least I can use the bio script with the last.fm setting and use the run service. This is not as nice as an integrated album review panel, but the next best thing.

Thanks for your efforts
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2012-01-27 18:12:42
The only other possibilities I can think of are 1) if you hit the "download" hypertext on the script download page, it will download the file to the default name "foo_allmusic.vbs.txt", so you need to manually eliminate the last four characters of the filename so that it has the proper extension, or 2) there is some subtle character difference in the filename in your scripts directory and the fiename used in the script call (perhaps zeros instead of letter 'o's, or one underscore in one place and two underscores in another).  If you navigate to the script file within Windows Exporer, select it, and then copy the path and then paste that path into your script, that might eliminate such a typo.  Good luck!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: gattofix on 2012-01-27 23:36:38
The only other possibilities I can think of are 1) if you hit the "download" hypertext on the script download page, it will download the file to the default name "foo_allmusic.vbs.txt", so you need to manually eliminate the last four characters of the filename so that it has the proper extension, or 2) there is some subtle character difference in the filename in your scripts directory and the fiename used in the script call (perhaps zeros instead of letter 'o's, or one underscore in one place and two underscores in another).  If you navigate to the script file within Windows Exporer, select it, and then copy the path and then paste that path into your script, that might eliminate such a typo.  Good luck!


It works! 

Thanks ever so much, Godrick!

It was in fact the file type mistake, I saved the script again from within word pad with the file name in quotation marks.

I have one more question for now: is there a way to show the AMG rating (1-5 stars, including half stars)?

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: dida1337 on 2012-02-02 16:09:54
Is there a way to make biography images appear as a background image in my foobar? Also, can I have biography image in instead of my front cover image taken from my hard drive? Basically what I am asking is, how can I have my front cover image and my background image downloaded from this service instead of using images from my hard drive?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: MDMA on 2012-02-02 17:41:38
What is the possibility of writing a script that well display all previous releases by an artist? I was thinking an excellent script could be made to work with with discogs.com that could display all artist releases (so you can see what you may be missing in your collection) and possibly as far as displaying other releases on the same record label.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: WilB on 2012-02-02 23:16:36
Is there a way to make biography images appear as a background image in my foobar? Also, can I have biography image in instead of my front cover image taken from my hard drive?


You can have biography view save the cover image to hard disc and ensure the location is added as a front cover source. However, since I think artwork is normally read at the start of track playback, the saved cover would not be available for the now playing track but would show on subsequent plays and so this approach may or may not suit you (there may be complex/inefficient ways round this depending on the plug-in displaying the cover). Similar arguments apply to use as a background image. Of course you can use biography view to just display the cover without text in a panel, which would work fine for the now playing track, if that's all you want to achieve. Finally, there is a biography server\misc option to provide artwork to other artwork viewers that is described as an unsupported experimental option + its not available for some artwork viewer components (e.g. PanelStackSplitter), but I have no experience of using this feature.

HTH
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: gattofix on 2012-02-03 04:54:32
Is there a way to have the AMG star rating  downloaded from the AMG server, displayed by Biography View, and, if possible, saved into a tag?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: dida1337 on 2012-02-03 10:05:48
Is there a way to make biography images appear as a background image in my foobar? Also, can I have biography image in instead of my front cover image taken from my hard drive?


You can have biography view save the cover image to hard disc and ensure the location is added as a front cover source. However, since I think artwork is normally read at the start of track playback, the saved cover would not be available for the now playing track but would show on subsequent plays and so this approach may or may not suit you (there may be complex/inefficient ways round this depending on the plug-in displaying the cover). Similar arguments apply to use as a background image. Of course you can use biography view to just display the cover without text in a panel, which would work fine for the now playing track, if that's all you want to achieve. Finally, there is a biography server\misc option to provide artwork to other artwork viewers that is described as an unsupported experimental option + its not available for some artwork viewer components (e.g. PanelStackSplitter), but I have no experience of using this feature.

HTH


Thank you for your reply. I managed to do that and it works great.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: TargetD on 2012-03-04 13:47:28
I've just started using this great little plugin and am really liking it.

However, I'd like to retrieve the artist info AND the album info. As you can see from the screenshot (http://anonym.to/?http://i42.tinypic.com/x26l4m.jpg (http://anonym.to/?http://i42.tinypic.com/x26l4m.jpg)) I don't retrieve the album info from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodbye_Cruel...rld_%28album%29 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodbye_Cruel_World_%28album%29)) - see the right hand panel, where it should be displayed.

I realise this is probably a really stupid question, but any ideas for solving this? Hopefully I'm not the only person struggling with basic things like this!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Marc27 on 2012-03-04 23:28:45
Everything working perfect!
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what the output method in external scripts is. If file is selected the displayed output in the
panel can be saved as a text file?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: highend on 2012-03-08 20:51:24
When I discovery this plugin I thought it would be great to automatically download a folder picture
if I play any song of an album.

.jpg is the required (at least for most players that look for a folder image) extension for such a picture
but somehow the plugin doesn't want to save it as a .jpg but as .png?

My settings for last.fm:
Artist: Disable saving downloaded data

and more importantly:

Album:
x Enable cache
Image: $directory_path(%path%)\folder

This works so far but it puts a folder.png file into the destination folder for an album, not a .jpg
Is this extension configured elsewhere?

Regards,
Highend
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: acrox999 on 2012-05-02 12:50:53
I don't know if this is possible and I can't find a way to do this but is there a way to put 2 panels at once? I mean, I'd like to have 2 biography panels, one showing biography of the artist, and the other one to show the biography of the album artist.

Too bad the panel use only one central server preferences, or else my idea would have worked easily.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2012-05-02 13:20:04
i've made a script for WSH panel mod that pulls the same biography info from last.fm. it supports per panel field remapping. you need a last.fm account to use it though.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22801321/samples.zip (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22801321/samples.zip)

the script you need to import is named simple biography.txt. read the instructions carefully.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: acrox999 on 2012-05-03 14:04:24
i've made a script for WSH panel mod that pulls the same biography info from last.fm. it supports per panel field remapping. you need a last.fm account to use it though.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22801321/samples.zip (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22801321/samples.zip)

the script you need to import is named simple biography.txt. read the instructions carefully.


Thanks a lot marc. Like what I thought, it is possible with WSH. Thanks a lot for this.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: phobos81 on 2012-05-16 15:35:08
I have given up on creating a script for GameFAQs to pull reviews from. I'm simply trying to get a text file in an albums folder to be recognized and displayed. Thought this would be easy  I don't know the specific commands necessary to make this happen so any help would be greatly appreciated. I've tried: display $replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,)review.txt and numerous other things.

Thanks
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mjm716 on 2012-05-22 21:46:11
Anyone (Marc?!)  still working on a WSHPanel or other script to pull an artist's discography from somewhere? It would really fit in nicely between bio & similar artist panels...

i've made a script for WSH panel mod that pulls the same biography info from last.fm. it supports per panel field remapping. you need a last.fm account to use it though.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22801321/samples.zip (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22801321/samples.zip)


Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-05-23 13:45:44
Here is one example vbscript to pull discography from musicbrainz: view - http://db.tt/UPL0tNs9 (http://db.tt/UPL0tNs9) or download - http://db.tt/cJeIBXMV (http://db.tt/cJeIBXMV)

Script expects artist name or musicbrainz artistid (if user has that tag) as argument

If anyone is interested, getReleases() function outputs array object with dictionaries representing each release, where keys can have this possible values: http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/WebServiceSearch#Search_Fields_3 (http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/WebServiceSearch#Search_Fields_3) and dictionary items hold according values for each release. Only some of the keys are usually present and script by default outputs: "date" "country" "title", i.e.:

Code: [Select]
> cscript //Nologo mb_discography.vbs "Vidna Obmana"

                Terrace of Memories
1991    BE      Passage in Beauty
1993    AU      Echoing Delight
1993    IT      Revealed by Composed Nature
1993    US      Ending Mirage
1994    AU      The Spiritual Bonding
1994    US      Memories Compiled 1
1994    US      Still Fragments
1995    IT      [Syrenia]
1995    US      Twilight of Perception
1996    US      Shadowing in Sorrow
1996    US      The River of Appearance
1998    US      Crossing the Trail
1998    US      Memories Compiled 1
1999    CA      True Stories
1999    SE      The Shape of Solitude
1999    SE      Variations for Organ, Keyboard and Processors
1999    US      Landscape in Obscurity
1999    US      Memories Compiled 2
1999    US      Motives for Recycling
2000    IT      Echo Passage
2000    US      The Contemporary Nocturne
2000    US      The Surreal Sanctuary
2001    US      Soundtrack for the Aquarium
2001    US      Subterranean Collective
2001    US      Tremor
2002    US      An Opera for Four Fusion Works (Act One: Echoes of Steel)
2002    US      Deep Unknown
2002    US      The Shifts Recyclings
2003    AT      Tracers
2003    US      Spore
2004    US      An Opera for Four Fusion Works (Act Two: Phrasing the Air)
2004    US      Anthology 1984-2004
2004    US      Legacy
2005    US      Noise/Drone Anthology 1984-1989
2006    DE      Greed
2006    US      An Opera for Four Fusion Works (Act Three: Reflection on Scale)
2006    US      The River of Appearance
2007    US      An Opera for Four Fusion Works (Act Four: The Bowing Harmony)

This patterns (script output) can be easily customized. There are two output function, default - OutputNET() which uses .NET library (mscorlib) to sort the output in ascending order, and Output() which doesn't need .NET library but also doesn't sort the output. Which output function is in use can be set at line 16, and cutom pattern accordingly that function
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: MDMA on 2012-05-23 14:54:36
brilliant stuff! romor

What would be the possibility of using discogs as a source instead of musicbrainz?


edit: also I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong but I can't seem to get the script to work. Do I just enter the path to the script in the command line section of the biography settings (and add it) ?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-05-23 18:09:52
Possibility would be very low, sorry
I wanted to give example. Maybe MB wasn't the greatest choice, but it's there

You should take care of script path or just put it in foobar folder
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2012-05-30 01:40:47
The allmusc script generously provided by Romor in post #428 seems to have stopped working, and I noticed the allmusic website has been redesigned.  Using what little skill I have, it seems the search structure still works, but the results presented by the website seem to have changed enough to require a tweak to the regex pattern or match detection and thus can't pull the bio and review text.

And since my parents always taught me to never play with matches  , any help in tweaking this script is appreciated.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-05-30 09:04:18
Thanks godrick

Script updated (same link: post #428 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=70955&view=findpost&p=777868)) or more correctly replaced by totally different one

Code: [Select]
Usage: cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs ""%album artist%"" ""%album%"" [review | bio]

It's 6x smaller, no more regex, no more track review
Worth noting is that third argument (review or bio) is mandatory

I tested it little, and please report issues, but I won't extend it for very special cases:
Simple is better than complex. Complex is better than complicated.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mjm716 on 2012-05-30 21:03:07
Script updated (same link: post #428 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=70955&view=findpost&p=777868)) or more correctly replaced by totally different one

Code: [Select]
Usage: cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs ""%album artist%"" ""%album%"" [review | bio]


I had the same problem as Godrick of the script no longer working (started the past day). I tried the updated script along with updated 'run external script' code and the only thing displayed any more is exactly that quoted code above.

using:
cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs "%artist%" [bio]
&
cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs "%album%" [review]

(and tried some other unsuccessful variations of that)

:|
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2012-05-30 21:08:29
mjm716, if you've not yet done so, try the following

cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs "%album artist%" "%album%" bio

or

cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs "%album artist%" "%album%" review

Note the different use of the quotes fro the code box in the earlier post, and the lack of brackets around bio and review.  The quotes in the code box of post #461 are necessary when embedded in the actual script to correctly display the error message and suggestion you see in in the response you were getting from your computer.

Romor, the script works great - thanks very much!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mjm716 on 2012-05-30 21:18:58
mjm716, if you've not yet done so, try the following

Romor, the script works great - thanks very much!


Thanks godrick for the tip - worked fine and thanks Romor for the script - it was sorely missed the past day.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: D.Sync on 2012-06-04 11:22:15
The default behaviour of it searching for item online could use some improvement. Do enlighten me if you know the solution for these:

1) Display a string [Searching...] when fetching data from the Internet (so that user will know whether the search is ongoing). It then fall back to displaying album cover if no artist info is found.

2) Also, is there a way to disable fetching album art from the internet as I wanted to use the local cover instead. I dislike the delay when displaying the cover art as I assumed that it will always search for album art online and will only fallback to local art if no such art if found.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mjm716 on 2012-07-06 17:11:07
mjm716, if you've not yet done so, try the following

cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs "%album artist%" "%album%" bio

or

cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs "%album artist%" "%album%" review

Romor, the script works great - thanks very much!


I'm using 2 separate panels to display both the artist bio in one and the album review in another.

One issue I've noticed with the above settings - when the AMG album name is wrong in the tags, the artist bio will not display.

e.g. Gato Barbieri - Chapter 2: Hasta Siempre // nothing displays, even though G.B. has a bio.

As soon as I fixed the album tag "Chapter Two: Hasta Siempre", both the review and bio display.

How do I get the bio to display even if the album is not found?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2012-07-06 17:41:24
Use the available last.fm source in the component's setup as the second listed current source (position the external script source in the first position, closest to the top of the screen).  When the allmusic source fails to find the bio, the last.fm source likely will.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mjm716 on 2012-07-06 17:54:09
Use the available last.fm source in the component's setup as the second listed current source (position the external script source in the first position, closest to the top of the screen).  When the allmusic source fails to find the bio, the last.fm source likely will.


The AMG bio exists, it just won't display unless the %album% is also found
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2012-07-10 01:33:54
To all users of Romor's latest allmusic script: any of you find that it does not work anymore?  Mine doesn't, and I've changed nothing in my setup or the script that I'm aware of.

In the event that I'm not unique in this regard, @Romor or others with scripting and related skills:

The latest allmusic script post #428 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=70955&view=findpost&p=777868) stopped working for me about a week ago.  In making generous use of echo statements, I can tell that just about everything still works:  the variables "artist_link" and "album_link" contain the right web addresses, the function "Request (url)" correctly reads these variables and grabs the entire web page and assigns the result to the variable "Request" via the code

Request = HTTP.responseText

(I echoed "Request" to the panel and it dutifully displays the entire source of the right web page)

What I can't tell is if the 3rd line and 4th lines of code below still work, and I know the 6th line results in variable "rev" being blank instead of containing the actual bio or review text from the web page.  "ARG(2)" is either "bio" or "review" per the script call, and echoing tells me these were passed to the script successfully.

If album_link <> "" Then
    If ARG(2) = "review" Then
      HTM.write Request(album_link)
    Else HTM.write Request(artist_link) End If
  Else WScript.Quit() End If
  Set rev = HTM.getElementById(ARG(2))
  If Not rev Is Nothing Then
     WScript.Echo rev.childnodes.item(1).innerText & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & Replace(rev.firstchild.innerText, vbCrLf, " ")
  End If
End If

In looking at the source for an example web page of a band from my youth http://www.allmusic.com/artist/talking-heads-mn0000131650 (http://www.allmusic.com/artist/talking-heads-mn0000131650) I can see that it contains the element <div id="bio">, and the corresponding web page for an album contains <div id="review">, so my crude conclusion is that the existing script should be able to find these elements and echo them, but from echo statments I inserted "rev" is evaluated as "Nothing" by the script.  I also uninstalled the panel and component and deleted its cfg file before reinstalling and tried all character code combos in the script call to see if any corruption or other weirdness was in play, with no effect.

It's possible that allmusic altered their site again, but I can't find what's changed, if anything.  Any enlightenment or suggestions to try are appreciated!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mjm716 on 2012-07-10 10:22:53
To all users of Romor's latest allmusic script: any of you find that it does not work anymore?  Mine doesn't, and I've changed nothing in my setup or the script that I'm aware of.

Other than the logic issue (script checks for albums before artist therefore never returns artist bio if album title not found), it is still working fine for me - is your fb still pulling/pushing any other panel sources (lastfm etc?)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-07-10 15:48:30
@godrick: works here too, try redownloading

@mjm716: Checking just for artist name match is not enough to assure that we got right artist, because of possible different spellings, similar artist names and duplicate artist names - it was discussed before. However there was unnecessarily double checking for album name which I corrected and script is available at the same link. Album, again has to be in allmusic discography for the particular artist, but album name isn't matched with vbscript but that's left to allmusic NLP result, as it sould have been done in the first place.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2012-07-11 23:16:26
Redownloading did it!  My script was apparently corrupted in a manner not visually evident.  Since it just happened again and going back to a pristine copy fixed it again, I need to rethink my tweaking approach - I use Notepad as an editor and tweak the script while foobar2000 is running, and try a new or revised script by playing a different album to trigger the script.  That worked....until it didn't.  I'll try tweaking scripts when foobar2000 is not running going forward.

More interestingly, what I was experimenting with:

I have quite a few jazz and classical albums for which allmusic will associate with multiple artists.  I pass my album artist and album tag fields to the script to retrieve the bio and review.  The script looks for that artist on the allmusic album search result webpage.  If that artist is in the search result for dl-tagged elements, the script always finds the right album and assigns the album_link variable to the right album.  Everything is perfect so far.

But the script then assigns the artist_link variable to the first artist link it encounters under that album, even if that artist is not the artist that I passed to the script and for whom I want a bio.

For example, I have Charlie Haden as my album artist for the the album "Alone Together", which returns the search result of http://www.allmusic.com/search/albums/alone+together (http://www.allmusic.com/search/albums/alone+together) Note that Charlie is listed second in the html source per the relevant extract from the search result:

Code: [Select]
 <dl class="info small">
                            <dd class="artist secondary_link">
                                    <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/brad-mehldau-mn0000934305">Brad Mehldau</a> / <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/charlie-haden-mn0000211483">Charlie Haden</a> / <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/lee-konitz-mn0000227776">Lee Konitz</a>

The script currently returns the bio of Brad Mehldau because Brad is listed first and the script command returns the first child result:

artist_link = i.firstchild.firstchild.getAttribute("href")

Given that, and since each artist link has the artist name as a label on its link, I tried to tweak this line to grab the link associated with the artist that I passed to the script instead of just grabbing the first position.  So I need the script to find the href associated with ARG(0) and assign that link to artist_link.  But my knowledge of how to use getAttribute is very slight and insufficient.  Any suggestions appreciated as always.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-07-12 08:10:55
I'm not sure what to do here. I quickly searched allmusic with some of my albums with multiple artists but couldn't get allmusic to branch artists. I'll try later today and see if I'll update the script.

In any case you can make this special case work for you, by changing line 13:
Code: [Select]
artist_link = i.firstchild.firstchild.getAttribute("href")

with iterator like this:
Code: [Select]
For Each ii In i.firstchild.children
    If Match(ARG(0), ii.innertext) Then artist_link = ii.href End If
Next
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mjm716 on 2012-07-13 00:00:13
@mjm716: Checking just for artist name match is not enough to assure that we got right artist, because of possible different spellings, similar artist names and duplicate artist names - it was discussed before. However there was unnecessarily double checking for album name which I corrected and script is available at the same link. Album, again has to be in allmusic discography for the particular artist, but album name isn't matched with vbscript but that's left to allmusic NLP result, as it sould have been done in the first place.

What about V/A compilations - never seems to find any? is there a special call for 'various' I should try?

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2012-07-14 01:15:44
At least for me, the existing script will grab reviews for albums attributed on the allmusic site to "Various Artists", if the album has a review on allmusic.  You say "never seems to find any", making me wonder if you've actually checked to see if the site actually has the album, has an artist attribution of "Various Artists", and has a review.  When the script fails to respond as you expect, you need to check that first.  If it's there, then check to see if you are passing the correct tag fields to the script and that the tag fields have exactly what allmusic expects.  If that looks OK and you still can't get the panel to display as you expect, try other albums for which you recall having success in seeing reviews.  If those aren't appearing, I'd exit and restart foobar2000, and if that doesn't work reboot your computer and try again.  I previously thought I was corrupting my scripts by editting them, but that was not the case - for reasons I can't explain the panel and scripts stop working properly and rebooting is the only thing that works for me and always works.

If you're convinced what you want is actually at allmusic, and you've checked that you're sending the right information to the script and that your panel is fully functioning, then it's time to look at the html source page for the search result returned by allmusic (it's easy to run the search yourself in your browser using the format in the beginning of the script) and see if you can find anything different about the page that the script is not anticipating.  This last step is the one where I still have much to learn, but I've learned a fair amount with the generous help of Romor and others here.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mjm716 on 2012-07-14 09:20:11
At least for me, the existing script will grab reviews for albums attributed on the allmusic site to "Various Artists", if the album has a review on allmusic.  You say "never seems to find any", making me wonder if you've actually checked to see if the site actually has the album, has an artist attribution of "Various Artists", and has a review.  When the script fails to respond as you expect, you need to check that first.  If it's there, then check to see if you are passing the correct tag fields to the script and that the tag fields have exactly what allmusic expects.  If that looks OK and you still can't get the panel to display as you expect, try other albums for which you recall having success in seeing reviews.  If those aren't appearing, I'd exit and restart foobar2000, and if that doesn't work reboot your computer and try again.  I previously thought I was corrupting my scripts by editting them, but that was not the case - for reasons I can't explain the panel and scripts stop working properly and rebooting is the only thing that works for me and always works.

If you're convinced what you want is actually at allmusic, and you've checked that you're sending the right information to the script and that your panel is fully functioning, then it's time to look at the html source page for the search result returned by allmusic (it's easy to run the search yourself in your browser using the format in the beginning of the script) and see if you can find anything different about the page that the script is not anticipating.  This last step is the one where I still have much to learn, but I've learned a fair amount with the generous help of Romor and others here.

First off, I think the script is great - it's only that I'm so addicted to getting that info now, that I want it to work for *all* my albums!

I have tried all of your recommendations, but it never seems to get *existing* V/A compilation reviews for me.

For example, when I run the script from a cmd prompt:

http://www.allmusic.com/album/no-age-sst-mw0000194617 (http://www.allmusic.com/album/no-age-sst-mw0000194617)
foo_allmusic.vbs "Various Artists" "No Age [SST]" review
(& without the [SST])
or
http://www.allmusic.com/album/fabric-55-mw0002085736 (http://www.allmusic.com/album/fabric-55-mw0002085736)
foo_allmusic.vbs "Various Artists" "Fabric 55" review

I get line 13/char 7 error "object doesn't support this property or method: 'i.firstchild.firstchild.getAttribute' (vbs runtime error) in instance 1 and no result in instance 2.

However running the script for normal artists/albums seems to work fine.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-07-14 10:38:14
None of those commands produce an error here.

For you first command: For some reason, allmusic returns empty result for that album: http://www.allmusic.com/search/album/No%20Age%20%5BSST%5D (http://www.allmusic.com/search/album/No%20Age%20%5BSST%5D)
Excluding "[sst]" from album name returns correct review text

For your second command: If you correct your artist name (tip: look for it in the album link you provided) review text should show
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2012-07-14 23:10:03
mjm716, I generally get poor results from allmusic searches whenever I have parentheses or brackets in an album name, so per Romor's suggestions in post #422, I replace the following in the latest script to eliminate everything within and including trailing parentheses in what is used by the script without altering my files' tag fields.  If you have brackets or leading parentheses in your album names, you can expand on concept by altering the second new line below:

Replace:
URL = "http://www.allmusic.com/search/albums/" & LCase(Replace(ARG(1), " ", "+"))

With:
  If InStr(ARG(1),"(")>0 Then
    ALBUM = Trim(Mid(ARG(1),1,InStr(ARG(1),"(")-1))
    Else
      ALBUM = ARG(1)
  End If
URL = "http://www.allmusic.com/search/albums/" & LCase(Replace(ALBUM, " ", "+"))
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: doniwko on 2012-08-11 14:58:41
(http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/1739/preferenceslastfm201208.png)

Can you please tell  why, when playing the album in *.flac, cover is not stored in a folder ? Biography of it is loaded, but it remains only an empty folder with the name of the album in folder album instead of the cover
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-08-18 17:25:15
New script for showing stream track info: view (http://db.tt/InXvmMiQ) download (http://db.tt/buf4InIP)

Initially I was doing script for shoutcast streams with 7.html trick, but after testing later it turned out it was unnecessary because soon as stream track changes, biography view is notified about the change (dynamic artist and title), but I leave function commented at bottom as reference.
So basically it is now showing selected last.fm info for provided artist and title, when such info may be desired and unknown, as while listening streams
It also "exposes" MBIDs: artist_mbid, album_mbid and track_mbid, so can be tweaked trivially further

Usage: cscript //nologo foo_shout.vbs "%artist%" "%title%"

Example showing all info (artist short bio and album tracklisting can be disabled):
(http://i.imgur.com/mOqlkt.png) (http://imgur.com/mOqlk.png)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Daeron on 2012-08-18 18:42:44
Can you please tell  why, when playing the album in *.flac, cover is not stored in a folder ? Biography of it is loaded, but it remains only an empty folder with the name of the album in folder album instead of the cover

What if you do not use brackets? If %album% is empty it probably won't be queried anyway, so it's pointless to have those. If that doesn't help what if you use a static filename? Try these:

Code: [Select]
$replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,%album%)
$replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,cover)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-10-08 19:14:17
just a note that allmusic script is updated due to minor changes on their site
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2012-10-08 20:47:09
Works great - thanks for catching this and updating so quickly!  I've learned a lot from the elegant approach you took with your May version, and the few changes needed to keep up with allmusic's latest changes certainly shows the flexibility of your script.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-10-08 21:01:22
Thanks godrick

Changes were really minor, unlike their previous revamp
And their portals (rovi) look really nice, functional too, I doubt they'll do major change in near future
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: SaintAckbar on 2012-10-16 03:07:30
I am, quite honestly, fairly confused about how to set-up the 3 tabs under the last.fm section of Biography so that I can download album art.
I've put some stuff in, and album art seems to be downloading into a folder in my Foobar2000 folder, but I'm not entirely sure if I'm doing this correctly.
Here are the 3 tabs under last.fm for me.

(http://puu.sh/1fk6t.jpg)

(http://puu.sh/1fk6J.jpg)

(http://puu.sh/1fk6W.jpg)

I'm also curious as to whether the album art that is downloaded will transfer over to my iPod when synced.

Any help or advice would be appreciated.

EDIT: It seems that it's only downloading album art for albums I've visited. Is there any way to make it search through all my albums by itself?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-10-17 10:28:39
just a note that allmusic script is updated due to minor changes on their site

sorry for poor update
updated again, hopefully better this time
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2012-10-17 11:02:05
^that is definitely much better. thanks.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-10-17 11:16:44
Eh marc2003, you are fast
I noticed later that exit loops improve performance and additionally updated again (30min ago)
Nothing critical thou
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-10-18 00:43:09
I updated allmusic script (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=70955&view=findpost&p=777868) yet again, this time to add new feature while rest stays simple as was

I added caching, as Biography View caching mechanism works just for built-in last.fm service, and dislike the idea of re-requesting while using HTML DOM object, for several reasons
New version caches data in XML file (optional), located in folder where script is called from, with this kind of scheme:

Code: [Select]
<Items> 
    <Item
        Id="xs:string [md5(artist & album)]"
        ArtistId="xs:string [Rovi Music ID]"
        AlbumId="xs:string [Rovi Music ID]">
        <!-- artist // album -->
            <bio> xs:string </bio>
            <review> xs:string </review>
    </Item>
</Items>

Actual simple DTD, to validate upon possible problem is here (thou who will need it?): http://db.tt/8vpR4pKJ (http://db.tt/8vpR4pKJ)

Artist biography caching is tied to album combination, for obvious reasons, and for other obvious reason artist and album titles are stored in XML comment and identified by md5 hash
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2012-10-18 17:55:36
Romor, my powers of observation failed me in not seeing with the script update last week that my biography panel was failing over to last.fm results rather than displaying allmusic results.  I still think this is great work even if I can't determine at times when it's working or not! 

Since I have a few mods to the basic script, I typically edit my script to add the changes and run it via a cmd window to get better feedback than available in the panel as I make changes, and once working in the cmd window, I try it in the panel and it works and I'm done.  That process normally works well, except this time - I get different results from the same script running in the cmd window than with the panel!

More specifically, I never could get the unaltered version just before the caching change (which I named "17.vbs") to work.  It bombs with the error message
" 17.vbs(12, 5) Microsoft VBScript runtime error: Object required: 'content' "

Lines 11 and 12, respectively of the script are:
    Set content = HTM.getElementById("content")
    Set rows = content.getElementsByTagName("tr")

...which seem fine.  I tweaked them anyway to try to get beyond this error but just got other errors.  I finally gave up and just ran it in the panel, and the panel does not error on this - it works just fine in the panel.  I haven't tried the version with the caching capability, but given the nature of that change I don't expect any impact on this mystery.

I've never encountered a situation before where this (or any other) script works in either the cmd window or the panel, but not the other.  I'm running Windows 7 32bit.  Since the script works in the panel that's all that really matters, but if there is any explanation for this so I can rely on the cmd window results in the future, any explanation or advice is appreciated.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-10-18 19:27:45
If command lines are same you should get same output

Try to dump HTM object output: "WScript.Echo HTM.body.innerHTML" before setting content and maybe deduce the problem
In any case, if script got to that point, you should have html with id="content" inside

If you have more questions, feel free to PM me
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2012-10-19 01:23:30
Thanks for the tip - it was indeed erroring because there was nothing in HTM via the cmd window.  A reboot seemed to solve it - very strange, but just glad the script continues to work great in the panel.

One of the mods I add is no longer effective given the website changes.  With the previous website design, search results were paged, and I could search beyond the first page with a simple change.  I have a number of albums that have common names ("Greatest Hits") for artists not as common (James Taylor), such that the searched album was typically 7 or 8 pages deep in the results.  Thus, if searching the first page of results was unsuccessful, my modded script conducted another search of several more pages by appending /all/10 or another multiple of 10 to the original search string.  I enclosed the core search code lines within a very simple loop:

    If album_link = "" Then
      For n = 10 To 200 Step 10
        URL = "http://www.allmusic.com/search/albums/" & LCase(Replace((ARG(1), " ", "+")) & "/all/" & n 
        (rest of core search portion of script)
    End If   

...but this no longer works because of Rovi's scroll-triggered addition of search results without reloading the page.  Certainly not a big deal and definitely not worth anything beyond a minimal effort, but if there is a similarly clever and almost painless way to expose additional search results, I'd like to do it.  I googled "screen scraping" and jQuery, but nothing popped out at me that I could recognize as appropriate.  Any tips, references or better googling keywords appreciated!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-10-19 03:21:40
godrick, use this instead:

Code: [Select]
URL = "http://www.allmusic.com/search/ajax_results/albums/" & LCase(Replace((ARG(1), " ", "+")) & "/all/" & n



Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2012-10-19 17:16:07
Romor, thanks for the tip.  That code line returned a web page of search results that is the same as the results returned by the URL of a normal search, and ignores the "/all/" & n portion, so every time the loop iterates, I get a search page of the same first 20 results.

So unless there is a another mod to the search string to ask for more results, it seems the only way to get more results is to virtually trigger the scroll down function in some way.  Upon a more careful look at the source page for a search I conduct via the browser, when a user manually scrolls down the source page does indeed update to contain the additional search results.

What I tried: I created a new version of Function Request (URL), which I call Function Request2 (URL), and just before 
Code: [Select]
Request = HTTP.responseText
I added 
Code: [Select]
HTTP.SendKeys "{PGDN}"
to try to simulate what a user would do.  The script bombed with the error "Object doesn't support this property or method: 'HTTP.Sendkeys'"

My experimenting showed that SendKeys doesn't error out when I attempt this:
Code: [Select]
Set objShell=CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
objShell.SendKeys "{PGUP}"


It feels like I'm close for better or worse.  I can't tell if I'm sending the command incorrectly, need a different command, haven't and perhaps can't ensure that focus is maintained on the desired object, or if this just isn't possible given the nature of the object I'm trying to control.

Falstaff, I saw that you were trying to use SendKey here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=77883&view=findpost&p=702738), so if you succeeded and have any advice for good or bad on this, it's appreciated.

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-10-19 17:54:23
Romor, thanks for the tip.  That code line returned a web page of search results that is the same as the results returned by the URL of a normal search, and ignores the "/all/" & n portion, so every time the loop iterates, I get a search page of the same first 20 results.

Really?

http://www.allmusic.com/search/ajax_result...test+hits/all/0 (http://www.allmusic.com/search/ajax_results/albums/greatest+hits/all/0)
http://www.allmusic.com/search/ajax_result...est+hits/all/20 (http://www.allmusic.com/search/ajax_results/albums/greatest+hits/all/20)
http://www.allmusic.com/search/ajax_result...est+hits/all/40 (http://www.allmusic.com/search/ajax_results/albums/greatest+hits/all/40)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2012-10-19 18:59:34
aha! Such a simple check that I didn't do  - I just relied on what was echoing in my cmd window - thanks!  It tells me that I've got a problem in my secondary search loop, and in addition to that all I was doing was echoing the results of the first search when I thought I was seeing search results of the secondary search.

I can figure it out from here, or if I can't, I don't deserve to further inflict my inability on anyone else to get it done.  Thanks again!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-10-19 23:30:10
Apologies to users of allmusic script, but I made another update which may be of interest

While trying to improve performance, as I was feeling that something must be wrong when it takes 4-5 seconds to retrieve the data while similar scheme in other scripting language is executed in less then second, I falsely suspected Htmlfile object and tried to remove it with regex.
Luckily I did the timings, and problem was pointing to Request function and it turned out that using "Msxml2.ServerXMLHTTP" was offender, which I corrected, and now script is back on track - result in second or two

Why is recommended "Msxml2.ServerXMLHTTP" slower then "Msxml2.XMLHTTP" I don't know, but here is a link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wi...p/ms762278.aspx (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms762278.aspx)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Decalicatan_Decalicatan on 2012-10-20 08:44:51
@ romor,

Thanks for your scripts.
I have a very "noob-ish" question  but is it possible to execute your script if foo_allmusic.vbs is in "C:\Users\...\AppData\Roaming\foobar2000\" folder instead of in "C:\Program Files (x86)\foobar2000" ?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-10-20 16:07:17
If it's not in your foobar folder, then just enter full path to it:

cscript //nologo "C:\Users\...\AppData\Roaming\foobar2000\foo_allmusic.vbs" "%album artist%" "%album%" review
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: PeteG on 2012-10-23 02:50:31
@romor
@godrick

Sadly, I have had some trouble with marc2003's allmusic script suite (WSH Panel Mod) recently and decided to give your solution a try.
And ... this is indeed convincing stuff! romor, you've got a new member in your fan club!
And thanks to godrick for having asked the right questions over time, especially about accented letters. Without your inspiring dialogs with romor I would probably have been lost  .
Initially I made a local copy of those AMG biographies and reviews that matches the rhythmic part of my Media Library:
Cache = 1 was left untouched in the latest installment of foo_allmusic.vbs.
A simple foobar2000 filter - %tracknumber% IS 01 AND %discnumber% IS 1 - produced a playlist with 4,300 items.
The Preview component was activated (Preview Length = 15 seconds, a lesser value is probably okay, but better safe than sorry).
Some 18-19 hours (!) later the harvesting was done, yielding a single 20 MB XML file. And all was pure joy!
Except of course all those times where I disagree with AMG's (inconsistent) naming of artists and albums resulting in nothing ...
E.g.: I have 27 Magma albums (the French zeuhl outfit). AMG has 11 reviews. Only a few landed in my basket.
In the case of the 'Ẁurdah Ïtah' album (AMG gives it two names: 'Wurdah Ïtah/Tristan et Iseult' resp. 'Wurdah Ïtah') I may have found a primitive solution. If the solution is feasible, I'll send another post. It might be of some use in other situations.

I have a few questions. If they are stupid just ignore them, I'm a foobar2000, vbs, and xml newbie - and expect to be the laughing stock from time to time.

1. Why is it necessary to use UTF-16 in the Server settings (UTF-8 isn't good, and ANSI is worse), when your script generates UTF-8?

Code: [Select]
If Not oFS.FileExists("romor\foo_allmusic.xml") Then
      oXml.loadXML "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><Items></Items>"
      oXml.save "romor\foo_allmusic.xml"
    Else

I use this

Code: [Select]
cscript //U //Nologo romor\foo_allmusic.vbs "%album artist%" "%album%" bio|review

The //U option only tells cscript to "Use Unicode for redirected I/O from the console" as far as I can tell, not the encoding type.
Or is the answer to my question blowin' in the cyberspace?

2. I suppose my little lump of gold - the 20 MB all_music.xml file - is more or less static?
The cache never expires. If AMG makes a change in an artist bio (or, more unlikely, in a review) it won't be downloaded. New artists and/or albums in my collection will of course get an entry in the file, when AMG has produced some text.
romor, is it beyond the scope of your very compact and streamlined script to make some sort of date check and make an AMG lookup accordingly? I imagine something like this:

Code: [Select]
<!ELEMENT Items (Item+)>
<!ELEMENT Item ((review?, bio?) | (bio?, review?))>
<!ATTLIST Item
    Id CDATA #REQUIRED
    DateId CDATA #REQUIRED
    ArtistId CDATA #REQUIRED
    AlbumId CDATA #REQUIRED
>
<!ELEMENT review (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT bio (#PCDATA)>

If I load an artist in fb2k with an excisting AMG bio in the xml file, the script performs a check: if DateId is expired then make a request to AMG. Or is this either gibberish or impossible? The evident alternative for me is of course to perform a harvest like the above say every 90 days, that's not a problem at all.

3. If I interpret the script correctly the whole xml file is loaded into memory - and stays there - at the first request?

Code: [Select]
oXml.loadXML "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><Items></Items>"

I have not encountered any performance issues, that's very, very nice! Even on and old Vista PC with 3½ cylinders. In the actual implementation there is some inevitable redundancy. I have over 50 albums with Frank Zappa. All the reviews has the biography appended to them in the file; I suppose this is a contributing factor to the short load times in the Bio View panel or is it without relevance?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-10-23 03:56:04
Glad to have you PeteG

I may have found a primitive solution. If the solution is feasible, I'll send another post. It might be of some use in other situations.

What is it?

1. Yes //U option outputs UTF-16 encoded stream which UTF-8 option can't catch. Use default if you don't care about accents or your code page provides support. Even if data in XML cache is stored as UTF-8 you output UTF-16 with //U option

2. That is good idea. I don't know if they change reviewes thou, but as datetime is easy in vbs, maybe I'll add it.

3. File is loaded async by default, by XML parser. Snippet you quoted just adds contents to new cache file, if it doesn't exist.

There are many artists with same names, and pairing artist with album solves couple of problems in one turn
Also you could aggregate cache file from command line
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2012-10-23 08:16:30
PeteG,

I'd also like to see what you try, even if you don't succeed, in addressing character issues for the artist (or album) string.  I have a few artists that screw up searches because of this, and they'd probably work if I could make use of the $ansi title formatting command in a vbscript, but I never bothered to figure out anything beyond the use of Replace for certain individual characters.

1) I can't explain why: I can only admire the mystery of the necessity of //U in the panel script call.  The rest of my foobar2000 config displays all characters correctly without any special settings, and the //U option is not needed to correctly display script search results in my cmd window, but if I don't use in my panel script call, the bios and reviews terminate at the first non-ASCII character.  The need to select UTF16 as the character set to correctly display UTF8 characters in the panel makes even less sense.  But since using the //U option and UTF16 setting works, and reinstalling my Win 7 32 bit OS did nothing to change anything, I gave up doing anything more to understand it.

3) You can never have too many Zappa albums.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: PeteG on 2012-10-24 01:04:23
What is it?

It's a dirty hack, a stop-gap solution. No celestial programming at all. I (mis)use your md5 hashing function to cheat AMG. Later this night I'll post my rather confusing experiencies so far.

Quote
1. Yes //U option outputs UTF-16 encoded stream which UTF-8 option can't catch ...

I see.

Quote
I don't know if they change reviewes thou, but as datetime is easy in vbs, maybe I'll add it.

No, reviews are propably not altered, even that some of them are indeed sadly short (read: useless). The datetime thing was just a thought; it only makes sense if the user uses your caching function, I don't know if it's worth the trouble (but it certainly has my vote).

Quote
File is loaded async by default, by XML parser.

I see. At least I see something in the fog. Some reading on the async subject is on my todo list.

Quote
There are many artists with same names, and pairing artist with album solves couple of problems in one turn

Yes, of course. Looking in a mirror I see a nincompoop. I do actually have one album with Air (the jazz outfit) and a couple of albums with the French electronica duo Air. And your script distinguishes perfectly between them. Quite impressive, especially because I retagged the jazz group to Air [2] ages ago.

Quote
Also you could aggregate cache file from command line

Indeed? Do I have to do some piping or redirection in a cmd window, or does it function out of the box and append new entries to my dear xml file? I haven't got the nerve ... eeh time ... to try. I could of course start from scratch in another folder and see what happens.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: PeteG on 2012-10-24 01:12:32
I'd also like to see what you try, even if you don't succeed ...

As mentioned above, the hack is on it's way. But if you don't - and don't intend to - keep a local xml copy (i.e. use the cache capability of romor's script) it won't help at all, I'm afraid.

Quote
You can never have too many Zappa albums.

Words of Wisdom, Sir, Words of Wisdom.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: PeteG on 2012-10-24 05:00:34
@users of romor's foo_allmusic.vbs script; the cache version only (as of Oct 19 2012)

An example
AMG has given the Magma album Ẁurdah Ïtah from 1974 the name Wurdah Ïtah. Probably because of the nasty Ẁ. foobar2000 has no problems showing the correct name, no need to change it. But it also means no review in the Bio view panel. If you are a nitpicking person as I am, my guess is that you want to keep your Media Library under your own control and not being dictated by AMG's naming habits. Without sacrificing the ability to read bios and reviews inside foobar2000.

The far from perfect solution
romor's script relies heavily on md5 hashing to pair %album artist% with %album%, which is very useful, also for this purpose. We'll need two values; use a netbased 'md5 Hash Generator' (google that) to generate them as the first thing:

Code: [Select]
MagmaWurdah Ïtah = fceefee8667867ce42b52a62c42fa934
MagmaẀurdah Ïtah = 86b77a24e045cfd1e53a111bb488d399

A note to the uninitiated: md5 is extremely critic, as it must be by nature; doublecheck your typing, or use copy & paste on the form

Code: [Select]
Album ArtistAlbum

You need to create a text file for that purpose. Keep it open on the desktop. No space between the two string values. Copy the two hexadecimal strings to the newborn text file, one by one.
In foobar2000: Rename the album to (AMG's) Wurdah Ïtah, after a few seconds of playback the review pops up (together with the bio) and will now be stored as the last entry in the foo_almusic.xml file.
Stop the celestial music. Open foo_almusic.xml in a proper editor, my favourite is Notepad++, it's XML capable; Microsoft's XML Notepad is the fancy one of the two, but Notepad++ is much more versatile. Both are free. Notepad won't do, it gets indigestion when it comes to big files. Before you start the brutal treatment of the xml file: Make a backup.
In the editor: Search for the Wurdah Ïtah string, fceefee8667867ce42b52a62c42fa934. Replace it with the Ẁurdah Ïtah string, 86b77a24e045cfd1e53a111bb488d399. Save.
Back in foobar2000: Rename the album to Ẁurdah Ïtah, i.e. the original name. Start playback of the correctly named album and the review pops up. Pure cheating.

Some sad remarks
While this primitive solution might work in some situations, further investigation has only made me confused on a higher level.
I do agree with AMG that the name of a 1976 Magma album is Üdü Wüdü. A review exists - but the script didn't grab it. Hence I renamed the album to Udu Wudu - and voilá, the review popped up. Afterwards I restored the album's name and made the necessary search & replace in the xml file. But what happended?
Similar situation with Ëmëhntëhtt-Ré. The reviews exists under the right album name, but was not in my xml file. A temporary renaming to Emehntehtt-Re did the trick.
More confusion: La Trilogie Theusz Hamtaahk [AMG], Theusz Hammtaahk - Trilogie [PeteG]. No temp. renaming necessary, that review was already in my file.
More yet: Kohntarkosz Anteria (K.A.) = [AMG]. Köhntarkösz Anteria = [PeteG]. That review was already in my file.
The last burp: 1,001 Degrees Centigrade [AMG]. 1.001° Centigrades [PeteG]. That review was already in my file.

When it comes to Album Artist mismatches, I have only made a single experiment at the moment. It's totally incorrect, but I prefer to have all my Zappa albums tagged with his name, including all The Mothers of Invention and Mothers stuff. Happily AMG stores the MoI reviews under Zappa's name as well. With one exception, Ahead of Their Time. I did the now trivial thing:

Code: [Select]
md5(Frank ZappaAhead of Their Time) = 2a4b223000797a151e0f02926e365b0f
md5(Mothers of InventionAhead of Their Time) = f9a74177cf8bb886accf920872192967

The script grabbed the review and the MoI bio. After restoring to Zappa state, the panel shows the AoTT review together with the FZ bio. And I have the MoI bio in the xml file tied together with the review, but for no use.

Further experiments are inevitable, I'm afraid. I have only used romor's script for a couple of days and haven't even had the time and opportunity to read more than a few of the newly collected bios and reviews. In the meantime: feedback will be highly appreciated.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: PeteG on 2012-10-24 13:37:33
Addendum to Post #504.

This is absurd, I should have seen it a long time ago: The URL in the address bar producing the review in the browser has not necessarily much to do with album name shown on the AMG page.

Example: allmusic.com/album/emehntehtt-re-mw0001345405

gives

Magma
Ëmëhntëhtt-Ré

Blindly copying the name AMG uses in the headline in a review (as I have done) isn't always useable, especially in situations with accented letters.

Hmm, 4 postings in a row from yours truly. It begins to look like I'm spamming the thread. It is by no means the intention, I truly hope that the moderators will be forgiving. I'm obviously not capable of doing my homework properly before posting.
Next time I'll do my damnest.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-10-24 21:39:17
Quote
Do I have to do some piping or redirection in a cmd window, or does it function out of the box and append new entries to my dear xml file?

I mentioned it, to make other potential user think twice about doing it. Can be done in many ways, and perhaps generally easiest by using text tools component to generate commands.

Quote
Words of Wisdom, Sir, Words of Wisdom.

I just saw his lengthy biography, which redundant copies make maybe 2MB alone in your cache.
But it doesn't matter to performance, and there is no other easy way out

Quote
my favourite is Notepad++, it's XML capable; Microsoft's XML Notepad is the fancy one of the two, but Notepad++ is much more versatile

There is also XmlPad (freeware, not developed anymore) which IMHO comes closest to something like XmlSpy. I would suggest that
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2012-10-24 23:52:01
PeteG, disc space is cheap, so it would seem the best bang for the buck is coming up with an approach to achieve more search hits than saving disc space.  More importantly, as a new member of the Romor Fan Club, you are required to admire the elegance of the caching approach 

In trying for more search hits, it seems you've figured out that there is no need to change what is in your file's tag fields, you just to need to experiment with processing the strings passed to the script sufficiently to get hits with Rovi's fuzzy search approach.

I'd like to use title formatting in a vbscript to invoke $ansi to deal with many of the character challenges you are experimenting with, and the WSH panel mod component seems to state that this is available in both java and vb scripts via the global object fb - IFbUtils as described in interfaces.txt.  But I've never seen an example of title formatting or any other fbutils method used in a vbscript, nor have I been able to guess the right way to call it in a vbscript  - anyone have an example to share?  thanks!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2012-10-25 09:25:15
@godrick, the functions in the interfaces.txt file you mention are exclusive to WSH panel mod. they can't be used in any old vbscript.

but if you want to test $ansi, simply pass $ansi(%album aritst%) on the command line instead of just %album artist% in the bio panel settings. i'd assume that as tags are supported, functions are as well??
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2012-10-25 12:56:04
Yes, I'm aware I'd need to run the vbscript in a WSH panel, which is why I didn't pursue it with much vigor.  But I did not think of trying title formatting in the script call, and it works!  thanks for the suggestion as always.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: PeteG on 2012-10-26 15:51:28
PeteG, disc space is cheap, so it would seem the best bang for the buck is coming up with an approach to achieve more search hits than saving disc space.  More importantly, as a new member of the Romor Fan Club, you are required to admire the elegance of the caching approach

1. I'm not afraid of running out of disc space, with a total of 9 TB I'll have a lot of free space in a foreseable future. My only (and initial) concern was a possible impact on load time in the Bio panel due to increasing xml file size, nothing else whatsoever. Btw, the load time in the panel of a bio|review from the +20 MB file is less than 1 s. Truly amazing and compared with an online search the time is negligible  .
2. I'm not quite sure what you mean. Rest assured, I'm deeply impressed of romor's programming skills, the script is a godsend. But if I have offended someone, I'm terribly sorry; it might be because of my rusty school English .
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: PeteG on 2012-10-26 16:15:32
There is also XmlPad (freeware, not developed anymore) which IMHO comes closest to something like XmlSpy. I would suggest that

You are right! XmlPad is intuitive and versatile; I'll stick to that. Thanks for the tip .

On your suggestion I have played with the command line part for a few hours, and have a couple of questions:

Code: [Select]
cscript //U //Nologo romor\foo_allmusic.vbs "Supersilent" "9" review
cscript //U //Nologo romor\foo_allmusic.vbs "The Jelly Jam" "2" review
cscript //U //Nologo romor\foo_allmusic.vbs "Susanna and the Magical Orchestra" "3" review

returned nothing. Common for the 3 searches is Album = digit.

Code: [Select]
cscript //U //Nologo romor\foo_allmusic.vbs "Supersilent" "Supersilent 9" review
cscript //U //Nologo romor\foo_allmusic.vbs "Susanna and the Magical Orchestra" "Susanna and the Magical Orchestra 3" review

returned the reviews. Nice, but not obvious.

Code: [Select]
cscript //U //Nologo romor\foo_allmusic.vbs "The Jelly Jam" "The Jelly Jam 2" bio
cscript //U //Nologo romor\foo_allmusic.vbs "The Jelly Jam" "The Jelly Jam 2" review

returned the bio, not the review (the review exists). Not nice, not obvious. Are all this due to some weird internal AMG handling of the searches?

Code: [Select]
cscript //U //Nologo romor\foo_allmusic.vbs "Various Artists" "Tribute to Miles" review

results in a VBScript run-time error:

Code: [Select]
... Object doesn't support this property or method: div.lastChild.firstChild.getAttribute("href")

It's line 24 in the script. Same run-time error occurs when "Artist Name" = "Original Soundtrack" (another album, Mamma Mia! ...). What am I doing wrong  ?
Besides these minor issues are supplemental cscript searches from the command line indeed very useful - the cache is getting bigger and bigger, wonderful .
romor, your help so far is much appreciated. Thanks a lot.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-10-26 19:56:16
Thanks for your report. Script is updated with these changes:

- if album name is less then 3 chars, artist is included in query string
- scenario when artist is non-existent (i.e. various artists and similar) is considered, and at the same time this feature (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=70955&st=450&p=801951&#entry801951) requested by godrick was added as it was convenient

PeteG, now you should be able to get results from all above reported examples, except for "The Jelly Jam" - "2" as far limit case, not worth explaining
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2012-10-26 22:20:15
Wow, PeteG, that Jelly Jam 2 case is rather unique!  In short, not only do The Jelly Jam have an album named "2", they also issued a double release that combined their previous albums "The Jelly Jam" and "2" that allmusic refers to as "The Jelly Jam/2".  That double release is listed highest in the allmusic search results and is thus achieves a match to your search when you use either "2" or The Jelly Jam 2" as your album string, but there is no review on allmusic for that double release.  All of those coincidences had to happen to end up with a bio and no review for those album strings with the previous and revised script.

To determine that I copied the script search URL into my browser, looked at the page source code of the results, and added echo statements to the script to find the album and artist links the script was finding (or not finding) - I do this fairly often when I don't understand what happened with a search.

The new method of concatenating short album names to artists is quite effective in finding valid results more often and faster - thanks, Romor!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: PeteG on 2012-10-28 00:40:32
Thanks for your report. Script is updated with these changes: ...

Eh romor, you are fast  (paraphrasing you, posting #487, )
Yes, your unexpected but highly appreciated update has solved the problems mentioned in #511. Thanks a lot, romor!
And to my pleasant surprise new reviews keep popping up on the screen. One of the major advantages using your script is that I get hits even in situations where I never would have bothered to do a manual search on AMG's site.
Various Artists: The Rough Guide to Latin Arabia|Think Global: West Africa Unwired|Jazzwerkstatt Sampler 2
are just a few, positive examples (I wouldn't have expected to find anything at all and accordingly never did a manual AMG lookup on those). Even an obscure album with Khmer Wedding Music, bought on location, had a review(!) and your highly recommended script catched & cached it.

@godrick 
Yes, The Jelly Jam thing was indeed tricky, thanks for your explanation (the emoticon is meant positively).
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: musichemyst on 2012-10-31 07:52:57
@romor

I had to stop in and say thanks for creating the foo_allmusic script and maintaining it so well. Being able to reliably have AMG's bios and reviews as my primary data source in the Bio panel is what makes the plugin not just great but essential -- and your script does exactly that.

Btw, the new cache feature is a great addition. For one, it's way more efficient in terms of network bandwidth and CPU usage on my system. However, it's also my understanding that many online reference databases -- AMG in particular -- don't like (or even prohibit) "scraping" and other queries from 3rd party apps due to their (supposed) cumulative negative impact on server performance and the net result of high page load times for their intended audience of browser-based users. And, to be fair, when I see a script like the previous versions of foo_allmusic (and many other similar scripts) querying AMG's servers on every single track change, I wonder if I'm not just contributing to a time when sites like AMG find a way to block scraping and non-browser querying altogether. But the way that foo_allmusic's caching reduces the number of queries -- especially when listening to album playlists in default playback order -- it clearly lowering the profile on the whole fb2k/Bio panel/foo_allmusic combo and I imagine will greatly reduce the risk of us pissing off AMG.

Also, thanks for figuring out thate issue with Msxml2.ServerXMLHTTP vs. Msxml2.XMLHTTP. I just updated my copy of the script for the first time in a long while and I immediately noticed the reduction in delay between Bio panel running the script and the actual text being displayed in the panel.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-10-31 18:54:00
You are welcome musichemyst

And don't worry too much about rovi servers. Rest assure script is untraceable, not just by design, but even if all foobar users from HA would engage it w/o caching, it wouldn't have percentile impact compared just to WMP users.
Caching is for purely practical reasons, implemented as I learn more about XML. I wouldn't have made it to store in sqlite or text file.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: vine on 2012-12-23 18:46:04
Somehow for me this script doesn't want to display anything. The biography panel just stays blank. Wikipedia and Last.fm work both.

As command line I use
Code: [Select]
 cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs "%album artist%" "%album%" review

"bio" or "review|bio|skip" doesn't work either.

The console displays
Code: [Select]
Biography : execute command -> cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs "Electric Wizard" "Black Masses" review

What am I doing wrong?

(http://i.imgur.com/fw3HPs.jpg) (http://i.imgur.com/fw3HP.jpg)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-12-23 20:35:17
Probably script is not in foobar's folder, in which case you have to use whole path instead just script name?
But then biography view, would show input error in panel, and you didn't mention that...

You can try to run it from command line:

c:\path-to-script> cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs "Electric Wizard" "Black Masses" review

to see if it maybe doesn't work on your system for some reason
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: vine on 2012-12-23 22:50:07
Well, the script is in Foobar's folder. That path is "C:\Program Files (x86)\foobar2000\foo_allmusic.vbs". I also have a copy of the script file in "D:\scripts\foo_allmusic.vbs". And the panel does show the input error "Can not find script ...", if I move the script, where it can't be found by default without a whole path (at least with ANSI and UTF8, UTF16 shows me a line of Asian symbols).

If I want to use a whole path to the Foobar's folder, the path is somehow cut off and there is another input error: There is no file extension in "C:\Program Files".
(http://i.imgur.com/Um31os.jpg) (http://i.imgur.com/Um31o.jpg)

But that doesn't matter, because if I use the script file in D:\scripts\foo_allmusic.vbs and the command line
Code: [Select]
cscript //nologo "D:\scripts\foo_allmusic.vbs" "%album artist%" "%album%" review

instead the panel is blank again. So I guess it can be found just like in Foobar's folder without a path specification.

Your command line executes the script, if I use double quotes for the path. Then it will prompt and shows:
Code: [Select]
Usage: cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs ""%album artist%"" ""%album%"" review|bio|skip

Same if I double click on the script file.

Edit: Oh, if you meant to use your command line in Foobar instead of the cmd, it cuts off the same:

C:\Program Files (x86)\foobar2000\foo_allmusic.vbs cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs "Electric Wizard" "Black Masses" review
Code: [Select]
Biography : execute command -> C:\Program Files 
fail: C:\Program Files

"C:\Program Files (x86)\foobar2000\foo_allmusic.vbs" cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs "Electric Wizard" "Black Masses" review
Code: [Select]
Biography : execute command -> "C:\Program Files 
fail: "C:\Program Files

D:\scripts\foo_allmusic.vbs cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs "Electric Wizard" "Black Masses" review
Code: [Select]
Biography : execute command -> D:\scripts\foo_allmusic.vbs cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs "Electric Wizard" "Black Masses" review
fail: D:\scripts\foo_allmusic.vbs cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs "Electric Wizard" "Black Masses" review

"D:\scripts\foo_allmusic.vbs" cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs "Electric Wizard" "Black Masses" review
Code: [Select]
Biography : execute command -> "D:\scripts\foo_allmusic.vbs" cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs "Electric Wizard" "Black Masses" review
fail: "D:\scripts\foo_allmusic.vbs" cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs "Electric Wizard" "Black Masses" review

cscript //nologo "D:\scripts\foo_allmusic.vbs" "Electric Wizard" "Black Masses" review (same as no path)
Code: [Select]
Biography : execute command -> cscript //nologo "D:\scripts\foo_allmusic.vbs" "Electric Wizard" "Black Masses" review
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: lo-fi on 2012-12-24 02:39:15
Try:
Code: [Select]
cscript //U //Nologo foo_allmusic.vbs "%album artist%" "%album%" review


UTF 16
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: vine on 2012-12-24 03:16:13
The panel keeps staying blank. 

Console output:
Code: [Select]
Biography : execute command -> cscript //U //Nologo foo_allmusic.vbs "Damon & Naomi" "More Sad Hits" review

Am I missing something? Do I need a specific plugin? My Foobar version is 1.1.17.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-12-24 08:23:13
@vine: press "Win+R", type "cmd" and hit enter, then paste this:

Code: [Select]
cscript //nologo "D:\scripts\foo_allmusic.vbs" "Electric Wizard" "Black Masses" review

and hit enter
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: vine on 2012-12-24 14:55:15
Yeah, that works, romor! I've got the review in cmd. But I already tried that line in the run external script settings. The panel doesn't display the review.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-12-24 15:46:57
Hm, maybe you did use 'skip' argument, as you wrote in initial post?
Did script ever worked for you?

Purpose of 'skip' argument is to skip artist/album from querying once marked. So if you use this argument on certain release, the information will be written in foo_allmusic.xml (located in your case in foobar's folder) and that release will never be queried again, unless you edit foo_allmusic.xml or delete it (better delete it, if unsure in editing xml files).

I'd suggest this:
- delete foo_allmusic.xml from foobar's folder
- use same command in biography view preferences as initially (without path as script is in foobar's folder)
- if you want to use UTF-16 add "//U" switch as previously suggested by lo-fi, otherwise choose ANSI

If that doesn't solve the problem, I can't think for now what else could be.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: vine on 2012-12-24 16:12:52
I only used all 3 arguments at once as in review|bio|skip. No, the script never worked and I tried many different albums. Anyway, there is no foo_allmusic.xml in my folder.

(http://i.imgur.com/AcabGs.jpg) (http://imgur.com/AcabG.jpg)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-12-24 16:30:55
I got another idea - maybe your biography view panel is set to artist instead album?
You can check by right-clicking on biography panel, and switch by double-clicking on it.

And if you wish you can add command in Artist tab in biography view preferences - it's same as in Album tab but change "review" argument with "bio"

Although missing foo_allmusic.xml doesn't make this scenario very probable.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: vine on 2012-12-24 16:46:13
I already tried that one too and was switching all the time between artist and album.
Is the foo_allmusic.xml necessary to display the reviews/bios? Can I manual create one?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-12-24 17:19:41
It's created by default to store the data.

If you did as suggested in post 522, you should have foo_allmusic.xml in your %homepath%
Press "Win+R", type cmd, then enter and type at command line:

dir foo*.xml

This should list the file.

If you do this, can you execute this command also:

Code: [Select]
cd %comspec:cmd.exe=% & dir foo*.xml


If it doesn't list anything, then open the script and change line 3: "Cache = 1" to "Cache = 0" and try again.

[edit] I just read that "//U" switch doesn't work on Windows 8, so don't use it and select ANSI, but try also UTF-8 just in case.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: vine on 2012-12-24 17:28:58
Yay! Yes, the .xml file was in %homepath% (C:\Users\x). I moved it to the Foobar's folder and now my biography panel displays bios and reviews on every album.

Thanks a lot, romor.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-12-24 17:33:24
Strange, but glad it worked for you.

Did "cd %comspec:cmd.exe=% & dir foo*.xml" command list anything?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: vine on 2012-12-24 17:38:14
The following is the output on both commands.

Code: [Select]
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.2.9200]
(c) 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\x>dir foo*.xml
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is AA79-3D0D

Directory of C:\Users\x

24.12.2012  15:47             2.523 foo_allmusic.xml
               1 File(s)          2.523 bytes
               0 Dir(s)  50.210.054.144 bytes free

C:\Users\x>cd %comspec:cmd.exe=% & dir foo*.xml
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is AA79-3D0D

Directory of C:\Windows\System32

File Not Found

C:\Windows\System32>
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-12-24 17:42:15
OK, thanks.
Let's wait and see if some other Windows 8 user will experience problems similar to yours. I can't make sense of it
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: vine on 2012-12-24 21:56:20
It seems like the script's caching didn't work for me (or Windows 8) by default although it was set to 1. The script didn't want to display information because it is set to cache the data, but there was no foo_allmusic.xml to save it to. After I found the foo_allmusic.xml and moved it to Foobar's folder, the biography panel showed the information, but it wasn't cached. foo_allmusic.xml didn't get updated. So I set the caching to 0, moved the foo_allmusic.xml to another location to see if the panel would work with out it - and it worked. Then I set the caching back to 1 and moved foo_allmusic.xml back to Foobar's folder and now it gets updated somehow.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-12-24 23:07:26
Don't know... If for some reason write access is denied that would be reported as error. If foo_allmusic.xml isn't found, then script is instructed to create it, and at the same time return False and query over HTTP and print result in panel. So script won't query over HTTP only if XML file is present and contains wanted data.

Whatever... set cache to 0 and don't worry about it, as I'm not convinced that writing to XML works for you (if that's what you mean with you last sentence)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: vine on 2012-12-25 01:35:52
No, I meant, that writing to XML works now and that I don't know the reason either. I can see the reviews and biographies in the foo_allmusic.xml.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2012-12-28 21:16:48
talk.vbs (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30782742/scripts/talk.html)  download (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30782742/scripts/talk.vbs)

Very simple script that mimics foo_talktome component.
Uses default voice settings (as set in speech control panel applet)

Example:

Code: [Select]
cscript //nologo talk.vbs "%title%. By %artist%, from %date% release %album%"


Should be add as first source in Album sources, as it doesn't return result so next source item will be executed afterwards.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: pepito on 2013-01-19 00:02:32
Hello,
I'am not sure you are still talking about Biography view...
Nevertheless,maybe somebody could gently help me
I have 2 biography panels in my foobar,one for bio and one for cycling artist image
but the max images is only 6 in the prefs even if there is a lot more on lastfm
is it possible to display more than 6 images/photos ?
or with a command line like my other config on Seven,where I use album art panel to cycle images from within the artist folder
or maybe with the allmusic,you are using?
thank you
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Super_Steve on 2013-01-21 14:15:41
Hi!
I'm not sure if this has been solved before, but I don't wanna read through 23 pages in case it hasn't been asked.

So, I'm using the biography plugin right now, but only for the pictures, no text, as a background.
I was wondering if it would be possible to pull pictures from somewhere else besides last.fm or Wikipedia, since their pictures are really low-res and it looks really bad when stretched.
Like, using a script or something.

I mean, it shouldn't be too hard to have a function to search google for the artist name with 'Size: large', take the first one and use that one instead?

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-01-22 13:26:49
There is one limited possibility I know of. You can add biography panel with just image support enabled, and in "Biography server preferences" add built in artwork reader in source list. Then in "Display preferences" create file path pattern that points to image file provided by your script.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-02-16 21:03:48
Today I noticed something strange. I can't see the whole biography.
Only the first few rows is visible, and then message:
''read more about ''artist'' on last.fm''

Something has changed on last.fm page, and causes this.
If you click on biography text, and go to last.fm page, you will see the same text.
But below it has button ''Read more...'' , after click on that you will get a full biography.
I think that's what is causing the problem.
If anyone has a similar problem or solution, let me know...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: lender1257 on 2013-02-17 07:52:21
Today I noticed something strange. I can't see the whole biography.
Only the first few rows is visible, and then message:
''read more about ''artist'' on last.fm''

Something has changed on last.fm page, and causes this.
If you click on biography text, and go to last.fm page, you will see the same text.
But below it has button ''Read more...'' , after click on that you will get a full biography.
I think that's what is causing the problem.
If anyone has a similar problem or solution, let me know...


same to me; something's changed on last.fm
hope the developer changes the plugin
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: foomark on 2013-02-17 10:06:08
Today I noticed something strange. I can't see the whole biography.
Only the first few rows is visible, and then message:
''read more about ''artist'' on last.fm''

Something has changed on last.fm page, and causes this.
If you click on biography text, and go to last.fm page, you will see the same text.
But below it has button ''Read more...'' , after click on that you will get a full biography.
I think that's what is causing the problem.
If anyone has a similar problem or solution, let me know...


Same here 
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-02-18 09:13:13
nothing the dev can do about it.

http://www.last.fm/group/Last.fm+Web+Servi...21604/_/2201974 (http://www.last.fm/group/Last.fm+Web+Services/forum/21604/_/2201974)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mjm716 on 2013-02-18 12:14:45
nothing the dev can do about it.

http://www.last.fm/group/Last.fm+Web+Servi...21604/_/2201974 (http://www.last.fm/group/Last.fm+Web+Services/forum/21604/_/2201974)


any chance the panel could maintain the local XML data, if longer than what is available at lastfm? or simply not fetch anything if local version exists?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-02-18 12:27:55
nothing the dev can do about it.

http://www.last.fm/group/Last.fm+Web+Servi...21604/_/2201974 (http://www.last.fm/group/Last.fm+Web+Services/forum/21604/_/2201974)


Really nothing that can be done? But let's say you go to the link http://www.last.fm/music/Jennifer+Lopez/+wiki (http://www.last.fm/music/Jennifer+Lopez/+wiki), there you have a full biography. Maybe WSH script can pull this information? Or to change something in foo_uie_biography. I don't believe that it is impossible...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Fooguy on 2013-02-18 17:28:37
Regarding the biography problem:
Now and then I use the Clementine music Player. And Clementine fetches the full biography from Last.FM  8-/
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: vomer on 2013-02-18 19:34:30
Well I posted a comment to that last.fm article link, and aside from half a dozen others it doesn't seem to be stirring up much complaint. Perhaps those of us who have last.fm accounts (or would make one) could let last.fm know how we feel?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-02-18 19:41:04
Well I posted a comment to that last.fm article link, and aside from half a dozen others it doesn't seem to be stirring up much complaint. Perhaps those of us who have last.fm accounts (or would make one) could let last.fm know how we feel?

They don't care how we feel, believe me. They are looking way to make money. someone needs to update plugin...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Zao on 2013-02-19 03:07:43
How would you "update" the plugin if the API doesn't expose the functionality.
Screen-scraping is an excellent way of making the lives of everyone worse.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-02-19 09:27:18
But let's say you go to the link http://www.last.fm/music/Jennifer+Lopez/+wiki (http://www.last.fm/music/Jennifer+Lopez/+wiki), there you have a full biography.


that's a web page - complete different from the webservices API (http://www.last.fm/api/show/artist.getInfo) that this component and my scripts utilise.

it is possible to scrape webpages but it's not something i'd ever waste my time doing. if you go back over this thread, romor has posted some scraping scripts that go over the allmusic site to pull info. take a look at that if you like.

BTW, my WSH panel mod script no longer tries to update if a cached file exists. obviously this is only useful for people who've used my script previously and already have a cache built up. details here: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=824713 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=77883&view=findpost&p=824713)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-02-19 11:49:50
On a side note, if resource investigated can be validated as XML, i.e. XHTML, there is no need for "API", as that's already webservice in a manner of speaking. That of course, purposely, is not the case here, nor on discogs, allmusic ...

It seems that last.fm biography can however be accessed from third party webservice, like echonest: http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artis...=jennifer+lopez (http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=BJZA2W0VD8EFHZELS&license=cc-by-sa&format=xml&name=jennifer+lopez)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-02-20 09:40:28
it's nothing like a webservice. it's not documented and is subject to change at any time without notification. also there is the issue of copyright and it's usually slower as well.

and i've looked at echonest before and i can't use it. there are no line breaks which makes large articles pretty much unreadable.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-02-20 10:08:47
Yeah, subject to change like we are witnessing. You get notified by user complaint.
It could be slower if you are accessing HTML DOM, while XHTML as XML is at as same speed as your "API webservices", because it's same technology.

Echonest response does have line breaks. Perhaps you can't see it rendered by XML style sheet in your browser, if you just clicked above link.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-02-20 10:39:18
it's not that - i tested the JSON response in a script some time ago when i discovered no line breaks. i'll take another look though....

edit: found my old post from august 2011 about it here: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=767576 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=77883&view=findpost&p=767576)

edit2: tested again and still not usable. screenshot shows last.fm on the left and wikipedia on the right....

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22801321/lastfm%20wiki.png (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22801321/lastfm%20wiki.png)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-02-20 10:54:57
In json response, new line is escaped with '\n'
Also double quotes are escaped with '\"'

Edit: On screenshot right perhaps there is issue as that content source was table perhaps. And that's also for wikipedia article, which is not needed as wikipedia can be accessed natively with their werservice
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-02-20 11:04:34
In json response, new line is escaped with '\n'


in theory, yes. but take a look at the raw source.

http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artis...=jennifer+lopez (http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=BJZA2W0VD8EFHZELS&format=json&name=jennifer+lopez)

they are there in the wikipedia segment but not the last.fm...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-02-20 11:07:36
That's rendered by browser, try:

Code: [Select]
curl "http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=BJZA2W0VD8EFHZELS&license=cc-by-sa&format=json&name=jennifer+lopez" > out.json


Edit: but also in browser (Firefox) I see "\n" in your link

Edit 2: Here is raw "run external script" command for Biography View, which uses xmllint (can be replace by any tool that supports basic XPath)

Code: [Select]
cmd /c "xmllint --xpath "/response/biographies/biography/text[../site='last.fm']/text'()'" --encode utf-8 --noent "http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=BJZA2W0VD8EFHZELS&license=cc-by-sa&format=xml&name=$replace($meta(artist,0),' ',+)""


Until someone feels like writing a script it can be used to display full last.fm biography
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-02-20 12:51:09
they are there in the wikipedia segment but not the last.fm...


After seeing the content in biography view processed with xmllint, it seems like they use new lines on last.fm contents to format additional information, like History, Musical style etc., while biography text new lines are stripped. These stripped new lines can be "recovered" by replacing dot followed by two spaces with dot followed by two CRLF, i.e ".  " -> ".\r\n\r\n". I'll do that later today and provide script, as there is no "sed" equivalent on Windows.

Edit: Sooner than later, here is 6 line vbscript that renders as expected full last.fm bio: https://gist.github.com/aa2ada8bdc93144abd03 (https://gist.github.com/aa2ada8bdc93144abd03)

How to use it (if script is placed in foobar root folder):

(http://i.imgur.com/TIdz4pI.png)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-02-20 16:13:36
Amazing, thanks Romor, works perfectly  if not asking too much perhaps you could combine, your previous script foo_shout.vbs with this. So that we can have, short preview album,tracklist and now playing with biography together.
However, THANKS, THANKS, THANKS Romor
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-02-20 19:12:26
Mire, you are welcome

I don't understand your foo_shout.vbs concern
Can't you use it as external script in album tab and lastfm_bio.vbs in artist tab?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-02-20 20:13:46
I thought if it is possible to merge two scripts into one. But I encountered a problem with lastfm_bio.vbs. Script don't read the full name of artist.. It reads only the first part of the name. And so for all artist... Example: for Robbie Williams, Biography text is: ''Robbie is a synthpop musician hailing from Virginia.''
Or something I'm not set correctly?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-02-21 02:11:18
Mire, enclose artist in double quotes. Just follow screenshot literally
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-02-21 10:34:15
These stripped new lines can be "recovered" by replacing dot followed by two spaces with dot followed by two CRLF, i.e ".  " -> ".\r\n\r\n".


just done that, thanks. for anyone who uses my WSH panel mod script, i've released a mod version in the other thread.

it does make me wonder if echonest cache data forever or whether last.fm supplies them with the full info? but for now, it's fine.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-02-21 11:22:35
Mire, enclose artist in double quotes. Just follow screenshot literally


Ok, now work. I had to copy quotes from the script. If i manualy write quotes, it does not work.
Thank's
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-02-21 19:03:07
Something I noticed, echonest, does not recognize ''&'' carakter, so if you have a song with that character, you must change it in  ''and'' carakter . fortunately i don't have a lot of those songs...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Timothy on 2013-02-21 19:15:49



Thanks for this nice workaround, is it possible to get last.fm bio via script in german language?

tim
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-02-22 10:59:50
echonest, does not recognize ''&'' carakter


it does when you properly encode these kind of characters before making a request.

as a workaround you try replacing

Code: [Select]
%artist%


on your command line with

Code: [Select]
$replace(%artist%,&,'%26)


@Timothy, there is no language support with this version.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: neons on 2013-02-23 18:45:48
Romor, your script works fine for me. Is it possible to add other possibilities. I'd like to download biography, and save it in a file, as it did foo_uie_biography earlier.And then if biography already exists in the folder, script will read that file.
If you have time to do this. Thank's.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-02-23 20:59:05
I encoded ampersand, thanks Marc

@neons: try this: https://gist.github.com/rornor/e8adee2d94cac17840b3 (https://gist.github.com/rornor/e8adee2d94cac17840b3)

You should change first line - 'folder' variable to point to desired and existing folder
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: neons on 2013-02-24 14:29:20
I encoded ampersand, thanks Marc

@neons: try this: https://gist.github.com/rornor/e8adee2d94cac17840b3 (https://gist.github.com/rornor/e8adee2d94cac17840b3)

You should change first line - 'folder' variable to point to desired and existing folder


It was really fast. Works great, I've changed the ''txt'' extension in ''lfml'' , maybe if last.fm reverse his decision, biography can be readable again.Now everything works as before the change.Thank's Romor
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-02-24 19:13:05
I tried the new script. One problem, if you turn off the network, and play song, script would make an empty biography file, because it does not provide the test network. And later when you turn on your network, the script will not overwrite that file.
I changed something and I was able to prevent this behavior, but I don't understand how it works, and whether it is well written, so can you update, thanks

This is my script:

Code: [Select]
       
Dim WshShell
Set WshShell = createobject("wscript.shell")
strURL = "www.google.com"
set png = WshShell.exec("ping -n 1 " & strURL)
do until png.status = 1
wscript.sleep 50
loop
strPing = lcase(png.stdout.readall)
Select Case True
     Case InStr(strPing, "reply from") > 1

folder = "C:\Users\mire\Desktop\foobar2000 xch4\lyrics\biography"
On Error resume Next
With CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
If Not .FileExists(folder & "\" & WScript.Arguments.Item(0) & ".txt") Then
Set xml = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.6.0")
xml.async = false
xml.load("http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=PKDMY7Z0SGFBW" & UCase(Right("denial", 4)) & "&license=cc-by-sa&format=xml&name=" & Replace(WScript.Arguments.Item(0), "&", "%26"))
.OpenTextFile(folder & "\" & WScript.Arguments.Item(0) & ".txt", 2, 1).Write(Replace(Replace(xml.selectSingleNode("/response/biographies/biography/text[../site='last.fm']").text, ". ", "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf), ". ", "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf) & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & "WIKIPEDIA BIO:" & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & Replace(Replace(xml.selectSingleNode("/response/biographies/biography/text[../site='wikipedia']").text, ". ", "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf), ". ", "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf))
End If
WScript.Echo .OpenTextFile(folder & "\" & WScript.Arguments.Item(0) & ".txt").ReadAll
End With
End Select
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-02-24 21:07:03
Mire, I updated script not to create empty files, like in scenario when user looses connection
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-02-25 00:22:56
Ok thanks. It's a good idea to save biography in case that something happens with the site. I hope it will not happen again...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: kjllmeplz on 2013-02-25 04:55:41
romor : thanks for the script.
But it still does not recognize ''&''.

(http://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac327/kjllmeplz/Capture_zps27991695.png)

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-02-25 09:34:52
I encoded ampersand, thanks Marc


oh sorry, i didn't even look at your script. i just assumed it didn't based on the problem that was reported and the fact that mine works ok. 
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-02-25 20:08:36
I encoded ampersand, thanks Marc


oh sorry, i didn't even look at your script. i just assumed it didn't based on the problem that was reported and the fact that mine works ok. 


I think that problem is not with script:
http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artis...grid+michaelson (http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=BJZA2W0VD8EFHZELS&license=cc-by-sa&format=xml&name=sara+bareilles+%26+ingrid+michaelson)
http://www.last.fm/music/Sara+Bareilles+&a...ichaelson/+wiki (http://www.last.fm/music/Sara+Bareilles+&+Ingrid+Michaelson/+wiki)


But in some cases it won't load anything (with or without'' &'' character):

http://imageshack.us/f/838/capturezvj.png/ (http://imageshack.us/f/838/capturezvj.png/)
http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artis...Whitehead" (http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=BJZA2W0VD8EFHZELS&license=cc-by-sa&format=xml&name=Mcfadden+%26+Whitehead&quot;)]http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artis...n+%26+Whitehead



http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/11/capturehnx.png/ (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/11/capturehnx.png/)
http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artis...mp;name=Cherish (http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=BJZA2W0VD8EFHZELS&license=cc-by-sa&format=xml&name=Cherish)




also sometimes wiki goes first and then below is last.fm:

http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artis...emical+brothers (http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=BJZA2W0VD8EFHZELS&license=cc-by-sa&format=xml&name=Chemical+brothers)

maybe it causes some strange behavior...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-02-26 09:30:01
well like i said before, no issues with ampersands in my WSH panel mod scripts.

screenshot (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22801321/echonest%20ok%20feb13.png)

and the wiki coming first in some examples doesn't matter as the script is set to only use last.fm - it doesn't care where it is.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-02-26 10:33:24
you guys are helpless
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-02-26 10:45:56
so after all that, mire777 still hasn't wrapped the artist in double quotes. i guess i should pay more attention. 
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-02-26 21:44:36
so after all that, mire777 still hasn't wrapped the artist in double quotes. i guess i should pay more attention. 


I don't know what you're talking about, of course I'm wrapped artist in double quotes...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: sanja123 on 2013-03-03 19:22:57
Romor, just to say, thank you for this script, you saved my life. great work!
Thank you very much.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-03-04 06:14:33
Sanja, welcome to the forum, and thanks for your kind words
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: lender1257 on 2013-03-04 07:30:20
they are there in the wikipedia segment but not the last.fm...


After seeing the content in biography view processed with xmllint, it seems like they use new lines on last.fm contents to format additional information, like History, Musical style etc., while biography text new lines are stripped. These stripped new lines can be "recovered" by replacing dot followed by two spaces with dot followed by two CRLF, i.e ".  " -> ".\r\n\r\n". I'll do that later today and provide script, as there is no "sed" equivalent on Windows.

Edit: Sooner than later, here is 6 line vbscript that renders as expected full last.fm bio: https://gist.github.com/aa2ada8bdc93144abd03 (https://gist.github.com/aa2ada8bdc93144abd03)

How to use it (if script is placed in foobar root folder):

(http://i.imgur.com/TIdz4pI.png)


hi romor
would you be so kind and explain exactly (if possible with pics) what i have to do to get your script running

thank you
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-03-04 08:33:57
Step by step walkthrough:

1. download the script from provided link and save it in foobar's folder
2. In foobar's preferences navigate to "Biography Server" page and from "Available source list" listbox, add "Run External Script" item to the "Current source list" list box. Move it to the top with the "Up" button
3. In foobar's preferences "Run External Script" page, in Artist tab, type exactly what you see in quoted image
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: lender1257 on 2013-03-04 09:04:26
Step by step walkthrough:

1. download the script from provided link and save it in foobar's folder
2. In foobar's preferences navigate to "Biography Server" page and from "Available source list" listbox, add "Run External Script" item to the "Current source list" list box. Move it to the top with the "Up" button
3. In foobar's preferences "Run External Script" page, in Artist tab, type exactly what you see in quoted image


Thanks, works perfectly
is it possible to get lastfm-bio in german ?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: jollyb on 2013-03-05 09:52:49
Romor, thanks for the script, it works. Have you considered to creating a new script for displaying image, if something happens with the existing ones. Last.fm seems no longer safe.. Thanks and continue your good work...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-03-05 10:04:24
Don't remove Last.fm from "Current source list" and images should show fine. There is no need for workaround
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-03-06 16:41:12
I updated last.fm biography script, as I noticed that it fails if artist name has non-ASCII character.
Problem was that unlike last.fm, echonest doesn't accept anything but UTF-8 encoded or ASCII query strings.
Those that use version with text caching, should check if 0 length files are present because of this issue, and delete all.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: neons on 2013-03-07 23:02:49
Thanks for the update, works even faster than standard foo_uie_biography now,  thanks
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: matif on 2013-03-14 09:10:45
Is it possible to add some effects when image change?
Would anyone update this plugin include this feature?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-03-14 09:46:52
that won't happen. the component itself is closed source and all the image stuff is done internally.

the developer has not been seen in a long time.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: matif on 2013-03-14 18:53:01
that won't happen. the component itself is closed source and all the image stuff is done internally.

the developer has not been seen in a long time.

Oh, right, this is why can't I found his original source...
In the past, I think romor fork Biography view, and Biography view is open source. XD
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: antonyb on 2013-03-14 23:53:38
Now it works LAST FM, how can I set the Italian language?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-03-15 00:04:31
you can't. this 3rd party site is English only.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: antonyb on 2013-03-15 00:20:31
I changed the address but does not work ..

WScript.Echo Replace(Replace(.selectSingleNode("/response/biographies/biography/text[../site='last.fm']").text, ".  ", "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf), ".  ", "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-03-15 00:36:22
of course not. as i said before, the script is using a 3rd party site (the echonest) - http://developer.echonest.com/docs/v4/arti...tml#biographies (http://developer.echonest.com/docs/v4/artist.html#biographies)

it only supports english.

if you want to know why the script refers to "last.fm", look at this example server response....

http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artis...icense=cc-by-sa (http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=FILDTEOIK2HBORODV&id=ARH6W4X1187B99274F&format=xml&license=cc-by-sa)

you'll see there are 2 bios provided by wikipedia and last.fm. the site=last.fm bit in the script selects only the last.fm article.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: antonyb on 2013-03-15 09:50:56
I understand, it would take a foo with a site like this http://www.enjoyyourstay.net/biografia-Renato_Zero-7463.html (http://www.enjoyyourstay.net/biografia-Renato_Zero-7463.html)

Or some other solution.
thanks
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-03-18 12:41:55
I understand, it would take a foo with a site like this http://www.enjoyyourstay.net/biografia-Renato_Zero-7463.html (http://www.enjoyyourstay.net/biografia-Renato_Zero-7463.html)

Or some other solution.
thanks


This site does not use the last.fm biography, and that's what we want to use. if you want you can use already built in wikipedia and set your language there in: preferences>tools>biography server>wikipedia
for now it's not possible to change language for last.fm with echonest, but it probably will be possible in the future..
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-03-18 15:07:11
you could scrape data from just about any site if you have the skills. romor has already proven this with his allmusic script. but whether anyone would want to tackle that particular site is another matter entirely.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: antonyb on 2013-03-18 20:58:00
This site does not use the last.fm biography, and that's what we want to use. if you want you can use already built in wikipedia and set your language there in: preferences>tools>biography server>wikipedia
for now it's not possible to change language for last.fm with echonest, but it probably will be possible in the future..

Wikipedia has less information, I prefer last fm but no Italian.
The Italian language is used shortly, I do not think that will be added to echonest

you could scrape data from just about any site if you have the skills. romor has already proven this with his allmusic script. but whether anyone would want to tackle that particular site is another matter entirely.

In fact, I asked you, I know you have the skills, but the problem is that the Italian is not in use, it takes someone who spends time
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-03-18 22:25:34
In fact, I asked you, I know you have the skills


actually i don't. scraping data from websites is much harder (at least to me) than using the documented webservices such as those provided by last.fm or the echonest.

BTW, i used the alphabetical shortcuts on the page to look up all artists beginning with the letter R. do you know how many there are? 29. sorry but nobody is going to write a bespoke script for a site like that. 

my only suggestion is to manually copy/paste the text into text files which my simple text reader script for WSH panel mod can then read and display in a panel. it supports title formatting so just dump the text file somewhere in your music folders and configure the script accordingly.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: antonyb on 2013-03-19 11:29:22
In fact, I asked you, I know you have the skills


actually i don't. scraping data from websites is much harder (at least to me) than using the documented webservices such as those provided by last.fm or the echonest.

BTW, i used the alphabetical shortcuts on the page to look up all artists beginning with the letter R. do you know how many there are? 29. sorry but nobody is going to write a bespoke script for a site like that. 

my only suggestion is to manually copy/paste the text into text files which my simple text reader script for WSH panel mod can then read and display in a panel. it supports title formatting so just dump the text file somewhere in your music folders and configure the script accordingly.

Good idea, but then you always update your biography, in the case of new album ..
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-03-19 14:55:54
my musicbrainz and discogs release scripts have clickable links taking you to the release page of new albums (assuming they've been added to those sites of course). they check for updates once a week (not automatically but when you select an artist and the cached data is over a week old). that doesn't mean to say the biographies on any given site will be updated but at least it's an easier way to check for new stuff.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: antonyb on 2013-03-19 17:34:29
my musicbrainz and discogs release scripts have clickable links taking you to the release page of new albums (assuming they've been added to those sites of course). they check for updates once a week (not automatically but when you select an artist and the cached data is over a week old). that doesn't mean to say the biographies on any given site will be updated but at least it's an easier way to check for new stuff.

How do I do this?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-03-19 19:15:41
my WSH panel mod scripts are in here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22801321/samples.zip (https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22801321/samples.zip)

please check the readme carefully.

recent screenshot of my musicbrainz script here. (https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22801321/2013/march/musicbrainz.png) (that's 2 instances showing off its different modes)

the discogs script looks exactly the same as the panel on the left except the source is obviously different. newest releases are displayed first. clicking the text links opens your browser where you can find more release information and track listings.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mjm716 on 2013-03-20 10:58:56
you guys are helpless




yes most of us are!

I have to add my +1 to any method of getting the bio|review data portable into tags (as an additional option to standard output & file).
Alternately just somehow having it referenced in the Foo db would be wonderful so that it could be searched (full text or just binary: missing/present).

Any chance of this?

I understand some of the difficulties, and I know I'm helpless to do so!

However, I would be willing to donate to such an undertaking & perhaps others are also willing?! 

Spring Equinox today and Berlin is buried in snow, so thoughts tend towards the very unpractical! 
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-03-20 13:35:37
I don't like to ask this question, but really, why would you want to match text from reviews/bios? What is your scenario?

AFAIK, you can't instruct foobar to tag files from text files, nor you can tag files with text that has new lines, other way than manually.
You can tag from text files with Mp3tag and I'll show you here how to extract XML data to text files:

- download this stylesheet: https://gist.github.com/b91dee6eeac15d8bdfb3 (https://gist.github.com/b91dee6eeac15d8bdfb3)
- run it through XSLT 2.0 aware processor, i.e. Saxon (http://sourceforge.net/projects/saxon/files/Saxon-HE/):

Code: [Select]
"C:\Program Files\Saxonica\SaxonHE9.4N\bin\Transform.exe" -s:foo_allmusic.xml -xsl:foo_allmusic.xsl

Above command will create text files for each review and biography item, named accordingly.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mjm716 on 2013-03-21 16:16:08
why would you want to match text from reviews/bios? What is your scenario?


Thanks much for the text technique.

Why?

missing/present is pretty obvious, otherwise, it's just nicer to have a bigger data set for search and cross-referencing
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-03-22 03:40:08
But it will interfere common search...

You could also try lyricsgrabber component, as it seems it does allow writing arbitrary data to arbitrary tag automatically
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Eric75 on 2013-03-24 11:59:27
my WSH panel mod scripts are in here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22801321/samples.zip (https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22801321/samples.zip)

please check the readme carefully.

recent screenshot of my musicbrainz script here. (https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22801321/2013/march/musicbrainz.png) (that's 2 instances showing off its different modes)

the discogs script looks exactly the same as the panel on the left except the source is obviously different. newest releases are displayed first. clicking the text links opens your browser where you can find more release information and track listings.

Hello Marc thanks a lot for all your scripts.
Some questions:
- Is it possible to chain some external scripts ? (IE LastFM + AMG +  ...) or do I need to have multiple Biography panels to do that ?
  It looks it is stopped after 1st successful one. or am I wrong in some place ?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-03-24 12:12:20
if you're talking about this component's ability to run scripts in order until it finds some content then no. mine won't do that. also, i don't have an AMG script so you'd have to stick with biography view for that anyway.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Eric75 on 2013-03-24 14:03:30
if you're talking about this component's ability to run scripts in order until it finds some content then no. mine won't do that. also, i don't have an AMG script so you'd have to stick with biography view for that anyway.

Hello Mark

I mean if I setup multiple commande lines in biography "external script" biography component box:
- are they all run in sequence (from top one to bottom one)
- or is it stopped at some point ?

If not possible to run them in sequence I have the option to merge all the scripts I need in one but I think that it is easier to manage with multiple ones.

Thanks, Eric
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-03-24 14:15:37
- are they all run in sequence (from top one to bottom one)


i believe that is the case. i presume it stops when one of the options returns some content. maybe romor or someone else more familiar with it can answer that. as this is a global setting, i guess it won't work if you want multiple panels. again that would require confirmation from someone who really knows.

all my scripts are completely independent of each other, being self contained as they are in their own panel. perhaps setup a WSH panel with my last.fm script (it displays exactly the same content as this component/romor's script). then have this component check for the AMG script? put them next to each other or in tabs perhaps?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Eric75 on 2013-03-24 14:33:21
Yes, I am going to try this way
Thanks again Mark
Eric
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: islandguide on 2013-04-06 09:38:01
Edit: Sooner than later, here is 6 line vbscript that renders as expected full last.fm bio: https://gist.github.com/aa2ada8bdc93144abd03 (https://gist.github.com/aa2ada8bdc93144abd03)

Hi and thank you for this script romor!

I've been trying to get it to work but I don't seem to be able to succeed. I followed the instructions that you posted and the script seems to run but it only returns the first letter of the last.fm bio as a result. That is, in the bio window I see the images and then just one (capital) letter. Any idea of how I might be able to fix this?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-04-06 14:26:43
Most probably you haven't set UTF-16 encoding and you used cscript with "//U" switch.
So in preferences select the the command, then set "character code" to UTF-16 and hit "update" button
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: islandguide on 2013-04-06 14:37:23
Ah, you are right and now it works. Wonderful!

Thank you again and sorry I troubled you with such a silly little mistake.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: foomark on 2013-04-06 20:39:02
i know it's a question that only a noob could do but...
where do i find this  menu? 

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: islandguide on 2013-04-06 21:57:18
Step by step walkthrough:

1. download the script from provided link and save it in foobar's folder
2. In foobar's preferences navigate to "Biography Server" page and from "Available source list" listbox, add "Run External Script" item to the "Current source list" list box. Move it to the top with the "Up" button
3. In foobar's preferences "Run External Script" page, in Artist tab, type exactly what you see in quoted image

(Preferences->Tools->Biography Server->Run External Script)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: foomark on 2013-04-07 12:34:58
Step by step walkthrough:

1. download the script from provided link and save it in foobar's folder
2. In foobar's preferences navigate to "Biography Server" page and from "Available source list" listbox, add "Run External Script" item to the "Current source list" list box. Move it to the top with the "Up" button
3. In foobar's preferences "Run External Script" page, in Artist tab, type exactly what you see in quoted image

(Preferences->Tools->Biography Server->Run External Script)


Ops, sorry, i completely missed the "Run external script" menù...
I followed every step but it doesn't seems to work for me, or probably i'm missing something else...
here's what i actually did, but (i'm using the DarkOne skin) the BIO panel is empty :S
(http://s18.postimg.org/4os1i40l1/image.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/4os1i40l1/)
(http://s22.postimg.org/p25dwe9ul/image.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/p25dwe9ul/)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Propheticus on 2013-04-07 12:49:43
works flawlessly here... also darkone skin. Have you made sure the script is placed in foobar's root folder?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: foomark on 2013-04-07 13:15:06
works flawlessly here... also darkone skin. Have you made sure the script is placed in foobar's root folder?


Yes it is.
May it be related to the fact that i'm using a portable foobar2000 installation??
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: acmodeu on 2013-04-09 14:41:34
Is there any way to make it stream more than 6 artist pictures?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-04-09 16:18:00
Is there any way to make it stream more than 6 artist pictures?

Value seem hashed in configuration file. So even if you try brute force you probably can't go far and test if you can trick it.

@foomark: maybe try with absolute path to script file: `cscript //nologo "c:\...\lastfm_bio.vbs" ...`
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: foomark on 2013-04-09 17:09:02
@foomark: maybe try with absolute path to script file: `cscript //nologo "c:\...\lastfm_bio.vbs" ...`



i tried this method and the result is ....
look 
[a href="http://postimg.org/image/4kltiynsj/" target="_blank"]
PPS: if i double click on it, the whole panel gets empty.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Propheticus on 2013-04-09 17:53:14
looks like you didnt select the UTF-16 option when adding the external script.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-04-09 18:02:23
@foomark: maybe try with absolute path to script file: `cscript //nologo "c:\...\lastfm_bio.vbs" ...`



i tried this method and the result is ....


That's OK
Just add '//U' switch before the script path
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: foomark on 2013-04-09 21:24:15
@foomark: maybe try with absolute path to script file: `cscript //nologo "c:\...\lastfm_bio.vbs" ...`



i tried this method and the result is ....


That's OK
Just add '//U' switch before the script path


First i want to say thank you not only for the script but also for your patience...
But there must be something "wrong" in my F2K configuration, cause i really can't get it to work.

The command i wrote is exactly: cscript //U //nologo "C:\Users\myfolders\foobar2000\lastfm_bio.vbs"  "$meta(artist,0)"
via standard output
UTF16

But my BIO panel is always empty 
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-04-09 21:58:08
You are welcome, foomark

I think that I've read somewhere about changes in Windows 8 in regard to UTF-16 and scripting, thou I'm not sure what was it exactly and when this issue occurs, as it seems it doesn't occur with every Windows 8 version.

I'll suggest you try without '\\U' switch and at the same time set "Character code" to ANSI
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: foomark on 2013-04-10 08:11:29
I think i tried every single combination of the script and character code but this...

You are welcome, foomark

I think that I've read somewhere about changes in Windows 8 in regard to UTF-16 and scripting, thou I'm not sure what was it exactly and when this issue occurs, as it seems it doesn't occur with every Windows 8 version.

I'll suggest you try without '\\U' switch and at the same time set "Character code" to ANSI


...seems to actually work!!!    Thank you so much!!

since i'm here i would like to ask you guys also another thing or two regarding the script...
1)Would it be possible to use other languages? I mean...if it's easy ok, if the whole script need to be re-written...it doesn't matter.
2)Is there a way to have, like it is in the original LastFm component, also the pictures of the artist?? I use DarkOne and the BIO panel is splitted in two, 50% for the bio and 50% for the pictures, that with this script stay empty.

Thank you again!!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-04-10 10:45:45
1. It's not possible at the moment, because provider (echonest) indexed only English version of Last.fm biographies

2. To have images, just leave Last.fm entry in "Current source list", and leave it at the bottom of the list
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: foomark on 2013-04-10 10:59:51
1. It's not possible at the moment, because provider (echonest) indexed only English version of Last.fm biographies

2. To have images, just leave Last.fm entry in "Current source list", and leave it at the bottom of the list


Ok thank you, the second tip works perfectly
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mjm716 on 2013-05-21 16:35:59
To avoid fragmentation, script can be viewed here: http://db.tt/erPq5XpB (http://db.tt/erPq5XpB) and downloaded from here: http://db.tt/RnrNrwQ3 (http://db.tt/RnrNrwQ3)
Any further changes will reflect there without using pastebin

I was without internet the past day and realized that the recent script (13.11.2012) no longer pulled items from the cache anymore.

When I looked into the problem, I realized my foo_allmusic.xml file which is about 22MB, had not been updated for some time. When I removed the file from the FB directory and resumed playing, a new file was created and the data saved correctly. I disabled my internet and tested with the new file and data was displayed from the cache, so things are referenced and working properly.

There doesn't seem to be an inherent XML file size/# of records limit in windows. I also checked the large XML file's structure and did not find any problems (open/close tags matched); and the last record had no strange characters.

Does anyone have any ideas?

update: figured it out - was an XML error in the file. FYI, I found this app to check it: http://download.cnet.com/XML-Validator/300...4ca43ec2e8b593b (http://download.cnet.com/XML-Validator/3001-7241_4-75765753.html?spi=5512f4bd89948ddbf4ca43ec2e8b593b)

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: FoobarFan33 on 2013-05-23 20:28:24
Hi all,

I'm using Foobar for a long time now but it's the first time I'm playing with components.
I have installed the biography plugin and it's really great, thanks to its author 
But I have a problem with the number of images I can visualize from last.fm. In the server preference, it's impossible to choose more than 6 artworks.
Am I doing something wrong (knowing myself it's really possible) or is it a limitation of the plugin ?
I'm using the 1.2.6 version of Foobar2000 and I'm on Windows 7.

Thanks very much for your help

PS : by mistake, I created a new topic to discuss about that. Do you know how to delete my post ?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: FLeX3DaMuZ on 2013-05-28 17:42:43
hey y'all!

I've noticed that the biography component isn't loading any artist pictures anymore.. someone experiencing problems with last.fm the last couple of days?

greetings!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-07-09 18:03:49
hey y'all!

I've noticed that the biography component isn't loading any artist pictures anymore.. someone experiencing problems with last.fm the last couple of days?

greetings!


Problem is probably in your foobar settings. For me everything work fine...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: PeteG on 2013-07-15 21:40:00
Rovi has made some changes to the AllMusicGuide => foo_allmusic.vbs has ceased to function  .
I've sent a PM to romor, the programmer.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-07-16 08:08:51
Updated: https://gist.github.com/9b835d41a4257cab25c9 (https://gist.github.com/9b835d41a4257cab25c9)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: PeteG on 2013-07-16 18:53:28
Indeed, romor, you're fast!
But ... I can't get allmusic.vbs to fetch anything. This, via the command line

Code: [Select]
cscript //nologo allmusic.vbs "Camel" "Nude" review

results in nothing (the entry do exist). A new foo_almusic.xml is created (as expected, cache set to 1), size 57 bytes.

The online database seems to have it's own problems with the new layout, by the way. Some wordy biographies are cut prematurely, e.g. The Beatles; Frank Zappa.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-07-16 19:23:28
Pete, recheck. I get output:

Code: [Select]
C:\Temp>cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs "Camel" "Nude" review
A new, larger version of Camel debuted on Nude, a concept album about a Japanese soldier stranded on a deserted island d
uring World War II and staying there, oblivious to the outside world, for 29 years. More ambitious than the preceding I
Can See Your House from Here, Nude is in many ways just as impressive. Although it's a less accessible effort, it has a
number of quite intriguing passages, particularly since it boasts heavier improvisation, orchestration, and even some wo
rldbeat influences. It's not as spacy as Camel's earlier progressive rock records, yet it is quite atmospheric, creating
 its own entrancing world. [A remastered version of Nude was released in 2009, including ten bonus tracks recorded live
at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1981 for the BBC Radio 1 program In Concert.]

Review by Daevid Jehnzen

C:\Temp>cscript //nologo foo_allmusic.vbs "Camel" "Nude" bio
Camel never achieved the mass popularity of fellow British progressive rock bands like the Alan Parsons Project, but the
y cultivated a dedicated cult following. Over the course of their career, Camel experienced numerous changes, but throug
hout the years, Andrew Latimer remained the leader of the band.

Formed in 1972 in Surrey, Camel originally consisted of Latimer (guitar, flute, vocals), Andy Ward (drums), Doug Ferguso
n (bass), and keyboardist Peter Bardens, previously of Them. By the end of 1973, the group signed with MCA and released
their eponymous debut. In 1974, the band switched record labels, signing with Decca's Gama subsidiary, and released Mira
ge. In 1975, Camel released their breakthrough album The Snow Goose, which climbed into the British Top 30. The band's E
nglish audience declined with 1976's Moonmadness, but the album was more successful in America, reaching number 118 -- t
he highest chart position the band ever attained in the U.S. Following the release of Moonmadness, Ferguson left the ban
d and was replaced by Richard Sinclair (ex-Caravan); at the same time, the group added saxophonist Mel Collins. Latimer
and Bardens conflicted during the recording of 1977's Rain Dances and those tensions would come to a head during the mak
ing of 1978's Breathless. After Breathless was completed, Bardens left the band. Before recording their next album, Came
l replaced Bardens with two keyboardists -- Kit Watkins (Happy the Man) and Jim Schelhaas (Caravan) -- and replaced Sinc
lair with Colin Bass.

By the time Camel released their 1979 album, I Can See Your House From Here, rock & roll had been changed by the emergen
ce of punk rock, which resulted in less press coverage for progressive rock, as well as decreased record sales. Camel su
ffered from this shift in popular taste -- I Can See Your House From Here received less attention than any of the band's
 releases since their debut. Latimer returned to writing concept albums with 1981's Nude. In 1982, drummer Andy Ward was
 forced to leave the band after suffering a severe hand injury. Camel's 1982 album, The Single Factor, was a slicker, mo
re accessible affair than previous Camel records, but it failed to chart. Stationary Traveller (1984) was another concep
t album.

After the release of the 1984 live album, Pressure Points, Camel entered a long period of hibernation that lasted until
the early '90s. In 1985, Decca dropped Camel from its roster. Latimer wasn't able to find a new label because he was emb
roiled in a difficult legal battle with Camel's former manager Geoff Jukes; Camel eventually won the lawsuit in the late
 '80s. Throughout this period, Camel produced no new music. In 1988, Latimer sold his home in England and moved to Calif
ornia, where he founded the independent label Camel Productions. By the time Camel recorded their follow-up to Stationar
y Traveller in the early '90s, the band was, for most intents and purposes, simply Andrew Latimer and a handful of sessi
on musicians. Dust and Dreams (1991) was the first release on Camel Productions. In 1993, PolyGram released a double-dis
c Camel retrospective, Echoes. In early 1996, Camel released Harbour of Tears.

Artist Biography by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: PeteG on 2013-07-16 21:19:00
This is strange. Stlll no joy. I've run out of good ideas after trying various combinations via cmd.

But I'm apparently the only one with problems, so don't waste your time, romor. I still have a nice, fat XML file and the old foo_allmusic.vbs. And the possibility of manual updating.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-07-16 21:24:31
you should try clearing the temp files in internet explorer.

edit: this would only fix pages you've tried to view when the script wasn't working. if you've been trying loads of new different artists, it won't help.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Static on 2013-07-17 08:44:42
I have the same problem, it doesn't fetch anything. It just creates a new empty xml file. I tried clearing the temp files but no changes.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: PeteG on 2013-07-17 11:10:46
Hm.
I've just found out, that script is doing fine on my Vista 32-bit machine, but still no luck on the Windows 7 64-bit machine.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Static on 2013-07-17 14:47:52
Windows 7 here, 32 bit, the script isn't working.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-07-17 15:36:21
i don't have the component installed but i did try the script on the command line. it worked fine using PeteG's Camel example. i'm running windows 7 x64.

i also tried a few of my own artist/album combinations and they work fine too. it's not exactly quick but that's down to the server response rather than the script itself.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mjm716 on 2013-07-17 17:52:05
I can confirm that the old version was broken (32bit/7) and that the new version works again on Camel/Nudes (cmd line and also FB).

However!

I just tried this example:

cscript //nologo allmusic.vbs "Manu Dibango" "Soul Makossa" bio

(38, 11) Microsoft VBScript runtime error: Object required: 'getElementsByTagName(...)(...)'

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/manu-dibang...74011/biography (http://www.allmusic.com/artist/manu-dibango-mn0000674011/biography)

likewise, these both exist but return blank results:

cscript //nologo allmusic.vbs "Mano Dibango" "Wakafrica" bio

cscript //nologo allmusic.vbs "Mano Dibango" "Wakafrica" review
http://www.allmusic.com/album/wakafrika-mw0000117777 (http://www.allmusic.com/album/wakafrika-mw0000117777)

another one:

cscript //nologo allmusic.vbs "Masada" "Hei" bio

returns:

Return to the homepage
Contact us to report a problem
View our FAQ
Uh oh. Billy Joel did NOT want you to see this album.
404 Error: The page you requested cannot be found.

but returns correct review.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Solynth on 2013-08-01 10:22:28
Hi, I searched this thread but I couldn't find anything on removing the citations from the Wikipedia bio. "[1], [2] etc".

Is there a way of doing this? Sorry if it's already been covered.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-08-01 14:17:58
i assume you're using the built-in wiki support and not using romor's script? i'm pretty sure that doesn't show citations. i think it shows last.fm by default so you need to edit the script somewhere for it to show wikipedia instead.

or you can try my script for WSH panel mod which allows for easy switching between last.fm/wikipedia via the right click menu.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22801321/wsh/samples.zip (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22801321/wsh/samples.zip) <<read instructions carefully.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Solynth on 2013-08-01 14:48:36
i assume you're using the built-in wiki support and not using romor's script? i'm pretty sure that doesn't show citations. i think it shows last.fm by default so you need to edit the script somewhere for it to show wikipedia instead.

or you can try my script for WSH panel mod which allows for easy switching between last.fm/wikipedia via the right click menu.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22801321/wsh/samples.zip (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22801321/wsh/samples.zip) <<read instructions carefully.


Awesome, I'll give that a go.

I'm currently using your Last.fm WSH panel mod to get the "loved" and playcount, to work with br3tt's WSH playlist. As you know this has the same folder name "marc2003" and it also has a "common7.js" in the folder.
Am I able to use both at the same time?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-08-01 15:22:21
yeah they do share some files - like most of the code for all my scripts is inside common7.js

but make sure you extract the whole marc2003 folder from the samples.zip though. it contains many other files not included with my playcount sync script. you can safely choose to overwrite any files if prompted.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Solynth on 2013-08-02 01:18:54
yeah they do share some files - like most of the code for all my scripts is inside common7.js

but make sure you extract the whole marc2003 folder from the samples.zip though. it contains many other files not included with my playcount sync script. you can safely choose to overwrite any files if prompted.


Oh my god, your panel is beautiful. Thanks, man.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: lender1257 on 2013-08-04 12:50:21
i assume you're using the built-in wiki support and not using romor's script? i'm pretty sure that doesn't show citations. i think it shows last.fm by default so you need to edit the script somewhere for it to show wikipedia instead.

or you can try my script for WSH panel mod which allows for easy switching between last.fm/wikipedia via the right click menu.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22801321/wsh/samples.zip (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22801321/wsh/samples.zip) <<read instructions carefully.


@marc2003
now i'm using your bio-script; works perfectly
question: you are saving the bios in folder "wsh_lastfm" - why ?
              is there the possibility to make the plugin "non-save" bios  or
              should I delete them from time to time
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-08-04 16:34:32
This is my script, I use it for some time, and works perfectly.
This is modified Romor's script. It hase future to save Bio.txt files, and display them later..
It first search for: last.fm bio, if not found > then search for Wikipedia bio, if not found > then display text(I don't like blank panel).
*You can enter your own text.
You must enter path location, where to save Bio.txt files.
THANKS ROMOR FOR THIS SCRIPT..





Code: [Select]
folder = "ENTER YOUR FOLDER"
On Error resume Next
With CreateObject("ADODB.Stream")
.Open
.Type = 2
.Charset = "utf-8"
.LoadFromFile folder & "\" & WScript.Arguments.Item(0) & ".txt"
If Len(.Size) > 1 Then
WScript.Echo .ReadText
.Close
Else
.WriteText WScript.Arguments.Item(0)
.Flush
.Position = 0
.Type = 1
.Read = 3
For i = 1 To .Size-3
param = param & "%" & Hex(AscB(.Read(1)))
Next
.Close
Set xml = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.6.0") : xml.async = False
xml.load("http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=OQMRCUVWC6PULGN2G&license=cc-by-sa&format=xml&name=" & param)
bio = xml.selectSingleNode("/response/biographies/biography/text[../site='last.fm']").text
If Len(bio) Then
bio = Replace(Replace(bio, ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf), ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf)
.Open
.Type = 2
.Position = 0
.Charset = "utf-8"
.WriteText bio
.SaveToFile folder & "\" & WScript.Arguments.Item(0) & ".txt"
.Close
WScript.Echo bio

Else

Set xml = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.6.0") : xml.async = False
xml.load("http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=OQMRCUVWC6PULGN2G&license=cc-by-sa&format=xml&name=" & param)
bio = xml.selectSingleNode("/response/biographies/biography/text[../site='last.fm']").text
If Len(bio) Then
bio = Replace(Replace(bio, ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf), ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf)
.Open
.Type = 2
.Position = 0
.Charset = "utf-8"
.WriteText bio
.SaveToFile folder & "\" & WScript.Arguments.Item(0) & ".txt"
.Close
WScript.Echo bio

Else

Set xml = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.6.0") : xml.async = False
xml.load("http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=OQMRCUVWC6PULGN2G&license=cc-by-sa&format=xml&name=" & param)
bio = (("WIKIPEDIA:" & vbCrLf & vbCrLf)) & xml.selectSingleNode("/response/biographies/biography/text[../site='wikipedia']").text
If Len(bio) Then
bio = Replace(Replace(bio, ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf), ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf)
.Open
.Type = 2
.Position = 0
.Charset = "utf-8"
.WriteText bio
.SaveToFile folder & "\" & WScript.Arguments.Item(0) & ".txt"
.Close
WScript.Echo bio


Else

WScript.Echo "We can't find biography for this artist. Maybe your tags are incorrect or you lose internet connection. Please note that latest one tag ''artist'' must be corrected field.. If your tag is alredy properly field, that means that thoes artist is unknown, or you enter misspeled name. Also when you played radio stream, some station does not send information about artist, so this also causes problem." & vbCrLf & "Thank you for understending.." & vbCrLf & "For further information, and posible solution, check this site:" & vbCrLf & "http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=70955." & vbCrLf & "Your Foobar theam.."


End If
End If
End If
End If
End With
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-08-05 09:39:53
question: you are saving the bios in folder "wsh_lastfm" - why ?


because caching is good. what's the point of consulting the internet on every play? once you've built up a cache, it also means you see the text instantly on track change when the bio already exists instead of waiting that long second or two...

you can delete the *.json files on a periodic basis if you really can't afford the disk space to keep them. 

@mire777, you might consider using my WSH script as that allows for easy switching between last.fm and wikipedia via the right click menu. it means you can check the wikipedia text even when last.fm text is present and vice versa. it uses exactly the same source (echonest) as romor's script so the content will be identical.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22801321/2013/march/wikipedia.png)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22801321/wsh/samples.zip (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22801321/wsh/samples.zip)

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-08-05 11:07:44
@mire777, you might consider using my WSH script as that allows for easy switching between last.fm and wikipedia via the right click menu. it means you can check the wikipedia text even when last.fm text is present and vice versa. it uses exactly the same source (echonest) as romor's script so the content will be identical.



I love your script, i tried it earlier. But i run Wsh panel mod 1.4.2. , and this is not compatibile with my version.
If i update Wsh panel, it will crash my skin.
I use Xch4nge skin, and there are a lot of WSH scripts..
Maybe i can change all Wsh sript in my skin, and then update. But it's a big job...
So my only solution is to somehow edit your script itself.

*EDIT: Ok i changed script, now works on WSH 1.4.2.

I have only one question:
How in your script to set transparent background?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-08-05 14:28:08
Ok,  It's finished. Changed background, fonts ...
Only to fix menu now.

Thanks Marc..


(http://imageshack.us/a/img14/5136/nqsv.png)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-08-05 17:49:20
ah yes. i see you're using that old modded version which allows that glass affect. you can't upgrade your component (although i think the last was 1.4.4) but you seem to have to figured out how to edit my script so it will work.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-08-05 20:44:50
ah yes. i see you're using that old modded version which allows that glass affect. you can't upgrade your component (although i think the last was 1.4.4) but you seem to have to figured out how to edit my script so it will work.


Yes, i found what's the difference in old and new WSH, change that, and now work fine. Great script..
Thank's Marc
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Static on 2013-08-06 12:31:24
Yes, i found what's the difference in old and new WSH, change that, and now work fine. Great script..
Thank's Marc


Can you please post the edited script? I also use the old WSH and I can't update it because it breaks my skin.

Thank you.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-08-07 00:14:11
Yes, i found what's the difference in old and new WSH, change that, and now work fine. Great script..
Thank's Marc


Can you please post the edited script? I also use the old WSH and I can't update it because it breaks my skin.

Thank you.


Here is script: http://pastebin.com/rCiZ4xYt (http://pastebin.com/rCiZ4xYt)

Which version of WSH panel mod you use? And skin?
I don't now if you like this font, i use...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-09-01 18:22:45
Hm.
I've just found out, that script is doing fine on my Vista 32-bit machine, but still no luck on the Windows 7 64-bit machine.

Sorry especially to you patient Pete, but not until now I had spare time...

I made regex version of allmusic script which doesn't use mshtml library and thus no problem should be expected on different platforms and IE versions, and it's located here: https://gist.github.com/13ebd9e29260a35c8145 (https://gist.github.com/13ebd9e29260a35c8145)
For some reason this regex version is twice faster than previous one using html dom, so I would advice other users to try.
It's alpha version, which I tested on couple of releases and find it work as expected.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: PeteG on 2013-09-02 12:16:15
Sorry especially to you patient Pete, but not until now I had spare time...

Wow. I must admit that I was beginning to give up the hope. Thank you so much, romor!
I've only had time for a preliminary test, but so far everything is working as expected on Windows 7 64-bit. Some 20 albums (checked beforehand): Found and retrieved, first via cmd and then via Biography Server. 100 % backwards compatibility with the existing XML file. Very, very nice. The speed improvement is maybe of more interest for programmers? I rely on the generated XML file, and that's a quick load.

The nit-picking department: The helpline (error message) doesn't match the name of the VBS file...

As a sidenote (site note – can one say that?): Using AdBlock in a browser (Chrome) seems to prevent admission to compilations and other subgroups (and possibly other stuff?), I've just found out. Since they changed layout in July, I has been of the belief that that stuff was gone forever. Well, well, well. This has nothing to do with your script.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: SmirG3l on 2013-09-03 11:05:23
What I'm doing wrong lol? Some band info is in Russian and some in English
(https://gs1.wac.edgecastcdn.net/8019B6/data.tumblr.com/9f59a2ce35e94291cebc2dcb2b7d38a8/tumblr_msjo02bQ3O1sb3mtqo1_1280.jpg)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2013-09-29 23:49:55
Romor, a belated but big thanks for your regex version.  I just got around to playing with it, and I think it works better with a little change that you probably originally intended.  I think you meant to end the For/Next loop contained in lines 43 through 53 of your latest revision upon the first match, so I added the "Exit For" line below and I get better matches as a result:

Code: [Select]
  For Each k In dAlbum.Keys
    If Match(Split(k, "..")(1), query) And Match(Split(dAlbum(k), "..")(1), Arg(0)) Then
      artistLink = Split(dAlbum(k), "..")(0) & "/biography"
      albumLink = Split(k, "..")(0)
      If result = "bio" Then
        search = biography(artistLink)
      Else
        search = review(albumLink)
      End If
      Exit For
    End If
  Next
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: godrick on 2013-09-30 07:25:25
Romor, a few other observations on tne regex version:

I get a few more successes if the search query is in lower case (without causing any problems at least so far)
   
Code: [Select]
Set reMatch = .Execute(Request("http://www.allmusic.com/search/albums/" & Escape(LCase(query))))

    For whatever reason, that works to see the review for Pink Floyd's The Final Cut review that would not otherwise be found with either the panel or cmd window.

I've forgotten what little I knew of regular expressions, so I can't suggest specific improvements, but I found that album titles that have punctuation marks of single quotes or apostrophes (and maybe other marks) would not result in displayed reviews in the panel, but reviews would be found and displayed in a cmd window. Album titles with colons, commas, dashes, periods exclamation points or question marks did not have any problems.

Lastly, I observed that allmusic reviews or artist biographies without any attribution (no "by ..." text) would result in the correct links found, but would not display the review or biography in the panel or cmd window.  An example of a review without attribution is The Beatles' Past Masters compliation.

The regex version works very fast - I like it!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2013-10-05 15:07:02
Thanks for diving in, Godrick

Indeed, I did overlook on "Exit For" statement, which is now corrected, together with replacing two dots as separator with two tildes.

Cheers
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: neons on 2013-10-13 23:13:43
Is possible to have some vbs or js script that will display more than 6 image from last.fm in foo_uie_biography panel?
I don't want to download pictures in folder, only to load image in memory and display them in panel?
I use Romor script to display bio text, and it works well.
I search something simmilar for image, to use with foo_uie_biography panel, not in separate wsh panel, and i can't find?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-10-18 11:37:10
I don't know if anyone else has a problem, but something strange is happens with biography images.
Example for artist Madonna, i have only one image, even if i try different settings in preferences(max artwork count is set to 6), nothing happens.
I tried to reset the page in preferences, even to reinstall foobar, nothing help..
Same happens for all artist...
Does anyone have the same problem?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-18 11:47:13
the service has been turned off.

http://www.last.fm/group/Last.fm+Web+Servi...21604/_/2216689 (http://www.last.fm/group/Last.fm+Web+Services/forum/21604/_/2216689)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-10-18 11:56:59
the service has been turned off.

http://www.last.fm/group/Last.fm+Web+Servi...21604/_/2216689 (http://www.last.fm/group/Last.fm+Web+Services/forum/21604/_/2216689)


This is bad. I thought it would happen sooner or later. Maybe it's time to consider some alternatives...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-10-18 12:41:05
maybe this can help:

http://musicmachinery.com/2013/03/27/getti...-echo-nest-api/ (http://musicmachinery.com/2013/03/27/getting-artist-images-with-the-echo-nest-api/)

http://static.echonest.com/demo/images/images.html (http://static.echonest.com/demo/images/images.html)

https://github.com/plamere/en-demos/blob/ma...ges/images.html (https://github.com/plamere/en-demos/blob/master/images/images.html)


I tried to download image with AlbumArt downloader from last.fm, it work ok, i download 10 images without problem...
I know it's not the same, but maybe help..
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-10-18 17:44:48
image response from echonest:

http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artis...&format=xml (http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/images?api_key=OQMRCUVWC6PULGN2G&name=madonna&format=xml)

we can use link to download image in folder and display in foobar...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-18 23:24:50
I tried to download image with AlbumArt downloader from last.fm, it work ok, i download 10 images without problem...
I know it's not the same, but maybe help..


that works well so you might as well use it. the reason it still works is because it uses the website, not the API.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-10-19 11:56:12
I tried to download image with AlbumArt downloader from last.fm, it work ok, i download 10 images without problem...
I know it's not the same, but maybe help..


that works well so you might as well use it. the reason it still works is because it uses the website, not the API.


I know that. Would you consider to do something with echonest?
You can use link from echonest response to download image, and then display in foobar.
I make vbs script that download image from website, but i don't now how to point script to read echonest response in xml?

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-19 15:44:25
i did a quick test but it was horrible. you get very similar images, some of which are tiny. also, because it uses multiple websites, there are all sorts of different ways you'd have to generate filenames to save to. i really can't be bothered with it.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-10-19 17:47:46
i did a quick test but it was horrible. you get very similar images, some of which are tiny. also, because it uses multiple websites, there are all sorts of different ways you'd have to generate filenames to save to. i really can't be bothered with it.


Ok, maybe not worth...

On the other hand, last.fm script from albumart downloader uses html to retrieve ''id'' number, for each individual image..

lastfm-artist.boo script:

Code: [Select]
encodedArtist = EncodeUrl(artist)
        imagesHtml = GetPage("http://www.last.fm/music/${encodedArtist}/+images")

        imageIdMatches = Regex("<a\\s+href=\"/music/[^/]+/\\+images/(?<id>\\d+)\"\\s+class=\"pic\"").Matches(imagesHtml)
        
        results.EstimatedCount = imageIdMatches.Count
        
        for imageIdMatch as Match in imageIdMatches:
            id = imageIdMatch.Groups["id"].Value
            results.Add("http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/126b/${id}.jpg", artist, "http://www.last.fm/music/${encodedArtist}/+images/${id}", -1, -1, "http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/${id}.jpg");



On http://www.last.fm/music/madonna/+images (http://www.last.fm/music/madonna/+images) in html, you have that number on end every image.
Then if you detect images ''id'', you call http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/${id}.jpg (http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/${id}.jpg) , to download image...
Example: http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/93603867.jpg (http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/93603867.jpg)
I suppose you can do same in WSH.
In vbs is posibble to do that. But i don't now how?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-19 18:04:58
perhaps you're a mind reader because i've already made a script based on that. 

i'll post in the WSH script thread when it's complete.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-10-19 18:07:34
perhaps you're a mind reader because i've already made a script based on that. 

i'll post in the WSH script thread when it's complete.


oh, great then, we are saved!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wcs13 on 2013-10-20 15:19:49
Hi everybody,

Sorry if this has been said before. I was trying to install the biography script from Marc2003 via WSH Panel Mod.
So I installed the latest version of WSH Panel Mod (1.5.6).
Then I read the instructions from Marc2003's scripts.
Then I extracted the folders to what I believed was the right location.
Then I got an initialization error, so I checked the console. and I got this :

Parsing file "C:\Program Files\foobar2000 (test 2)\scripts\marc2003\v2\common.js": Failed to load
Parsing file "C:\Program Files\foobar2000 (test 2)\scripts\marc2003\v2\tooltip_buttons.js": Failed to load

What disturbs me is that WSH Panel Mod seems to be looking for a common.js file, when Marc2003's files provide a common7.js file.
It also seems to be looking for a v2 directory that I don't have.
FYI currently I have a C:\Program Files\foobar2000 (test 2)\scripts" directory, where I extracted the marc2003 folder and the samples folder.

Thanks in advance.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-20 15:41:52
the script inside your panel is ancient. you need to import whichever script you'd like to use from the samples folder into the panel. also, the marc2003 folder needs to be extracted into your foobar profile. if running portable mode then it needs to be a subfolder of the main foobar folder. examples...

C:\Users\marc\AppData\Roaming\foobar2000\marc2003
D:\Portable Apps\foobar2000\marc2003

all this is explained in the readme. 

make sure you're using the latest from here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22801321/wsh/samples.zip (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22801321/wsh/samples.zip)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wcs13 on 2013-10-20 16:10:21
Thanks marc. It works now.

One error report though : I tried to remap the artist field to my custom titleformating script, and I got this error : "Your entry was too long and will be truncated".
However, my custom script works well with the original Biography component.
So, would it be possible to increase the allowed entry size ?

Thanks.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-20 16:15:34
hold shift and then right click the panel>properties. you should be able to paste your code into the artist_tf bit.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wcs13 on 2013-10-20 16:22:52
Worked again !  Many thanks Marc.

Last question I guess : does one of your scripts provide online artist images fetching, just like the Biography component does ?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-20 16:25:12
thumbs & now playing.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wcs13 on 2013-10-20 16:42:58
Awesome.  It all runs smoothly now ! Sorry to have yet more questions ^^ :

1. Can I change the default containing folder where images & co. are stored ? (right now it's %foobar folder%/wsh_lastfm)

2. Can I re-use my existing (and already 20 GB !!!) bio images folder (created by the Biography component), which is as follows ?
X:/PRIVATE/BIOS/%artist%/Biography/ [all the artist images, with up to 12 images per artist (*) apparently]
(*) the 12 images seem to be labeled artist.jpg / artist_01.jpg / ... / artist_05.jpg (6 images) + artist.png / artist_01.png / ... / artist_05.png (6 more images which are NOT necessarily the same)
X:/PRIVATE/BIOS/%artist%/Discography/ [all the album images, named (%date%) %title%][/li][/list](and of course to make things even more complicated, by %artist%, %date% and %title% I don't mean the standard fields but my own titleformating scripts for each of these fields...  )

I can start again from scratch, but I think it's a pity to simply erase a 20 GB cache folder with lots of useful images & stuff...

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-20 16:56:16
right click>image source>custom folder. then right click>Set custom folder. you can use standard foobar title formatting.

note that you can only specify folders. it does not understand filenames. it simply displays all images in a given folder.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wcs13 on 2013-10-20 18:00:22
I have tried.  It... sort of works... or not... 

What is weird is that both scripts seem to work... sometimes :
- The lastfm&wiki script sometimes displays artist info, but sometimes it displays nothing (when the standard Biography component ALwAYS manages to display something)
- The thumbnails script sometimes displays images (the images within my custom folder => good !), but sometimes it displays nothing, even if the folder with the images exists (when the standard Biography component ALWAYS manages to display images)

I'm puzzled at this :
- For example I have tried two different artists (among others) : for one of them both scripts work, and for the other images won't display, even though the directory exists and is formatted exactly in the same way. To be more specific, X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Justin Timberlake\Biography will work, but X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Epica\Biography won't work.
- Another example (not related to your scripts) is that the Biography component finds an image, but it won't save it apparently (I can't find the corresponding directory, e.g. X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Ciara). And since there is no "Open source directory" option like in your script, I can't know if it has saved it somewhere or not.

Another problem is that I haven't found a way to specify a custom folder for the lastfm&wiki script, so it keeps using the wsh_lastfm directory, which is an unwanted behaviour for me.

Oh, and one last thing : why does all the info in your WSH panels disappear as soon as we hit the "stop" button, when all the info remains on the standard Biography component ?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-20 18:30:54
- The lastfm&wiki script sometimes displays artist info, but sometimes it displays nothing (when the standard Biography component ALwAYS manages to display something)


this script uses another website called the,echonest.com to get bios. it could be they just don't have data for that artist. can you give an example of one and the last.fm page just so i can double check.

Quote
The thumbnails script sometimes displays images (the images within my custom folder => good !), but sometimes it displays nothing, even if the folder with the images exists (when the standard Biography component ALWAYS manages to display images)


perhaps your artist tags contain characters that are illegal for windows folder names and the folder isn't really an exact match to the tag? perhaps bio panel did some kind of internal replacement? my script doesn't do anything like that. you can of course use the $replace title formatting function.

Quote
Another problem is that I haven't found a way to specify a custom folder for the lastfm&wiki script, so it keeps using the wsh_lastfm directory, which is an unwanted behaviour for me.


don't use it then.  the files can't be used by anything else so there isn't much point in saving them elsewhere.

Quote
Oh, and one last thing : why does all the info in your WSH panels disappear as soon as we hit the "stop" button, when all the info remains on the standard Biography component ?


right click>selection mode and change it to one of the other options.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wcs13 on 2013-10-20 18:48:38
1. Lastfm&wiki script : I can't help right now, because for mysterious reasons it now seems to work !    But the times it didn't work this afternoon it was for very known bands (e.g. it wouldn't display the bio for Epica - and now it does !). And I promise I haven't changed anything (maybe just restarted foobar, and I'm not even sure, lol).

2. Thumbnails script : I had checked the names, and I did on purpose pick very simple names : Justin Timberlake, Epica, Ciara (of course I checked the names via "Properties" juste to make sure there wasn't any unwanted character, space, etc... it's all normal). Right now the Epica images won't display, even though the directory with images exists : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Epica\Biography . But with Justin Timberlake it works perfectly ( X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Justin Timberlake\Biography ). I just don't get it !!!

3. Custom folder : sure, I understand.  I could live with it. It's just that :
- It's not "clean" IMHO,
- I don't like the idea of my foobar2000 folder's size constantly growing. That's why I would like to keep all bio related stuff in another folder.

4. Selection mode : I had tried the other options already, and it didn't appear to work... and now, mysteriously too, every option seems to work, including the default one that didn't work before !

Bottom line : right now I need to understand why point 2 doesn't work. And maybe one day you can find a solution for point 3.
Othe than that I'm quite happy.  But until point 2 works I won't be able to replace my standard Biography component...

Thumbnails script suggestion : an option to permanently delete one of the images, by right-clicking on the corresponding thumbnail (or image) and selecting the appropriate option ?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wcs13 on 2013-10-20 19:06:36
To be even more specific :
http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/778171justin1.jpg (http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/778171justin1.jpg)
http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/126095justin2.jpg (http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/126095justin2.jpg)
http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/407363epica1.jpg (http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/407363epica1.jpg)
http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/699922epica2.jpg (http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/699922epica2.jpg)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-20 19:11:24
1) it might be worth checking the console. it does report problems if there are network/server errors.

2) add this function to your panel

Code: [Select]
function on_mouse_mbtn_up() {
    p.MsgBox("Folder exists: " + p.fso.FolderExists(im.folders[0]) + "\nFiles found: " + im.files.length, 0, p.name);
}


now middle click the panel and see what it says. also what file extension is it? my script checks for jpg/jpeg/png/gif.

3) open the panel, after the first line of code that begins var p = new panel.... add this new line of code

Code: [Select]
p.data_folder = "e:\\path\\to\\folder\\"


you can already delete files by right clicking the main image. it doesn't work on the thumbnail strip.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wcs13 on 2013-10-20 22:56:41
1. Here is an excerpt from my console log (only the errors) :

Code: [Select]
WSH Panel Mod (Last.fm & Wikipedia Biography by marc2003): Parsing file "C:\Program Files\foobar2000 (test 2)\marc2003\common7.js"
WSH Panel Mod (Last.fm & Wikipedia Biography by marc2003): initialized in 27 ms
WSH Panel Mod (Last.fm & Wikipedia Biography by marc2003): Parsing file "C:\Program Files\foobar2000 (test 2)\marc2003\common7.js"
WSH Panel Mod (Last.fm & Wikipedia Biography by marc2003): initialized in 26 ms

the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Justin Timberlake\Biography\Justin Timberlake.png
the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Justin Timberlake\Discography\(2013) The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2.png

the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Justin Timberlake\Biography\Justin Timberlake.png
the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Justin Timberlake\Discography\(2013) The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2.png

the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Ciara\Biography\Ciara Biography.txt.lfml
the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Ciara\Biography\Ciara.png

the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Jay Sean\Biography\Jay Sean.png

the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\John Legend\Biography\John Legend.png

the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Xavier Naidoo\Biography\Xavier Naidoo Biography.txt.lfml
the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Xavier Naidoo\Biography\Xavier Naidoo.jpg
the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Xavier Naidoo\Discography\(2013) Bei Meiner Seele.jpg

the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Yuri Lane\Biography\Yuri Lane Biography.txt.lfml
the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Yuri Lane\Biography\Yuri Lane.jpg

the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Xavier Naidoo\Biography\Xavier Naidoo Biography.txt.lfml
the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Xavier Naidoo\Biography\Xavier Naidoo.jpg
the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Xavier Naidoo\Discography\(2013) Bei Meiner Seele.jpg

the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Ciara\Biography\Ciara Biography.txt.lfml
the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Ciara\Biography\Ciara.png

the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\The Civil Wars\Biography\The Civil Wars Biography.txt.lfml
the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\The Civil Wars\Biography\The Civil Wars.png

the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Justin Timberlake\Biography\Justin Timberlake.png
the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Justin Timberlake\Discography\(2013) The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2.png

the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Ciara\Biography\Ciara Biography.txt.lfml
the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Ciara\Biography\Ciara.png

the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Justin Timberlake\Biography\Justin Timberlake.png

the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Justin Timberlake\Discography\(2013) The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2.png

the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Justin Timberlake\Biography\Justin Timberlake.png
the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Justin Timberlake\Discography\(2013) The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2.png
However :
- I don't know if these errors are generated by your script, or by the standard Biography component
- I don't see any error related to Epica, and that's weird because your script currently doesn't seem to find my Epica images 

2. Here's what the debug pop-up says when it comes to Epica :
Folder exists : True
Files found : 0
The problem is that the files DO exist, and they look like standard jpg and png files : http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/780289epica3.jpg (http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/780289epica3.jpg)

3. Thanks ! I'll look into it as soon as I have solved point 2.

4. About the thumbnail strip, could you improve it so that when there are too many thumbnails it uses 2 strips instead of one ? Look at my Justin Timberlake image in my previous posts : there are 12 thumbnails so I need them to be really small in order to fit... Another solution would be to add some horizontal scrolling ability, but I don't know if that's feasible. Up to you.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-20 23:26:57
that's not my script reporting those errors.

i've got nothing else to suggest really. i was thinking if it was at least counting the images but not loading them it might be a problem with the images themselves. but the fact it's not even finding them based on file extensions is just plain odd. you're the first one to ever report anything like this.

thumbnails already scroll - it just depends where your mouse is. if you scroll over the main image, it cycles through them all. if your mouse is over the strip then it scrolls side to side - or up/down if you change the orientation. you can try grid mode as well if you have lots of images per artist.

edit: forgot to clarify, when i say scroll, i mean use your mouse wheel. it is in the readme.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wcs13 on 2013-10-20 23:34:37
FWIW, here's a different example :
http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/357430miley1.jpg (http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/357430miley1.jpg)
http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/160206miley2.jpg (http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/160206miley2.jpg)

The 1st problem is that the standard Biography component, although finding a bio and an image, doesn't create any folders for this (no X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Miley Cyrus folder). I don't understand why.
EDIT - I get it !  It doesn't create any folders because the album was a compilation (%album artist% = compilation). I can work through this and solve it.

The 2nd problem is that your script, seeing that there is no folder, doesn't choose to create one and go online find some images... WHY ?
Same 2nd problem could be applied to Epica : even if your script can't find the existing images, why doesn't it go and fetch them online ?
I suppose that when we specify a custom folder, the logical order of actions is "1 = check if images are present in the custom folder / 2 = if not, go fetch them online". Right ?

I think these examples are good ones, since for widely known artists like Miley Cirus or Epica, it's obvious that images can be found easily. So I guess your script should be able to find them. Am I wrong ?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-20 23:38:52
there are 2 distinct modes. last.fm mode downloads images. custom folder mode does not. the fact all download options aren't there in custom folder mode should be a clue. again, it's in the readme. i give up.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wcs13 on 2013-10-20 23:44:22
Well, sorry for bothering you then. It was never my intention.

I have read the readme file :
Quote
There are 2 possible sources for the images. First of all, it can download artist art from Last.fm. The
script can do this automatically or you can turn this off and download manually just for artists you
like. If you already have folders full of images , you can direct the script to display those instead. You
can configure folder paths using full foobar2000 title formatting syntax. You can even use multiple
folders when using | as a separator.

Still, I don't understand why you couldn't provide an option to download online info IF that info isn't contained in the custom folder. The Biography component does that.
So that means that I would have to keep BOTH components installed and up-to-date :
- Biography component, for fetching online info and writing it to the custom folder every time,
- WSH Panel Mod + your scripts, only for displaying it in a fancy way.

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-20 23:56:36
this biography component can't get images any more. the feed it uses has been turned off by last.fm.

edit: my mistake - it can download one image. it grabs it from the same feed that provides the bio text.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wcs13 on 2013-10-21 00:07:41
That's right, I recall having read about it in this thread.
So I wonder... where does this image come from then ? http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/357430miley1.jpg (http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/357430miley1.jpg)
- The "Miley Cyrus" folder doesn't exist,  and the "Compilation" folder is empty
- A Windows file search on the whole BIOS folder and all its subfolders doesn't show any file containing the "Miley" string
- Biography Server preferences specify last.fm only
- Tag info : %artist% = Miley Cyrus / %album artist% = Compilation / no other relevant tags are filled
- Last but not least, the image turns out to be exactly the same as the one from last.fm webpage. That's weird, if we really can't fetch such images anymore...
It's funny, because the Console gives this error "the specified file is not available : X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Miley Cyrus\Biography\Miley Cyrus.png"... yet the component still displays the image !!! 

And I'm sorry if you have given up on the Epica "bug" (I assume it may eventually be a bug, since the folder exists, the images are within it, but your script can't display them while the Bio component can).
I am willing to conduct further testing when you are ready for it.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wcs13 on 2013-10-21 00:23:44
Another funny test : if I cut down my Internet access, the Bio component can't display anymore the Miley Cyrus bio and image. If I resume my Internet access, the bio and image show again.
So it looks like the Bio component (v4.2.4 BTW) is fetching them online every time BUT not writing them to the custom folder. How bizarre.
The "Create folder when cache paths specify non-existent folder" checked is CHECKED.
The "Disable saving downloaded data" checkbox is NOT CHECKED, for both Artist and Album.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-21 00:31:18
see my edit above about the one image it can fetch.

i think your problem with artist/album artist is down to your title formatting string/tags. that's all my script uses. it's not magic.

on line 30 of the panel, you'll find this...

Code: [Select]
function on_metadb_changed() {
    im.metadb_changed();
}


replace it with..

Code: [Select]
function on_metadb_changed() {
    if (im.metadb_changed()) fb.ShowPopupMessage("Folder tf: " + im.custom_folder_tf + "\nFolder: " + im.folder);
}


code edited because i forgot artist is irrelevant when using custom mode. 
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wcs13 on 2013-10-21 00:49:19
Another info : I think I have finally found an artist where Bio component can find info but your script can't :
Nils Landgren Funk Unit

Last.fm page ( http://www.lastfm.fr/music/Nils+Landgren+Funk+Unit (http://www.lastfm.fr/music/Nils+Landgren+Funk+Unit) ) doesn't show any Bio for this artist.
Hence your script doesn't show anything.
However, Bio component displays this : http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/210553nils1.jpg (http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/210553nils1.jpg)

And again, the Bio server preferences specify last.fm as the ONLY "Current source list"...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-10-21 00:50:45
Another funny test : if I cut down my Internet access, the Bio component can't display anymore the Miley Cyrus bio and image. If I resume my Internet access, the bio and image show again.
So it looks like the Bio component (v4.2.4 BTW) is fetching them online every time BUT not writing them to the custom folder. How bizarre.


foo_uie_biography component do not download image if you don't ask to do that, it only shows image.

Marc script download image and then display it from folder.
That is how work.
You can display your old images with name ''artist_01.jpg'' and cycle them , but only in off mode. That means you can't use online ''last.fm'' mode at same time when you use ''custom folder mode''.
To do that you must modify script..
This script uses different names for images then foo_uie_biography use, so you must add support in this script  to read ''artist_01.jpg'' files instead names that are already use...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-21 00:53:25
it works for me...

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22801321/2013/october/lastfm.png)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wcs13 on 2013-10-21 00:59:01
Damn ! Well done Marc !

My last.fm webpage (in french) shows these links at the top :
    Titres
    Albums
    Images
    Vidéos
    Concerts
    Biographie
    Artistes similaires
    Charts
    Tags
    Auditeurs
    Articles
    Actualités
    Groupes

I clicked on "Biography" (which leads to http://www.lastfm.fr/music/Nils+Landgren+Funk+Unit/+wiki (http://www.lastfm.fr/music/Nils+Landgren+Funk+Unit/+wiki) ) and it's empty, so I assumed there was no Bio...
But still, I thought we couldn't download stuff from last.fm anymore ?

mire777, please... I've been using the Bio component for some years now. Of course it can download images automatically, otherwise my cache folder wouldn't be 20 GB with thousands of images !!!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-21 01:04:04
you'll find the bio on the english page: http://www.last.fm/music/Nils+Landgren+Funk+Unit (http://www.last.fm/music/Nils+Landgren+Funk+Unit). you can change the language in the bio panel settings to french if you like. then it will correspond by displaying nothing like the website.

as my script uses the.echonest.com, it's english only and you don't get any choice.

Quote
But still, I thought we couldn't download stuff from last.fm anymore ?


you can still fetch text (and one image). but as you should have noticed, it's truncated to 300 characters which is why i use the alternative site.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-10-21 01:07:41
Damn ! Well done Marc !

My last.fm webpage (in french) shows these links at the top :
    Titres
    Albums
    Images
    Vidéos
    Concerts
    Biographie
    Artistes similaires
    Charts
    Tags
    Auditeurs
    Articles
    Actualités
    Groupes

I clicked on "Biography" (which leads to http://www.lastfm.fr/music/Nils+Landgren+Funk+Unit/+wiki (http://www.lastfm.fr/music/Nils+Landgren+Funk+Unit/+wiki) ) and it's empty, so I assumed there was no Bio...
But still, I thought we couldn't download stuff from last.fm anymore ?

mire777, please... I've been using the Bio component for some years now. Of course it can download images automatically, otherwise my cache folder wouldn't be 20 GB with thousands of images !!!


I'm just saying that you must have set in the preferences to download images. Otherwise component would not download anything..You probably know it.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wcs13 on 2013-10-21 01:09:14
Marc, here are the results of the modification of line 30 of your panel :

Folder tf: X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\%artist%\Biography\
Folder: X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Epica\Biography\

Folder tf: X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\%artist%\Biography\
Folder: X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Justin Timberlake\Biography\

Folder tf: X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\%artist%\Biography\
Folder: X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Miley Cyrus\Biography\

Does it mean something to you ?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-21 01:16:14
i thought you might be using some fancy title formatting but you're not. i really am done now.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wcs13 on 2013-10-21 01:28:41
LOL !  Thanks anyway.

I think I'm not too bad at least at basic titleformatting. Been using it for years now ! FYI here's my own "better than just %artist%" script :

Code: [Select]
$puts(d,$if($or($strcmp($len($meta(album artist2)),0),$strstr($meta(album artist2),Brilliant Classics),$and($strstr($left(%sorting%,3),OST),$not($strstr(%language%,Instrumental)))),$if($or($strcmp($len($meta(album artist)),0),$strstr($meta(album artist),Compilation)),$if($strcmp(%artist2%,?),$if($strcmp($len($meta(artist)),0),$if($strcmp($len($meta(composer)),0),'?',%composer%),%artist%),%artist2%),%album artist%),%album artist2%))$puts(d2,$if($or($strcmp($len($meta(album artist2)),0),$strstr($meta(album artist2),Brilliant Classics),$and($strstr($left(%sorting%,3),OST),$not($strstr(%language%,Instrumental)))),$if($or($strcmp($len($meta(album artist)),0),$strstr($meta(album artist),Compilation)),$if($strcmp(%artist2%,?),$if($strcmp($len($meta(artist)),0),$if($strcmp($len($meta(composer)),0),'?',composer),artist),artist2),album artist),album artist2))$puts(m,$if2($meta($get(d2),0),%$get(d2)%))$if($and($strchr($get(m),'('),$strcmp($strchr($get(m),')'),$len($get(m)))),$puts(a,$left($get(m),$sub($strchr($get(m),'('),2))),$puts(a,$get(m)))$puts(m,$meta($get(d2),1))$if($and($strchr($get(m),'('),$strcmp($strchr($get(m),')'),$len($get(m)))),$puts(b,$left($get(m),$sub($strchr($get(m),'('),2))),$puts(b,$get(m)))$puts(m,$meta($get(d2),$sub($meta_num($get(d2)),1)))$if($and($strchr($get(m),'('),$strcmp($strchr($get(m),')'),$len($get(m)))),$puts(c,$left($get(m),$sub($strchr($get(m),'('),2))),$puts(c,$get(m)))$if($strcmp($get(a),?),,[$ifgreater($meta_num($get(d2)),3,$get(a)', [...] & '$get©,$ifgreater($meta_num($get(d2)),2,$get(a)', '$get(b)' & '$get©,$ifgreater($meta_num($get(d2)),1,$get(a)' & '$get(b),$get(a))))])

You don't need to examine it. I'm pretty sure it works, since I've been using it for a while now within foobar2000. Maybe it could be more efficient/shorter, but anyway... it works.
I just pasted it in your script (this was the thingy that was too long a few posts ago, so you explained me how to insert it manually with shift  ).

But damn... that Epica thing... the images are there... I just don't get it !!! AAAAAAAAAAH !!!

PS : funny, the forum handles "( c )" as "©" even within a code or a codebox...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-21 01:36:40
can a command prompt list the files?

Code: [Select]
function on_metadb_changed() {
    if (im.metadb_changed()) p.WshShell.Run("cmd /k dir /a \"" + im.folders[0] + "\\*.*");
}
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wcs13 on 2013-10-21 02:14:57
Yes, it can :

Répertoire de X:\PRIVATE\BIOS\Epica\Biography

20/10/2013  18:02    <REP>          .
19/08/2009  22:11    <REP>          ..
20/10/2013  23:44            1 737 Epica Biography.txt.lfml
11/09/2011  00:45            31 227 Epica.jpg
18/06/2013  04:03            19 602 Epica_01.jpg
12/05/2012  16:06            24 977 Epica_02.jpg
08/05/2012  03:15            24 977 Epica_03.jpg
06/05/2012  17:32            24 977 Epica_04.jpg
12/05/2012  16:06            59 933 Epica_05.jpg
21/10/2013  02:07          181 705 Epica.png
18/06/2013  04:03        1 066 928 Epica_03.png
12/05/2012  16:06        1 066 928 Epica_01.png
18/06/2013  04:03          306 401 Epica_02.png
18/06/2013  04:03          762 082 Epica_04.png
18/06/2013  04:03          158 701 Epica_05.png
20/10/2013  23:43          143 872 Thumbs.db
              14 fichier(s)        3 874 047 octets


EDIT 1 - Right now the last.fm bio for Justin Timberlake won't appear anymore in your script ("Justin Timberlake - Nothing found."). It used to appear an hour ago or so ! And of course standard Bio component still displays it (at least the first few lines). Switching to Wikipedia doesn't change anything ("Nothing found."). Changing selection mode doesn't change anything either. Playing other songs then going back to J.T. doesn't change anything either. A foobar restart doesn't change anything either. Now that's weird, isn't it ?  Especially since I naively thought the Bio had been saved somewhere and didn't have to be downloaded every time...

EDIT 2 - as you suggested, I have changed your data folder to this : p.data_folder = "X:\PRIVATE\marc2003data"
But the folder is still completely empty. I'm wondering if there's a problem somewhere. And isn't there a semicolon missing or something ?

EDIT 3 - another sugggestion. In the same way that we can delete an image (right-click), maybe we could choose an image as the "preferred" image for that Artist, so that image would be the one displayed each time afterwards for that Artist. There are several ways to achieve that. The complicated one involves handling a database. The easy one involves saving the "preferred" image in the same directory as "preferred.jpg" (or .png or whatever).
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-21 11:10:16
if you go back and look at the example i gave, you should see that double backslashes are needed to separate folders.

Code: [Select]
p.data_folder = "e:\\path\\to\\folder\\"


also you need to make this folder exists as the script won't create it for you.

if you still have problems with nothing displaying, clear your internet explorer cache. you don't normally ever have to touch it but if you've lost/deleted files generated by my scripts, you do need to clear IE to force a fresh download.

Quote
Yes, it can :


well that definitely proves there is nothing wrong with title formatting or finding the folder. i can only assume some sort of bug with the function used in the component to get the files?? as it's not actively developed, i don't think anything else can be done.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-21 12:12:42
i don't think anything else can be done.


i might have lied - i found an alternative way to list files not using the function built into the component. right click panel>Update script, restart when prompted and see if it helps.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wcs13 on 2013-10-21 12:36:25
double backslashes are needed to separate folders

I thought it was just fancy stuff.  I'm happy to report that it works now !

i might have lied - i found an alternative way to list files not using the function built into the component. right click panel>Update script, restart when prompted and see if it helps.

It... it... works !!!    Epica images now display perfectly. Man, you are a genius ! How did you do that ?...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-21 12:43:57
i had a little help from a friend..... google.

it just took a few lines of javascript instead of using a function that is built into the component.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: wcs13 on 2013-10-21 16:07:49
So it looks like it was a bug from within the component. I knew I wasn't crazy ! 

Now the only thing that could make the whole machinery even better would be an option (= not mandatory for those who don't want it, so everyone is happy) to keep downloading online stuff (both bios and images) even if the cache is on a custom directory. Because we may want to have a custom directory AND still keep on downloading online stuff, right ?...

If that option was added, could I totally remove my standard Biography component ? I suppose I could.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-10-21 18:21:34
I knew I wasn't crazy !


i really thought you were. perhaps it's some issue with file attributes or permissions but i would have thought anything running from within foobar would behave the same.

anyway, you need to right click and update again because the new version ignored filenames with uppercase letters in the file extension.

as for letting you download images where you want, i'll think about but it but no promises.

any more comments really should go in this thread (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=77883). this has been unbelievably off topic for this component thread.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: harumscarum on 2013-10-30 09:39:21
moved
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: neons on 2013-11-04 09:45:08
Romor will you do something about image artist problem in standard biography? I use your script to show bio text, the problem is that we only have one picture. I don't want to change component because of this. Maybe you can provide vbs script that showing more images?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Elaphe on 2013-11-04 17:59:23
I'm using the biography component in three different panels, one for cover, one for artist info and one for artist photo. It looks better this way than with photo and text together.

What I miss (or don't know how to implement) is a generic (custom if possible) image while the album cover is being downloaded or in case it's not found. Any idea?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-11-04 18:10:02
I'm using the biography component in three different panels, one for cover, one for artist info and one for artist photo. It looks better this way than with photo and text together.

What I miss (or don't know how to implement) is a generic (custom if possible) image while the album cover is being downloaded or in case it's not found. Any idea?


You can set custom image in preferences>display>stub image path. If nothing found then it display yours image...

Or you can try something like this in panel stack splitter:

$puts(user_path,%ps_user_profile_path%)
$if($not(%album%),
$imageabs($add($get(but_w),110),$add($get(but_h),200),,,$get(user_path)images\no_album.png,nokeepaspect,))
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Elaphe on 2013-11-04 19:33:27
I'm using the biography component in three different panels, one for cover, one for artist info and one for artist photo. It looks better this way than with photo and text together.

What I miss (or don't know how to implement) is a generic (custom if possible) image while the album cover is being downloaded or in case it's not found. Any idea?


You can set custom image in preferences>display>stub image path. If nothing found then it display yours image...

Or you can try something like this in panel stack splitter:

$puts(user_path,%ps_user_profile_path%)
$if($not(%album%),
$imageabs($add($get(but_w),110),$add($get(but_h),200),,,$get(user_path)images\no_album.png,nokeepaspect,))


I've tried the stub image path option and it works. That's however, for the album art component, not the biography. For some strange reason I never get covers downloaded with the album art component. That's why I use biography for this. I don't understand the second part of your message. Where do I write that code? Sorry I'm new to foobar. Is it for UI columns? I don't use UI columns. Thanx.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2013-11-05 12:36:33
I'm using the biography component in three different panels, one for cover, one for artist info and one for artist photo. It looks better this way than with photo and text together.

What I miss (or don't know how to implement) is a generic (custom if possible) image while the album cover is being downloaded or in case it's not found. Any idea?


You can set custom image in preferences>display>stub image path. If nothing found then it display yours image...

Or you can try something like this in panel stack splitter:

$puts(user_path,%ps_user_profile_path%)
$if($not(%album%),
$imageabs($add($get(but_w),110),$add($get(but_h),200),,,$get(user_path)images\no_album.png,nokeepaspect,))


I've tried the stub image path option and it works. That's however, for the album art component, not the biography. For some strange reason I never get covers downloaded with the album art component. That's why I use biography for this. I don't understand the second part of your message. Where do I write that code? Sorry I'm new to foobar. Is it for UI columns? I don't use UI columns. Thanx.


I earlier used 'stub image path' with biography component if i set path in 'front cover' it works with biography-artist image.
It shows embedded front cover if not found from net, also you can set your image from folder.
Yes this code is for columns UI, if you use DUI, then you don't have this option. You can only use 'stub image' or try WSH bio component from Marc. But this component also don't have option to show image if not found from net i think? But you can ask Marc about that: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....883&st=2725 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=77883&st=2725)

If you want to download images from last.fm, then this Marc component is best to do that. Because it download more then one image.. And you can set that this downloaded image appears as artist image in playlist with 'stub image path'.




Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: foomark on 2013-11-08 13:52:40
Is there a way to remember the last selected track/artist so that when i launch foobar2000 the biography panel is not empty??
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Elaphe on 2013-11-23 13:10:47
What's wrong with this plugin? A few days ago the cover of the album is not displayed anymore and the artist photo is displayed instead. It was working fine before.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-11-23 14:21:42
have you checked the last.fm website for the artist/album you're looking at? images are uploaded by normal users and they get voted on meaning they can change at anytime.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Daeron on 2013-11-23 14:49:38
Are you sure you haven't accidentally double-clicked on the panel? Doing so will switch between artist and album display.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Elaphe on 2013-11-23 17:31:57
That was it! I bet I already checked this with right click and no matter if I selected artist or album, the artist was always displayed.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Byron86 on 2013-12-03 21:44:30
I have the following problem.

When I have a song - for example the artist "Britney Spears feat. Madonna" I set the plugin that the info shows the info of the Album Artist which is "Britney Spears".
This works well, as long as there is no track with "Various Artists" album artist tag.

So what I want is: There is a song by "XY" on a compilation with the album artist tag "Various Artists". What do I have to set under "Remap data" that in those cases the artist info is the track artist.

I tried this with "$if(.......) but I can't get this to work.

Can somebody help me? I hope it gets clear what I want, my English is not so good explaining those complex problems. ^^
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-12-03 22:49:57
Code: [Select]
$if($strcmp(%album artist%,Various Artists),%artist%,%album artist%)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Byron86 on 2013-12-03 23:00:07
Thanks a lot!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: JonIrenicus on 2013-12-04 09:16:57
Hi to all.

I cannot understand, how to set background image in the BIO field.
For example, i have mp3-files and Biography View plugin gets info about current track from internet DB and its fine.
http://imageshack.com/a/img15/6900/vwm0.jpg (http://imageshack.com/a/img15/6900/vwm0.jpg)
But i have MIDI, SPC and NFS files, which cannot have any cover at all. So, while they are playing, i see only blank square of empty BIO plugin.
Is there a way to set there this (http://imageshack.com/a/img443/2254/3qrw.jpg) image as background, or as NO_COVER image to this plugin?


Thank you.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2013-12-04 15:15:29
have a look at the server preferences. i think you can add other sources.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: JonIrenicus on 2013-12-04 16:48:05

Thank you, It's worked.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Elaphe on 2013-12-06 19:00:45
I don't know why this happens but sometimes I see the artist instead of the album cover. It suppose it happens when the album is not found. There should be an option to block this and show nothing (or a predefined image such as a CD case) instead of automatically switching from album to artist. It's driving me crazy.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Daeron on 2013-12-06 19:51:33
Right-click/Options/Lock Display Type.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Elaphe on 2013-12-06 21:57:33
Yes, that was the solution, thanx. Now, any idea how to use a custom image instead of black? Or is this feature still not implemented?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Daeron on 2013-12-06 23:00:13
If you mean a filler image when no album art was found, I think its pulled from Preferences/Display/Stub image path. Just make sure it's added as a source on the Biography server preferences page.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ganon on 2013-12-23 19:57:07
Hello all, the bio plugin has stopped working for many months now. All I get is one artist image from last.fm. When I first installed it I was getting all 6 images. Has something changed at last.fm, or is there an update to this plugin...? Any help shall be greatly appreciated.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Daeron on 2013-12-24 07:00:32
The corresponding part of the API was changed/shut down. I'd suggest using WSH Panel Mod and one of marc2003's scripts which uses a different method to get the images.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ganon on 2013-12-25 05:31:26
The corresponding part of the API was changed/shut down. I'd suggest using WSH Panel Mod and one of marc2003's scripts which uses a different method to get the images.


Thanks! I googled the script you mentioned above, but honestly I don't have a clue as to how to apply it to the darkone_v4_by_tedgo skin. Any help will be appreciated.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Daeron on 2013-12-25 07:44:14
Check the readme marc2003 wrote for it (should come with the zip file).

If it's more of a question of 'fitting it in' rather than just 'getting it work at all', you might be better asking the creator of that skin.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ganon on 2013-12-25 15:30:56
Check the readme marc2003 wrote for it (should come with the zip file).

If it's more of a question of 'fitting it in' rather than just 'getting it work at all', you might be better asking the creator of that skin.


Yeah, I have the zip file. I'm sending it to the creator of the skin and see what he has to say. Thx again for your help.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Sunrays on 2014-01-07 00:18:34
Hello,

I have this problem...



Otherwise, great plugin.. thanks to whoever made it




Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Soanseth on 2014-01-07 22:59:09
Does somebody know why i cant scroll images in this plugin? mouse scroll just slows down whole player and nothing happens. ok, just scrolling up slows down everything, and scrolling down does nothing.
and yes, max 6 photos is set in preferences.

help?

sorry for language, im polish xP
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2014-01-07 23:10:42
How do i avoid this picture from showing up ever again?


because this component only fetches one image, all you get is the most popular one as voted by users on last.fm. you can check that out by browsing the last.fm website artist page.

@Soanseth, last.fm turned off the service that allowed you download multiple images. that's why you only get one now.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Soanseth on 2014-01-07 23:13:31
Oh crap, i knew it. thanks for help ;]
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Kougeru on 2014-02-06 18:56:09
Anyone know of a way to make the images load faster? =P  Sometimes they don't change for 10 seconds or more. I tried using WSH via that guys post very early in the thread but the file didnt contain anything foralbum art, which is all I care about. WSH makes me crazy too. Are there any other alternatives? been searching google all night and this seems to be the only result besides WSH :\
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2014-02-06 21:33:34
Anyone know of a way to make the images load faster? =P  Sometimes they don't change for 10 seconds or more. I tried using WSH via that guys post very early in the thread but the file didnt contain anything foralbum art, which is all I care about. WSH makes me crazy too. Are there any other alternatives? been searching google all night and this seems to be the only result besides WSH :\


For now, this not possible without WSH..

It seems that albumart can be acessed trough WSH, by using this link:
http://www.last.fm/music/Madonna/Something+to+Remember (http://www.last.fm/music/Madonna/Something+to+Remember)
http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/500/4255...adonnsometh.png (http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/500/42552457/Something+to+Remember+madonnsometh.png)

But I think that this will not improve faster load images, it depends on the speed of your Internet.
When you use Marc thumbs, if 1st image load faster then the default albumart in foo_uie_biography, this can be solution for you.
Speed can be even faster if you don't care about image quality:

low: http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/126/4255...adonnsometh.png (http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/126/42552457/Something+to+Remember+madonnsometh.png)
medium: http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/500/4255...adonnsometh.png (http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/500/42552457/Something+to+Remember+madonnsometh.png)
high: http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/425524...adonnsometh.png (http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/42552457/Something+to+Remember+madonnsometh.png)

Ask Marc2003 to add albumart in his script...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2014-02-06 22:19:57
the best thing to do is batch download all your album art in one go and then use the built-in artreader to display it. i don't see the point in using last.fm because the quality of most art is pretty bad. if you really want to use it as a source, album art downloader XUI supports it.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=57392 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=57392)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Kougeru on 2014-02-06 22:36:27
It seems really iffy. Sometimes it will load instantly and sometimes it will take 30+ seconds on 40mb internet. I guess a better question is, is it possible to make it search my harddrive for album hard before searching lastfm? I assumed it would default to this but that doesn't seem to be the case and I don't see an option for it. Overall though, it's working great for me. I only had about 300 albums out of thousands that I had art scanned for so this really helps a lot even with the slow loading.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2014-02-06 22:39:42
I guess a better question is, is it possible to make it search my harddrive for album hard before searching lastfm? I assumed it would default to this but that doesn't seem to be the case and I don't see an option for it.


no. there are caching options though. i'm not sure if they're on by default or not. with it switched on, you obviously won't have any delay next time you listen to the album.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2014-02-07 09:54:41
I made a quick test about fetching album covers, works ok. but i can't recieve album info text from echonest, seems that this metod doesn't exist. So there is no point to have covers without text info...
It's easy to scratch album and bio text from last.fm web. Good question is why not use the web, instead echonest..
I test biography on echonest myself(i edited bio on last.fm) and found that this text on echonest is updated after 1 month.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Speech on 2014-02-08 14:33:17
2. is it possible to make whis plugin automaticly save albumart in album playing folder?

Go to >Preferences, Tools, Biography Server, Last.fm,  then the Album tab
then in the image: space put this
$replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,)Albumart

My album folders already have a folder.jpg file, but my compilation folders don't have album art for each track.

With this code
Code: [Select]
$replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,)[%artist% - ][%album%]
you can populate compilation folders with "artist - album" covers. But the downside is that it will also create "artist - album" file where there is already a folder.jpg.

So, is there a hack so that it doesn't create a new file if folder.jpg already exists in the same folder?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2014-02-08 14:47:13
nope.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: StealthX on 2014-04-30 17:47:40
Is it possible to make this not put half of words on a line? Like say a line ends in the word 'publication' on here it might show 'publi' and then when I scroll down on puts the entire word on the next line, can I just make it not end any line with half words and just put the entire word on the next line?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ganon on 2014-05-30 23:17:46
have a look at the server preferences. i think you can add other sources.

I just saw this, something I've always wanted to do...but don't know how. Please Help. Thanks.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2014-05-31 17:43:11
have a look at the server preferences. i think you can add other sources.

I just saw this, something I've always wanted to do...but don't know how. Please Help. Thanks.


Try ex. this: http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php...st&p=841216 (http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=70955&view=findpost&p=841216)

Save text as: lastfm_bio.vbs
Text: ''ENTER YOUR FOLDER'' replace with your custom folder where to save biography text.
Put this file in foobar main folder.
In preferences>tools>biography server>run external script  -On ''command line'' write: cscript //U //nologo lastfm_bio.vbs "$meta(artist,0)"
Set character code to: UTF16.

Add ''run external script'' in source list, after last.fm.

Script use echonest.
Dont now if this still work, i don't use foo_uie_biography anymore.
Try..
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ganon on 2014-06-02 22:15:20
have a look at the server preferences. i think you can add other sources.

I just saw this, something I've always wanted to do...but don't know how. Please Help. Thanks.


Try ex. this: http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php...st&p=841216 (http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=70955&view=findpost&p=841216)

Save text as: lastfm_bio.vbs
Text: ''ENTER YOUR FOLDER'' replace with your custom folder where to save biography text.
Put this file in foobar main folder.
In preferences>tools>biography server>run external script  -On ''command line'' write: cscript //U //nologo lastfm_bio.vbs "$meta(artist,0)"
Set character code to: UTF16.

Add ''run external script'' in source list, after last.fm.

Script use echonest.
Dont now if this still work, i don't use foo_uie_biography anymore.
Try..


Thanks. I did as you instructed above. Nothing happens. Where ''ENTER YOUR FOLDER'', custom folder, is with or without quotes...?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2014-06-03 01:53:27
have a look at the server preferences. i think you can add other sources.

I just saw this, something I've always wanted to do...but don't know how. Please Help. Thanks.


Try ex. this: http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php...st&p=841216 (http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=70955&view=findpost&p=841216)

Save text as: lastfm_bio.vbs
Text: ''ENTER YOUR FOLDER'' replace with your custom folder where to save biography text.
Put this file in foobar main folder.
In preferences>tools>biography server>run external script  -On ''command line'' write: cscript //U //nologo lastfm_bio.vbs "$meta(artist,0)"
Set character code to: UTF16.

Add ''run external script'' in source list, after last.fm.

Script use echonest.
Dont now if this still work, i don't use foo_uie_biography anymore.
Try..


Thanks. I did as you instructed above. Nothing happens. Where ''ENTER YOUR FOLDER'', custom folder, is with or without quotes...?


With quotes, it looks like this: folder = "C:\foobar2000\biography"

It should work, i tested API it's ok.

Uups, sorry.
In tools>Biography Server: ''Run External Script'' should be first in list.
I tested with foo_uie_biography it works.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ganon on 2014-06-03 06:42:12
have a look at the server preferences. i think you can add other sources.

I just saw this, something I've always wanted to do...but don't know how. Please Help. Thanks.


Try ex. this: http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php...st&p=841216 (http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=70955&view=findpost&p=841216)

Save text as: lastfm_bio.vbs
Text: ''ENTER YOUR FOLDER'' replace with your custom folder where to save biography text.
Put this file in foobar main folder.
In preferences>tools>biography server>run external script  -On ''command line'' write: cscript //U //nologo lastfm_bio.vbs "$meta(artist,0)"
Set character code to: UTF16.

Add ''run external script'' in source list, after last.fm.

Script use echonest.
Dont now if this still work, i don't use foo_uie_biography anymore.
Try..


Thanks. I did as you instructed above. Nothing happens. Where ''ENTER YOUR FOLDER'', custom folder, is with or without quotes...?


With quotes, it looks like this: folder = "C:\foobar2000\biography"

It should work, i tested API it's ok.

Uups, sorry.
In tools>Biography Server: ''Run External Script'' should be first in list.
I tested with foo_uie_biography it works.


OK, done as you said. I see the .txt  files in my custom folder, but I thought this info would show up in the BIO in Foobar...maybe this is not what I've been looking for...also, it only downloads artist info not album...thx again for your help and any suggestions you may offer.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2014-06-03 11:36:25
OK, done as you said. I see the .txt  files in my custom folder, but I thought this info would show up in the BIO in Foobar...maybe this is not what I've been looking for...also, it only downloads artist info not album...thx again for your help and any suggestions you may offer.


Well you didnt set something right. It shows text in foobar panel.
You have other scripts for album somewhere. Here: http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php...0955&st=625 (http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=70955&st=625)
Ask Romor for help..
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ganon on 2014-06-03 15:06:30
OK, done as you said. I see the .txt  files in my custom folder, but I thought this info would show up in the BIO in Foobar...maybe this is not what I've been looking for...also, it only downloads artist info not album...thx again for your help and any suggestions you may offer.


Well you didnt set something right. It shows text in foobar panel.
You have other scripts for album somewhere. Here: http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php...0955&st=625 (http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=70955&st=625)
Ask Romor for help..


OK, thanks mire777. It works now with the link you gave me to Romor's comments. Now I need to find a way to do this with album info...and thx again for all your help. Much appreciated.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ganon on 2014-06-03 18:14:07
This is my script, I use it for some time, and works perfectly.
This is modified Romor's script. It hase future to save Bio.txt files, and display them later..
It first search for: last.fm bio, if not found > then search for Wikipedia bio, if not found > then display text(I don't like blank panel).
*You can enter your own text.
You must enter path location, where to save Bio.txt files.
THANKS ROMOR FOR THIS SCRIPT..





Code: [Select]
folder = "ENTER YOUR FOLDER"
On Error resume Next
With CreateObject("ADODB.Stream")
.Open
.Type = 2
.Charset = "utf-8"
.LoadFromFile folder & "\" & WScript.Arguments.Item(0) & ".txt"
If Len(.Size) > 1 Then
WScript.Echo .ReadText
.Close
Else
.WriteText WScript.Arguments.Item(0)
.Flush
.Position = 0
.Type = 1
.Read = 3
For i = 1 To .Size-3
param = param & "%" & Hex(AscB(.Read(1)))
Next
.Close
Set xml = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.6.0") : xml.async = False
xml.load("http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=OQMRCUVWC6PULGN2G&license=cc-by-sa&format=xml&name=" & param)
bio = xml.selectSingleNode("/response/biographies/biography/text[../site='last.fm']").text
If Len(bio) Then
bio = Replace(Replace(bio, ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf), ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf)
.Open
.Type = 2
.Position = 0
.Charset = "utf-8"
.WriteText bio
.SaveToFile folder & "\" & WScript.Arguments.Item(0) & ".txt"
.Close
WScript.Echo bio

Else

Set xml = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.6.0") : xml.async = False
xml.load("http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=OQMRCUVWC6PULGN2G&license=cc-by-sa&format=xml&name=" & param)
bio = xml.selectSingleNode("/response/biographies/biography/text[../site='last.fm']").text
If Len(bio) Then
bio = Replace(Replace(bio, ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf), ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf)
.Open
.Type = 2
.Position = 0
.Charset = "utf-8"
.WriteText bio
.SaveToFile folder & "\" & WScript.Arguments.Item(0) & ".txt"
.Close
WScript.Echo bio

Else

Set xml = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.6.0") : xml.async = False
xml.load("http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=OQMRCUVWC6PULGN2G&license=cc-by-sa&format=xml&name=" & param)
bio = (("WIKIPEDIA:" & vbCrLf & vbCrLf)) & xml.selectSingleNode("/response/biographies/biography/text[../site='wikipedia']").text
If Len(bio) Then
bio = Replace(Replace(bio, ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf), ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf)
.Open
.Type = 2
.Position = 0
.Charset = "utf-8"
.WriteText bio
.SaveToFile folder & "\" & WScript.Arguments.Item(0) & ".txt"
.Close
WScript.Echo bio


Else

WScript.Echo "We can't find biography for this artist. Maybe your tags are incorrect or you lose internet connection. Please note that latest one tag ''artist'' must be corrected field.. If your tag is alredy properly field, that means that thoes artist is unknown, or you enter misspeled name. Also when you played radio stream, some station does not send information about artist, so this also causes problem." & vbCrLf & "Thank you for understending.." & vbCrLf & "For further information, and posible solution, check this site:" & vbCrLf & "http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=70955." & vbCrLf & "Your Foobar theam.."


End If
End If
End If
End If
End With


Hello again mire777. Do you have a similar script for album info...? The one for artist works just fine. Thanks
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ganon on 2014-06-03 19:25:21
This is my script, I use it for some time, and works perfectly.
This is modified Romor's script. It hase future to save Bio.txt files, and display them later..
It first search for: last.fm bio, if not found > then search for Wikipedia bio, if not found > then display text(I don't like blank panel).
*You can enter your own text.
You must enter path location, where to save Bio.txt files.
THANKS ROMOR FOR THIS SCRIPT..





Code: [Select]
folder = "ENTER YOUR FOLDER"
On Error resume Next
With CreateObject("ADODB.Stream")
.Open
.Type = 2
.Charset = "utf-8"
.LoadFromFile folder & "\" & WScript.Arguments.Item(0) & ".txt"
If Len(.Size) > 1 Then
WScript.Echo .ReadText
.Close
Else
.WriteText WScript.Arguments.Item(0)
.Flush
.Position = 0
.Type = 1
.Read = 3
For i = 1 To .Size-3
param = param & "%" & Hex(AscB(.Read(1)))
Next
.Close
Set xml = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.6.0") : xml.async = False
xml.load("http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=OQMRCUVWC6PULGN2G&license=cc-by-sa&format=xml&name=" & param)
bio = xml.selectSingleNode("/response/biographies/biography/text[../site='last.fm']").text
If Len(bio) Then
bio = Replace(Replace(bio, ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf), ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf)
.Open
.Type = 2
.Position = 0
.Charset = "utf-8"
.WriteText bio
.SaveToFile folder & "\" & WScript.Arguments.Item(0) & ".txt"
.Close
WScript.Echo bio

Else

Set xml = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.6.0") : xml.async = False
xml.load("http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=OQMRCUVWC6PULGN2G&license=cc-by-sa&format=xml&name=" & param)
bio = xml.selectSingleNode("/response/biographies/biography/text[../site='last.fm']").text
If Len(bio) Then
bio = Replace(Replace(bio, ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf), ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf)
.Open
.Type = 2
.Position = 0
.Charset = "utf-8"
.WriteText bio
.SaveToFile folder & "\" & WScript.Arguments.Item(0) & ".txt"
.Close
WScript.Echo bio

Else

Set xml = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.6.0") : xml.async = False
xml.load("http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=OQMRCUVWC6PULGN2G&license=cc-by-sa&format=xml&name=" & param)
bio = (("WIKIPEDIA:" & vbCrLf & vbCrLf)) & xml.selectSingleNode("/response/biographies/biography/text[../site='wikipedia']").text
If Len(bio) Then
bio = Replace(Replace(bio, ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf), ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf)
.Open
.Type = 2
.Position = 0
.Charset = "utf-8"
.WriteText bio
.SaveToFile folder & "\" & WScript.Arguments.Item(0) & ".txt"
.Close
WScript.Echo bio


Else

WScript.Echo "We can't find biography for this artist. Maybe your tags are incorrect or you lose internet connection. Please note that latest one tag ''artist'' must be corrected field.. If your tag is alredy properly field, that means that thoes artist is unknown, or you enter misspeled name. Also when you played radio stream, some station does not send information about artist, so this also causes problem." & vbCrLf & "Thank you for understending.." & vbCrLf & "For further information, and posible solution, check this site:" & vbCrLf & "http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=70955." & vbCrLf & "Your Foobar theam.."


End If
End If
End If
End If
End With


Hello again mire777. Do you have a similar script for album info...? The one for artist works just fine. Thanks.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ganon on 2014-06-03 19:51:21
This is my script, I use it for some time, and works perfectly.
This is modified Romor's script. It hase future to save Bio.txt files, and display them later..
It first search for: last.fm bio, if not found > then search for Wikipedia bio, if not found > then display text(I don't like blank panel).
*You can enter your own text.
You must enter path location, where to save Bio.txt files.
THANKS ROMOR FOR THIS SCRIPT..





Code: [Select]
folder = "ENTER YOUR FOLDER"
On Error resume Next
With CreateObject("ADODB.Stream")
.Open
.Type = 2
.Charset = "utf-8"
.LoadFromFile folder & "\" & WScript.Arguments.Item(0) & ".txt"
If Len(.Size) > 1 Then
WScript.Echo .ReadText
.Close
Else
.WriteText WScript.Arguments.Item(0)
.Flush
.Position = 0
.Type = 1
.Read = 3
For i = 1 To .Size-3
param = param & "%" & Hex(AscB(.Read(1)))
Next
.Close
Set xml = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.6.0") : xml.async = False
xml.load("http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=OQMRCUVWC6PULGN2G&license=cc-by-sa&format=xml&name=" & param)
bio = xml.selectSingleNode("/response/biographies/biography/text[../site='last.fm']").text
If Len(bio) Then
bio = Replace(Replace(bio, ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf), ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf)
.Open
.Type = 2
.Position = 0
.Charset = "utf-8"
.WriteText bio
.SaveToFile folder & "\" & WScript.Arguments.Item(0) & ".txt"
.Close
WScript.Echo bio

Else

Set xml = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.6.0") : xml.async = False
xml.load("http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=OQMRCUVWC6PULGN2G&license=cc-by-sa&format=xml&name=" & param)
bio = xml.selectSingleNode("/response/biographies/biography/text[../site='last.fm']").text
If Len(bio) Then
bio = Replace(Replace(bio, ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf), ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf)
.Open
.Type = 2
.Position = 0
.Charset = "utf-8"
.WriteText bio
.SaveToFile folder & "\" & WScript.Arguments.Item(0) & ".txt"
.Close
WScript.Echo bio

Else

Set xml = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.6.0") : xml.async = False
xml.load("http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/artist/biographies?api_key=OQMRCUVWC6PULGN2G&license=cc-by-sa&format=xml&name=" & param)
bio = (("WIKIPEDIA:" & vbCrLf & vbCrLf)) & xml.selectSingleNode("/response/biographies/biography/text[../site='wikipedia']").text
If Len(bio) Then
bio = Replace(Replace(bio, ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf), ".  ",  "." & vbCrLf & vbCrLf)
.Open
.Type = 2
.Position = 0
.Charset = "utf-8"
.WriteText bio
.SaveToFile folder & "\" & WScript.Arguments.Item(0) & ".txt"
.Close
WScript.Echo bio


Else

WScript.Echo "We can't find biography for this artist. Maybe your tags are incorrect or you lose internet connection. Please note that latest one tag ''artist'' must be corrected field.. If your tag is alredy properly field, that means that thoes artist is unknown, or you enter misspeled name. Also when you played radio stream, some station does not send information about artist, so this also causes problem." & vbCrLf & "Thank you for understending.." & vbCrLf & "For further information, and posible solution, check this site:" & vbCrLf & "http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=70955." & vbCrLf & "Your Foobar theam.."


End If
End If
End If
End If
End With


Hello again mire777. Do you have a similar script for album info...? The one for artist works just fine. Thanks.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ganon on 2014-06-03 19:53:48
OK, done as you said. I see the .txt  files in my custom folder, but I thought this info would show up in the BIO in Foobar...maybe this is not what I've been looking for...also, it only downloads artist info not album...thx again for your help and any suggestions you may offer.


Well you didnt set something right. It shows text in foobar panel.
You have other scripts for album somewhere. Here: http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php...0955&st=625 (http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=70955&st=625)
Ask Romor for help..


Everything works fine now. Just need to know if there is a similar script for additional album info...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2014-06-03 20:38:35
Hello again mire777. Do you have a similar script for album info...? The one for artist works just fine. Thanks.


Yes. Try this, script works with last.fm API. As i remmember, should be better than default - has more info.
Shows Album tracks also.

Code: [Select]
DisplayAlbumTracks = 1

Set ARG = WScript.Arguments

If ARG.Count <> 2 Then
  WScript.Echo "Usage: cscript //nologo lastfm_album.vbs ""%artist%"" ""%title%"""
  WScript.Quit()
Else
  If Arg(0) <> "?" And Arg(1) <> "?" Then
  LfmInfo ARG(0), ARG(1)
End If
End If

Function LfmInfo(artist, track)
  Set XML = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.6.0")
  ws = "http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/?method="
  api = StrReverse("9c8f955632698c23323d4b2c7a77030") & Chr(100) : q = Chr(34)

  XML.loadXML(Request(ws & "track.getinfo&api_key=" &_
  api & "&artist=" & artist & "&track=" & track))
  Set X = XML.selectSingleNode("lfm/track/album/title")
    If Not X Is Nothing Then album = X.text : rel = "Artist: " & q & artist & q & vbCrLf & "Album: " & q & album & q & vbCrLf End If
  Set X = XML.selectSingleNode("lfm/track/mbid")
    If Not X Is Nothing Then track_mbid = X.text End If
  Set X = XML.selectSingleNode("lfm/track/artist/mbid")
    If Not X Is Nothing Then artist_mbid = X.text End If


    If album <> "" Then
    XML.loadXML(Request(ws & "album.getinfo&api_key=" &_
    api & "&artist=" & artist & "&album=" & album))
    Set X = XML.selectSingleNode("lfm/album/mbid")
    If Not X Is Nothing Then album_mbid = X.text End If
    Set X = XML.selectSingleNode("lfm/album/releasedate")
    If Not X Is Nothing Then
      If X.text <> "" Then
        rel = Left(rel, Len(rel)-2) & vbCrLf & "Released on " & Mid(X.text, 1, InStr(X.text, ",")-1) & vbCrLf
      End If
      End If
    Set X = XML.selectSingleNode("lfm/album/wiki/content")
    If Not X Is Nothing Then
      If X.text <> "" Then rel = rel & vbCrLf & "ALBUM INFO:" & vbCrLf & DropHtml(X.text) & vbCrLf End If
     End If
     End If

  If DisplayAlbumTracks Then
    Set X = XML.selectNodes("lfm/album/tracks/track")
    If Not X Is Nothing Then
      For Each t In X
        If LCase(track) = LCase(t.selectSingleNode("name").text) Then p = "*" Else p = "  " End If
        trklst = trklst & p & Space(Len(t.getAttribute("rank")) mod 2) & t.getAttribute("rank") & ". " &_
        t.selectSingleNode("name").text & vbCrLf
      Next
    If trklst <> "" Then trklst = "ALBUM TRACKLIST: " & vbCrLf & trklst End If
    End If
    End If

  If DisplayAlbumTracks Then rel = rel & vbCrLf & trklst End If
  WScript.Echo "" & rel

End Function

Function DropHtml(s)
  Set HTML = CreateObject("HtmlFile")
  HTML.write s
  DropHtml = HTML.body.innerText
End Function

Function Request(url)
  Set HTTP = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")
  HTTP.open "GET", url, 0
  HTTP.send ""
  If Err.number <> 0 then
   WScript.Echo "Error: " & HTTP.parseError.url & vbCrLf & HTTP.parseError.Reason
   WScript.Quit()
End If
  Request = HTTP.responseText
End Function


Save this as ''lastfm_album.vbs''.
Put script in main foobar folder.

Go to Preferences>tools>Run External Script>Album
On Command line enter this text:

cscript //nologo lastfm_album.vbs "%artist%" "%title%"

Set Character Code to: utf8
Click ''Add New'' > Apply.

In Preferences>Tools>Biography server
''Run External Script'' should be first in list.

I can't test this, i'm on work now.
So, Try it yourself.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ganon on 2014-06-04 15:21:01
Hello again mire777. Do you have a similar script for album info...? The one for artist works just fine. Thanks.


Yes. Try this, script works with last.fm API. As i remmember, should be better than default - has more info.
Shows Album tracks also.

Code: [Select]
DisplayAlbumTracks = 1

Set ARG = WScript.Arguments

If ARG.Count <> 2 Then
  WScript.Echo "Usage: cscript //nologo lastfm_album.vbs ""%artist%"" ""%title%"""
  WScript.Quit()
Else
  If Arg(0) <> "?" And Arg(1) <> "?" Then
  LfmInfo ARG(0), ARG(1)
End If
End If

Function LfmInfo(artist, track)
  Set XML = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.6.0")
  ws = "http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/?method="
  api = StrReverse("9c8f955632698c23323d4b2c7a77030") & Chr(100) : q = Chr(34)

  XML.loadXML(Request(ws & "track.getinfo&api_key=" &_
  api & "&artist=" & artist & "&track=" & track))
  Set X = XML.selectSingleNode("lfm/track/album/title")
    If Not X Is Nothing Then album = X.text : rel = "Artist: " & q & artist & q & vbCrLf & "Album: " & q & album & q & vbCrLf End If
  Set X = XML.selectSingleNode("lfm/track/mbid")
    If Not X Is Nothing Then track_mbid = X.text End If
  Set X = XML.selectSingleNode("lfm/track/artist/mbid")
    If Not X Is Nothing Then artist_mbid = X.text End If


    If album <> "" Then
    XML.loadXML(Request(ws & "album.getinfo&api_key=" &_
    api & "&artist=" & artist & "&album=" & album))
    Set X = XML.selectSingleNode("lfm/album/mbid")
    If Not X Is Nothing Then album_mbid = X.text End If
    Set X = XML.selectSingleNode("lfm/album/releasedate")
    If Not X Is Nothing Then
      If X.text <> "" Then
        rel = Left(rel, Len(rel)-2) & vbCrLf & "Released on " & Mid(X.text, 1, InStr(X.text, ",")-1) & vbCrLf
      End If
      End If
    Set X = XML.selectSingleNode("lfm/album/wiki/content")
    If Not X Is Nothing Then
      If X.text <> "" Then rel = rel & vbCrLf & "ALBUM INFO:" & vbCrLf & DropHtml(X.text) & vbCrLf End If
     End If
     End If

  If DisplayAlbumTracks Then
    Set X = XML.selectNodes("lfm/album/tracks/track")
    If Not X Is Nothing Then
      For Each t In X
        If LCase(track) = LCase(t.selectSingleNode("name").text) Then p = "*" Else p = "  " End If
        trklst = trklst & p & Space(Len(t.getAttribute("rank")) mod 2) & t.getAttribute("rank") & ". " &_
        t.selectSingleNode("name").text & vbCrLf
      Next
    If trklst <> "" Then trklst = "ALBUM TRACKLIST: " & vbCrLf & trklst End If
    End If
    End If

  If DisplayAlbumTracks Then rel = rel & vbCrLf & trklst End If
  WScript.Echo "" & rel

End Function

Function DropHtml(s)
  Set HTML = CreateObject("HtmlFile")
  HTML.write s
  DropHtml = HTML.body.innerText
End Function

Function Request(url)
  Set HTTP = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")
  HTTP.open "GET", url, 0
  HTTP.send ""
  If Err.number <> 0 then
   WScript.Echo "Error: " & HTTP.parseError.url & vbCrLf & HTTP.parseError.Reason
   WScript.Quit()
End If
  Request = HTTP.responseText
End Function


Save this as ''lastfm_album.vbs''.
Put script in main foobar folder.

Go to Preferences>tools>Run External Script>Album
On Command line enter this text:

cscript //nologo lastfm_album.vbs "%artist%" "%title%"

Set Character Code to: utf8
Click ''Add New'' > Apply.

In Preferences>Tools>Biography server
''Run External Script'' should be first in list.

I can't test this, i'm on work now.
So, Try it yourself.


Many thanks, however, I'm getting the following error: "Cscript error: execution of the Windows script host failed. (Not enough storage is available to complete this operation.)" Please advise...

Edit: Got it working now, but it's showing the wrong album in almost every track I play. Also in some it just gives the album name and tracks and nothing more...

Edit: This not entirely true...it takes more than 15 secs. to show the album info, and it will only show the right info when the 2nd track is played. Also, the track names have to be exactly as they appear on the album. If I had a comment in brackets beside the track name, then the script can't find the album...it seems this boils down to a tagging issue, but the 2nd track thing must be something in the script...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2014-06-04 17:50:22
Many thanks, however, I'm getting the following error: "Cscript error: execution of the Windows script host failed. (Not enough storage is available to complete this operation.)" Please advise...

Edit: Got it working now, but it's showing the wrong album in almost every track I play. Also in some it just gives the album name and tracks and nothing more...

Edit: This not entirely true...it takes more than 15 secs. to show the album info, and it will only show the right info when the 2nd track is played. Also, the track names have to be exactly as they appear on the album. If I had a comment in brackets beside the track name, then the script can't find the album...it seems this boils down to a tagging issue, but the 2nd track thing must be something in the script...


Script check for albums by %artist% %track%.
On command line write this: cscript //nologo lastfm_album.vbs "%artist%" "%album%"
If you have problem with track names, this is problem by you> But if you have correctly tagged %album% field it will show exactly album then.
If on last.fm you don't have text for this album then it will only show tracks.
2nd track thing is probably problem with foo_uie_biography itself not in script(slow internet acces etc.. , or something not set right), because i always receive album info i cant reproduce this behavior..
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ganon on 2014-06-04 18:28:21
Many thanks, however, I'm getting the following error: "Cscript error: execution of the Windows script host failed. (Not enough storage is available to complete this operation.)" Please advise...

Edit: Got it working now, but it's showing the wrong album in almost every track I play. Also in some it just gives the album name and tracks and nothing more...

Edit: This not entirely true...it takes more than 15 secs. to show the album info, and it will only show the right info when the 2nd track is played. Also, the track names have to be exactly as they appear on the album. If I had a comment in brackets beside the track name, then the script can't find the album...it seems this boils down to a tagging issue, but the 2nd track thing must be something in the script...


Script check for albums by %artist% %track%.
On command line write this: cscript //nologo lastfm_album.vbs "%artist%" "%album%"
If you have problem with track names, this is problem by you> But if you have correctly tagged %album% field it will show exactly album then.
If on last.fm you don't have text for this album then it will only show tracks.
2nd track thing is probably problem with foo_uie_biography itself not in script(slow internet acces etc.. , or something not set right), because i always receive album info i cant reproduce this behavior..


Ok, thx. "Script check for albums by %artist% %track%". -here, am I supposed to replace certain line(s) in the script...?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ganon on 2014-06-05 02:09:38
Many thanks, however, I'm getting the following error: "Cscript error: execution of the Windows script host failed. (Not enough storage is available to complete this operation.)" Please advise...

Edit: Got it working now, but it's showing the wrong album in almost every track I play. Also in some it just gives the album name and tracks and nothing more...

Edit: This not entirely true...it takes more than 15 secs. to show the album info, and it will only show the right info when the 2nd track is played. Also, the track names have to be exactly as they appear on the album. If I had a comment in brackets beside the track name, then the script can't find the album...it seems this boils down to a tagging issue, but the 2nd track thing must be something in the script...


Script check for albums by %artist% %track%.
On command line write this: cscript //nologo lastfm_album.vbs "%artist%" "%album%"
If you have problem with track names, this is problem by you> But if you have correctly tagged %album% field it will show exactly album then.
If on last.fm you don't have text for this album then it will only show tracks.
2nd track thing is probably problem with foo_uie_biography itself not in script(slow internet acces etc.. , or something not set right), because i always receive album info i cant reproduce this behavior..


Ok, thx. "Script check for albums by %artist% %track%". -here, am I supposed to replace certain line(s) in the script...?


Please disregard my comment above. Thx
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ganon on 2014-06-05 02:49:38
Many thanks, however, I'm getting the following error: "Cscript error: execution of the Windows script host failed. (Not enough storage is available to complete this operation.)" Please advise...

Edit: Got it working now, but it's showing the wrong album in almost every track I play. Also in some it just gives the album name and tracks and nothing more...

Edit: This not entirely true...it takes more than 15 secs. to show the album info, and it will only show the right info when the 2nd track is played. Also, the track names have to be exactly as they appear on the album. If I had a comment in brackets beside the track name, then the script can't find the album...it seems this boils down to a tagging issue, but the 2nd track thing must be something in the script...


Script check for albums by %artist% %track%.
On command line write this: cscript //nologo lastfm_album.vbs "%artist%" "%album%"
If you have problem with track names, this is problem by you> But if you have correctly tagged %album% field it will show exactly album then.
If on last.fm you don't have text for this album then it will only show tracks.
2nd track thing is probably problem with foo_uie_biography itself not in script(slow internet acces etc.. , or something not set right), because i always receive album info i cant reproduce this behavior..


Ok, thx. "Script check for albums by %artist% %track%". -here, am I supposed to replace certain line(s) in the script...?


Please disregard my comment above. Thx


No change with your suggestions above. Still returning the wrong album...seems to me,  the script is still looking first at the track, then looking for the first album it finds the track in. So, it return  "Compilations", or "Greatest Hits", or "The Best of...", etc. where it finds the track, but it's hardly ever the album I have in the tag...also, obviously if the next track is not in the previous album it returns the next album it finds, but never the one in the tag, with a few exceptions of course, those being albums whose artists don't have "Compilations," or "Best of..." etc...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2014-06-05 08:29:27
No change with your suggestions above. Still returning the wrong album...seems to me,  the script is still looking first at the track, then looking for the first album it finds the track in. So, it return  "Compilations", or "Greatest Hits", or "The Best of...", etc. where it finds the track, but it's hardly ever the album I have in the tag...also, obviously if the next track is not in the previous album it returns the next album it finds, but never the one in the tag, with a few exceptions of course, those being albums whose artists don't have "Compilations," or "Best of..." etc...


Ok seems that this metod not work for you, and it's waste of time to modify script.
So try this: http://pastebin.com/a5s7PSNn (http://pastebin.com/a5s7PSNn)

Save text as: allmusic.vbs
Put file in main foobar folder.
Set character code(ANSI) - (if you later get a problem with some text characters, change this to UTF8 or UTF16)
On command line write this: cscript //nologo allmusic.vbs "%album artist%" "%album%" review|bio

This is Romor's script that can be used to display artist biography and album review according to allmusic.com
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ganon on 2014-06-06 01:22:36
No change with your suggestions above. Still returning the wrong album...seems to me,  the script is still looking first at the track, then looking for the first album it finds the track in. So, it return  "Compilations", or "Greatest Hits", or "The Best of...", etc. where it finds the track, but it's hardly ever the album I have in the tag...also, obviously if the next track is not in the previous album it returns the next album it finds, but never the one in the tag, with a few exceptions of course, those being albums whose artists don't have "Compilations," or "Best of..." etc...


Ok seems that this metod not work for you, and it's waste of time to modify script.
So try this: http://pastebin.com/a5s7PSNn (http://pastebin.com/a5s7PSNn)

Save text as: allmusic.vbs
Put file in main foobar folder.
Set character code(ANSI) - (if you later get a problem with some text characters, change this to UTF8 or UTF16)
On command line write this: cscript //nologo allmusic.vbs "%album artist%" "%album%" review|bio

This is Romor's script that can be used to display artist biography and album review according to allmusic.com


Well! Finally, the allmusic script works for me; I'm really amazed at how you all write these scripts! Thanks for all your help and support, mire777. Take good care. Cheers.

(Edit: Just for the record, in my opinion as to what I've been seeing so far, allmusic is far more comprehensive than lastfm for album info, however, for artist info, lastfm is superior).
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ganon on 2014-06-12 14:43:13
No change with your suggestions above. Still returning the wrong album...seems to me,  the script is still looking first at the track, then looking for the first album it finds the track in. So, it return  "Compilations", or "Greatest Hits", or "The Best of...", etc. where it finds the track, but it's hardly ever the album I have in the tag...also, obviously if the next track is not in the previous album it returns the next album it finds, but never the one in the tag, with a few exceptions of course, those being albums whose artists don't have "Compilations," or "Best of..." etc...


Ok seems that this metod not work for you, and it's waste of time to modify script.
So try this: http://pastebin.com/a5s7PSNn (http://pastebin.com/a5s7PSNn)

Save text as: allmusic.vbs
Put file in main foobar folder.
Set character code(ANSI) - (if you later get a problem with some text characters, change this to UTF8 or UTF16)
On command line write this: cscript //nologo allmusic.vbs "%album artist%" "%album%" review|bio

This is Romor's script that can be used to display artist biography and album review according to allmusic.com


Well! Finally, the allmusic script works for me; I'm really amazed at how you all write these scripts! Thanks for all your help and support, mire777. Take good care. Cheers.

(Edit: Just for the record, in my opinion as to what I've been seeing so far, allmusic is far more comprehensive than lastfm for album info, however, for artist info, lastfm is superior).


Hello again, are multiple languages supported in last. fm and/or Wikipedia...?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2014-06-12 18:49:05
Hello again, are multiple languages supported in last. fm and/or Wikipedia...?


For echonest which pull info from wikipedia and last.fm - no.
For allmusic.com don't now?

You can set language in default foo_uie_biography, but then you should not use scripts...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ganon on 2014-06-13 18:24:59
Hello again, are multiple languages supported in last. fm and/or Wikipedia...?


For echonest which pull info from wikipedia and last.fm - no.
For allmusic.com don't now?

You can set language in default foo_uie_biography, but then you should not use scripts...


Thx, mire. That's what I thought, however, is there a way to add allmusic to the available source list in Biography View: Preferences...or is this not necessary? I ask because the album.vbs script does not read the album info in allmusic. When I google an album, for example the Barry Lyndon soundtrack, I get: "Barry Lyndon (Music from the Soundtrack)" in allmusic. com with a full description, and when I put this in the album tag, it simply defaults to the image that is in that allmusic page, but it does not pick up the description. Is this the way it works...? Thx again for your time.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2014-06-13 20:56:58
Hello again, are multiple languages supported in last. fm and/or Wikipedia...?


For echonest which pull info from wikipedia and last.fm - no.
For allmusic.com don't now?

You can set language in default foo_uie_biography, but then you should not use scripts...


Thx, mire. That's what I thought, however, is there a way to add allmusic to the available source list in Biography View: Preferences...or is this not necessary? I ask because the album.vbs script does not read the album info in allmusic. When I google an album, for example the Barry Lyndon soundtrack, I get: "Barry Lyndon (Music from the Soundtrack)" in allmusic. com with a full description, and when I put this in the album tag, it simply defaults to the image that is in that allmusic page, but it does not pick up the description. Is this the way it works...? Thx again for your time.


No, not possible to add allmusic in source list. This is not necessary at all... Component loads allmusic.vbs, through: ''run external script''.
About second question - i really don't know, this is Romor script so he can answer about how this work...

This plugin is really great, but it is outdated..
I only hope that someone will update this component in some time, and allow as to add more sources, especially for images. We can write script that can catch images, but it's not possible that component shows img. on track change. Only after track is finished it can show more than one image.
If anyone knows where is developer, or have skills to make new biography plugin, i would like to know this?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: ganon on 2014-06-14 16:18:53
Hello again, are multiple languages supported in last. fm and/or Wikipedia...?


For echonest which pull info from wikipedia and last.fm - no.
For allmusic.com don't now?

You can set language in default foo_uie_biography, but then you should not use scripts...


Thx, mire. That's what I thought, however, is there a way to add allmusic to the available source list in Biography View: Preferences...or is this not necessary? I ask because the album.vbs script does not read the album info in allmusic. When I google an album, for example the Barry Lyndon soundtrack, I get: "Barry Lyndon (Music from the Soundtrack)" in allmusic. com with a full description, and when I put this in the album tag, it simply defaults to the image that is in that allmusic page, but it does not pick up the description. Is this the way it works...? Thx again for your time.


No, not possible to add allmusic in source list. This is not necessary at all... Component loads allmusic.vbs, through: ''run external script''.
About second question - i really don't know, this is Romor script so he can answer about how this work...

This plugin is really great, but it is outdated..
I only hope that someone will update this component in some time, and allow as to add more sources, especially for images. We can write script that can catch images, but it's not possible that component shows img. on track change. Only after track is finished it can show more than one image.
If anyone knows where is developer, or have skills to make new biography plugin, i would like to know this?


OK. Thanks for the info. I've checked other posts and Romor's comments are more than 2 years old. I guess the only way to get hold of him would be with a PM...but who has his email...?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: edmscan on 2014-09-07 19:09:28
I am wondering if I can supply a default image in the BIO area when there is no image found .. ?  It is just annoying to see nothing when nothing is found. Fortunately this is rare.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: orbtwin on 2014-11-06 22:25:51
there's a way to "auto-download" artist image in jpg mode?...i have an old track info mod panel showing the artists images manual downloaded.
into the panel right click there's an option to manually save, but i want to do auto

Code: [Select]
//Artists Pictures
$puts(pos.horizon2,$muldiv(%_height%,4,7))
$puts(pos.shadow2,100)
$puts(pos.artx2,$sub($div(%_width%,2),868))
$puts(pos.arty2,$sub($get(pos.horizon2),167))
$puts(path.noartist,/images/cui/noartist.png)
$puts(path.artistPath,$if($fileexists(Z:\artists pictures\%artist%.jpg),Z:\artists pictures\%artist%.jpg,$get(path.noartist)))
$puts(text.noartist,no picture)
$puts(text.artist,$if($fileexists(Z:\artists pictures\%artist%.jpg),%artist%,$get(text.noartist)))



but i want to do the work in auto mode, saving pictures in jpg.
it's possible?
thanks
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: FritzLn on 2015-03-01 18:12:37
is the allmusic script still working? i followed the directions from post 775, but I'm not getting anything. thanks
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2015-03-01 18:20:30
if all you want is a review, i have a script for WSH panel mod that works.

http://marc2003.x10host.com/allmusic-review (http://marc2003.x10host.com/allmusic-review)

check the Setup page for download links and instructions.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: FritzLn on 2015-03-01 18:33:50
if all you want is a review, i have a script for WSH panel mod that works.

http://marc2003.x10host.com/allmusic-review (http://marc2003.x10host.com/allmusic-review)

check the Setup page for download links and instructions.


awesome, thank you.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mjm716 on 2015-03-09 01:10:30
if all you want is a review, i have a script for WSH panel mod that works.

http://marc2003.x10host.com/allmusic-review (http://marc2003.x10host.com/allmusic-review)

check the Setup page for download links and instructions.



Just wondering - any reason this only grabs album reviews and not biographies? 
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2015-03-09 05:17:01
i prefer last.fm for artist bios. you'll usually find much more in depth and constantly updated articles for a wider range of artists. and you can always contribute your own if you find it lacking.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mjm716 on 2015-03-09 11:25:38
i prefer last.fm for artist bios. you'll usually find much more in depth and constantly updated articles for a wider range of artists. and you can always contribute your own if you find it lacking.


not necessarily lacking, but last.fm bios are user submitted (often by the bands themselves, so less objective), versus a source like allmusic.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2015-03-09 12:45:59
is the allmusic script still working? i followed the directions from post 775, but I'm not getting anything. thanks

Original script (you can easily check following my signature) works as expected.
What was mire doing I have no idea...
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2015-03-09 16:01:49
not necessarily lacking, but last.fm bios are user submitted (often by the bands themselves, so less objective), versus a source like allmusic.


yes, you do occasionally see some subjective nonsense about how awesome some artist is but i find it's mostly factual - but of course this depends entirely on the pages you encounter because of your music tastes. it can always be edited if you don't like it.

@romor, sorry i was too lazy to download the component/your script when FritzLn posted. now i know yours is working, i won't try and pimp my script in here anymore.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: romor on 2015-03-09 16:51:08
No worries Marc  your panel looks nicer for sure. Just that both components are close to dead and from my perspective I'd like to see customized on track change command (out of the box) which is so logical and could give lyrics or bio or reviews or just anything else in a simple panel. deadbeef has it
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2015-03-09 18:45:28
your panel looks nicer for sure.


not really. perhaps mine is more readable using a larger font by default but you can soon change that in the panel settings for this component. in fact the causal user has many more appearance options to play with.

i just like using WSH panel mod because i can make the interface a little bit more interactive with menus/buttons etc. also, i like the fact it updates instantly on track change when you have cached data. this component is a bit sluggish in that regard and obviously that is something beyond your control.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: davideleo on 2015-06-10 16:36:33
Is there as readable readme document for this component uploaded somewhere?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: lumberjack on 2015-08-23 18:25:45
Hello everyone o/

I've been using foobar for quite some time now and it really is a piece of awesome software.  Along with it I've been using few components and one of those is "foo_uie_biography". It has served me fine for years, but since last week, the tab I've been using for foo_uie_biography is only showing me the artists pictures but the description is nowhere to be found. I tried deleting the tab and component and "reinstalling" it but the problem doesn't go away.

Here's a screenshot of UI --> http://i.imgur.com/Lx9uKzG.png (http://i.imgur.com/Lx9uKzG.png)
SS of preferences --> SS1 (http://i.imgur.com/SlVMahh.png), SS2 (http://i.imgur.com/NH47q1e.png)

I suppose it's an easy to solve problem but I guess I'm missing something.. If anyone has a clue how to deal with the problem, please give me a reply. Thx!
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Daeron on 2015-08-23 18:47:47
Most likely related to last.fm (the site it's polling data from) breaking its own functionality for the time being as they transition to their new beta site.

Whether the component will work again after that concludes, don't know, and it will probably take a while.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: lumberjack on 2015-08-24 16:42:34
I see. Thank you for the reply.  We'll see what'll happen when site is fully functional.
Also, I played around with settings, set Wiki as the main info source and got some really weird and funny biographies (think what happens if artists name is sleep )
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2015-08-27 23:50:45
since this is just about dead, i might as well pimp my WSH panel mod script...

screenshot: https://github.com/19379/wsh_marc2003/wiki#lastfm-bio (https://github.com/19379/wsh_marc2003/wiki#lastfm-bio)
download/instructions: https://github.com/19379/wsh_marc2003/releases (https://github.com/19379/wsh_marc2003/releases)
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: lumberjack on 2015-08-28 01:22:06
It's a nice alternative and you should advertise it more along with your other mods  Thx marc!

Tomorrow I'll try to set Last.fm API account since today I can't get to open http://www.last.fm/api/account/create (http://www.last.fm/api/account/create)

Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2015-08-28 08:03:38
from reading last.fm's new forum, it appears that API account creation is disabled at the moment. for other people who might read this, it's not even needed for the bio script to work - it's only needed for the similar artists/charts script.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: lumberjack on 2015-08-28 09:57:25
Quote
it's only needed for the similar artists/charts script.

Yeah, that's what I was aiming for.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: arcos on 2015-08-28 12:28:02
And what about the Now.playing.txt ?????
thanks
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: shortdude123 on 2015-10-23 04:08:20
So is there a way to fix the broken last.fm biography?  The wikipedia biography is laughably terrible for so many artists.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2015-10-23 10:11:35
there is no fix for this component because the source has never been shared. as an alternative, you can use my WSH panel mod script which is linked a few posts up.
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: timmytucker718 on 2016-01-03 03:43:10
there is no fix for this component because the source has never been shared. as an alternative, you can use my WSH panel mod script which is linked a few posts up.



Ah that's too bad.  It still pulls the artwork from last.fm and bio from wikipedia (although this can be wrong). 


Your links you posted are down.  Mind updating?
Title: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Daeron on 2016-01-03 13:01:30
https://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=110499 (https://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=110499)
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Lee James on 2016-04-14 20:14:58
Could anyone please advise me of a plugin that will quickly and easily download album art?

I've tried this Biography View plugin but can't get it to work. The instructions are Japanese and I couldn't find instructions in this thread. All I could get it to do was show a panel with the album art in it, I couldn't get it to download album art and put it in the folder.

Until now I have been using the Discogs plugin, but it's not ideal as it is a slow process - first you have to search through artist names and find the right artist, then you have to carefully choose the album, and then worst of all you have to wait while the art downloads which can take up to about 30 seconds (during which you can't use Foobar so you are just sitting there waiting).

I have a large number of CDs to rip so I want something I can quickly download album art with.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: davideleo on 2016-04-14 21:27:25
I've tried this Biography View plugin but can't get it to work. The instructions are Japanese and I couldn't find instructions in this thread. All I could get it to do was show a panel with the album art in it, I couldn't get it to download album art and put it in the folder.

Right click on the album art in the panel and select "save image".
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Lee James on 2016-04-15 02:10:53
Right click on the album art in the panel and select "save image".
Oh, thank you, that worked. Though I am not impressed with this plugin and will be sticking with Discogs for my album artwork, for 3 reasons:

1. It only provides two images, and not even a back cover! (Back covers are really important to me.)
2. You can't just press a button to download them both, and you have to specify the file location every time which seems pointless.
3. Crucially, the images it downloads are really tiny (only 300x300) - that's even smaller than Discogs (600x600). That makes it unusable to me as I have a large art panel and I like to look at the CD covers in detail, read the smallprint etc.

Thanks anyway :)
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: davideleo on 2016-04-15 15:05:55
you have to specify the file location every time which seems pointless.

Save image->Config...  There you can set default paths for both artist and album pics.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Lee James on 2016-04-15 17:46:56
Save image->Config...  There you can set default paths for both artist and album pics.
Thank you once again, though I can't work out how to tell it to save them into whatever folder the music is in.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: davideleo on 2016-04-15 18:11:35
I can't work out how to tell it to save them into whatever folder the music is in.

Save Image -> Folder Containing Track
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: rolf1955 on 2016-04-23 18:51:37
Hey,
because Biography view via last.fm is no longer working, I tried to do it by Last.fm Bio Scraper Python script. lastfm-bio-scraper (https://github.com/MaciekBaron/lastfm-bio-scraper) But I couldn't get it to work. Is there some experience or another solution?
Thank you all!!
cheers Ralfes

Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: rolf1955 on 2016-04-23 19:11:40
Hey,
because Biography view via last.fm is no longer working, I tried to do it by Last.fm Bio Scraper Python script. lastfm-bio-scraper (https://github.com/MaciekBaron/lastfm-bio-scraper) But I couldn't get it to work. Is there some experience or another solution?
Thank you all!!
cheers Ralfes


I have a solution: I make it by using "lastfm_bio.vbs" - works great!!!
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: rolf1955 on 2016-04-23 19:20:01
Hey,
because Biography view via last.fm is no longer working, I tried to do it by Last.fm Bio Scraper Python script. lastfm-bio-scraper (https://github.com/MaciekBaron/lastfm-bio-scraper) But I couldn't get it to work. Is there some experience or another solution?
Thank you all!!
cheers Ralfes


I have a solution: I make it by using "lastfm_bio.vbs" - works great!!!
Is it posible to change the language?
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2016-04-23 19:29:29
You can edit the url to one of the following...

(https://i.imgur.com/6tMWWPp.png)

Or you could just install JScript Panel and use my bio script which has that menu.

Component (foo-jscript-panel) and scripts (js-marc2003) are in my sig.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: rolf1955 on 2016-04-23 19:38:25
You can edit the url to one of the following...

(https://i.imgur.com/6tMWWPp.png)

Or you could just install JScript Panel and use my bio script which has that menu.

Component (foo-jscript-panel) and scripts (js-marc2003) are in my sig.
Uhh!! Wow!! I´ll try it. Thank you very much!!
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: rolf1955 on 2016-04-23 22:48:44
I replaced now foo_uie_biography with foo_jscript_panel + last.fm bio of js_marc2003.

Two questions:
- How can I change colors of text (in case of Pseudo Transparent needed)?
- How can I implement download of last.fm artist images?

Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2016-04-24 00:47:14
Right click the panel>Configure. Look inside the on_paint function and insert this before text.paint(gr);

Code: [Select]
panel.colours.text = _.RGB(255, 0, 0);

To download images, you'll need the thumbs script. Automatic downloads are off by default but you can turn that on via the right click menu.

If you want images/bio text combined in the same script, look at now playing (basic).
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: rolf1955 on 2016-04-24 10:02:45
Right click the panel>Configure. Look inside the on_paint function and insert this before text.paint(gr);

Code: [Select]
panel.colours.text = _.RGB(255, 0, 0);

To download images, you'll need the thumbs script. Automatic downloads are off by default but you can turn that on via the right click menu.

If you want images/bio text combined in the same script, look at now playing (basic).
Again thank you very much!! It works. :-)
Now one last: how I can change saving artist images and "*.json" Information files from "Roaming\foobar2000\wsh_data\artists" to the album correspondingly folder? I also would like to give artist thumbs specific names (for example like %artist%1).
I would like to use this information (image + bio) for offline use.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2016-04-24 15:15:07
All files are already cached and are available offline. I won't be providing help on how to change filenames because it's important they keep the ID from the original to prevent duplicates from being downloaded in future.

If you want to use the art elsewhere in foobar, you can go to File>Preferences>Display>Album art>Artist tab.

Code: [Select]
c:\users\YOU\appdata\roaming\foobar2000\wsh_data\artists\%album artist%\*.*

or if using portable mode, something like...

Code: [Select]
D:\Applications\foobar2000\wsh_data\artists\%album artist%\*.*
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: rolf1955 on 2016-04-24 15:37:18
All files are already cached and are available offline. I won't be providing help on how to change filenames because it's important they keep the ID from the original to prevent duplicates from being downloaded in future.

If you want to use the art elsewhere in foobar, you can go to File>Preferences>Display>Album art>Artist tab.

Code: [Select]
c:\users\YOU\appdata\roaming\foobar2000\wsh_data\artists\%album artist%\*.*

or if using portable mode, something like...

Code: [Select]
D:\Applications\foobar2000\wsh_data\artists\%album artist%\*.*

merci beaucoup!!  :)
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: shortdude123 on 2016-05-06 20:13:04
marc2003,

Thanks for your solution! Works great for the biography text.   

However....  is there anyway to get the artist photo/album cover with jscript?  Right now the artist photo/album photo still works with the foo_uie_biography component, so I am still using that along with your script.   But I'm wondering if there is a way I can ditch the bio componant completely? 

Thanks!
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Daeron on 2016-05-06 20:21:26
His thumbs script can pull artist images. He also posted a script that downloads last.fm cover art, which should be somewhere on the more recent pages in one of the jscript topics.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Voiceprint on 2016-05-21 06:45:55
Hi guys, I've tried to make some of the suggestions work but they don't. I'm using catrox skin, and only thing that's missing is the bio text. I still get the artist picture but no text. Could somebody please message me on how to set it up so i can see bio from last.fm or a similar website? I'm relatively green when it comes to this so if somebody could explain at least with some detail I'd be grateful. Thanks.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Daeron on 2016-05-21 07:10:20
The component is essentially obsolete now. You can get the same functionality with jscript panel and one of marc2003's scripts.
https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,110499.0.html
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2016-05-21 12:02:09
Just to clarify:

last.fm bio.txt: displays text only. Use the right click menu to change language and other options.
thumbs.txt: displays images only. Automatic downloads are off by default but can be turned on via the right click menu
now playing (basic).txt: displays images and text in the same panel. Same options as above scripts.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: kan on 2016-05-27 08:17:10
there is no fix for this component because the source has never been shared. as an alternative, you can use my WSH panel mod script which is linked a few posts up.

There is a fix. Biography View uses official last.fm API so it still works. The issue is that an api key used in component has been blocked by last.fm. The solution is simple. You need to obtain a new api key (free) from last.fm and replace the old one with the new one in component using a hexeditor.
By the way good work marc2003.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2016-05-27 23:23:34
You are mistaken. The API key used by the component is fine because it can still download images. Also, the url for the image is extracted from the same page that contains the text. The reason the component can't display text is because the response XML is formatted differently compared to what is was before.

The solution is simple. You need to obtain a new api key (free) from last.fm and replace the old one with the new one in component using a hexeditor.

This is bullshit. Why are you making stuff up that isn't true?

edit; just to prove a point, I captured the response with wireshark.

http://i.imgur.com/Gc5exA9.png

The text is right there. Changing the API key isn't going to fix it.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mire777 on 2016-05-28 09:42:30
Just don't know why some developer don't make new biography component, it's easy to make that plugin if you already familiar with creating components for foobar. Biography and lyrics are plugins that should be present as standard..
Anyway i use wsh(jscript), so i don't need to worry that it will stop working..
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Daeron on 2016-05-28 11:25:09
Just don't know why some developer don't make new biography component, Anyway i use wsh(jscript),
You answered your own question. That component is called jscript with the corresponding biography sample from marc2003.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: kan on 2016-05-30 19:59:37
You are mistaken.

Yes. You are right. I did not test it thoroughly and made a mistake.  There is no need to use Wireshark, you can check it directly from browser using API request:
http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/?method=artist.getInfo&api_key=554ae27e0b90079f4fa22a825cf2b200&autocorrect=1&artist=Abba
and it did not work at the time I was checking it.
Second I forgot about cache of Biography component. Coincidence this two has led me to wrong conclusion that this is a culprit.

You gave me a hint and I had one more look at this issue and found a solution. A real one this time :).
It used to be <![CDATA[...]]> markup in XML that exist no more in last.fm API response. Fortunately it can be corrected using hexeditor as well. All bytes <![CDATA[...]]> should be filed with zeros so component puts nothing in this place.
Fixed Biography component:
http://www.filedropper.com/foouiebiographylastfmfix
changes:
-bytes <![CDATA[...]]> changed to 00
-version change from 0.4.2.4  to 0.4.2.5
and it DOES work this time.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: zeremy on 2016-05-30 21:38:13

You gave me a hint and I had one more look at this issue and found a solution. A real one this time :).
It used to be <![CDATA[...]]> markup in XML that exist no more in last.fm API response. Fortunately it can be corrected using hexeditor as well. All bytes <![CDATA[...]]> should be filed with zeros so component puts nothing in this place.
Fixed Biography component:
http://www.filedropper.com/foouiebiographylastfmfix
changes:
-bytes <![CDATA[...]]> changed to 00
-version change from 0.4.2.4  to 0.4.2.5
and it DOES work this time.

Your download link doesn't work. :-[
But I can confirm the HEX fix does work and can display the wiki text.!! :D
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: kan on 2016-05-30 21:50:06
Your download link doesn't work. :-[

For me the download link works. I can give one more:
http://speedy.sh/cYfsT/foo-uie-biography-lastfm-fix.7z

I have to give one more advice. If somebody uses cached files, you have to remove all old *.lmfl files from cache directory(set in Biography component settings). That files contains ![CDATA[...] markups and will not be displayed correctly.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: lender1257 on 2016-05-31 07:45:31
i confirm, biography 4.2.5 works perfect
thx
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: lender1257 on 2016-05-31 08:21:14
an issue:
david gilmour bio ends with pete townshend - white city - 1985
but there are 14 lines more on lastfm
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: lender1257 on 2016-06-02 11:46:38
error found:
panel preference - font/color :
font renderer must be on GDI+
so the whole bio will be shown
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: shortdude123 on 2016-06-07 18:28:23
Thanks for the update! Your efforts are truly appreciated. 

I did notice that the text formatting is a bit fucked up with apostrophes, and other symbols.  For example, whenever there is an apostrophe it'll display "#apos;"   Any fix for this? 
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: shortdude123 on 2016-07-27 02:05:18
Now images aren't showing anymore.... 
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: shortdude123 on 2016-08-10 23:58:58
Now images aren't showing anymore.... 

Is anybody else experiencing this or is the problem on my end?
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: スラッシュ on 2016-08-13 05:24:39
I'm having the same issue.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: failure13 on 2016-08-16 09:25:57
Yep, same here - no images.
+ i've found bug, if bio text is scrollable, and you scroll to bottom, than press little arrow on top - whole bio will disappear and will stay same, unti foobar2000 restart
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: swana on 2016-08-23 17:50:58
+1 on no artist image showing

Anyone figure out why (or how to fix)?
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: Solynth on 2016-08-25 13:08:20
I can get the album and artist pictures to display in the panel, but the image cache is not working. The images are not downloading to the respective folders.

(http://i.imgur.com/AwTDHq5.jpg)

I have the setting "Provide artwork to other artwork viewers" enabled. It's weird that it can display the images fine in the panel, but they wont download.

It seems to only work for some artists.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: shortdude123 on 2016-08-27 03:13:58
+1 on no artist image showing

Anyone figure out why (or how to fix)?

I honestly just gave up on this and switched to marc2003's jscript panel for bio and album info. 

Doesn't have the album art saving capabilities but I can live with it. 
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: fuffi on 2017-02-26 10:10:31
Doesn't have the album art saving capabilities but I can live with it.
This is something, I really loved about it. automatic saving of an albumart, which I then could embedd into the music files. I really miss it.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: J.Fleming on 2017-11-20 08:17:38
Just today noticed that I would get CPU max in foobar. It happens only when single clicking on an .mp3 file and highlighting it in the Playlist. Does not happen on wavs. Start foobar, no spike. Add file, no spike. Single click on .mp3 in playlist, CPU core maxes and stays maxed no matter what I do in Foobar until Foobar is closed.

Nailed the problem down to foo_uie_biography.dll, specifically to the Wikipedia source. Remove "Wikipedia" from "Current source list" and the problem goes away.

Not sure if this is temporary, fixable, etc., but just posting the info in case it's useful to anyone.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: J.Fleming on 2017-11-20 08:29:21
157 date=1464641406]
http://speedy.sh/cYfsT/foo-uie-biography-lastfm-fix.7z

Both of these links are now dead. In fact, the second one leads to malware (unless an ad blocker is installed).

If someone has this could they please upload it as a forum attachment?
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: jazzthieve on 2017-11-20 14:35:56
Version 0.4.2.4
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: J.Fleming on 2017-11-20 15:02:28
Thanks very much for the reply, but I was looking for kan's fix, not the original component (although it probably doesn't hurt to have it available here).

Anyways, I figured out how to do the hex edit on it and text is working again. But like others have said, images are no longer downloading. I tried the "Provide artwork to other artwork viewers" option but it didn't work for me. I wonder if there is a similar hex edit trick that can be used for images.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: J.Fleming on 2017-11-20 15:06:33
The component is essentially obsolete now. You can get the same functionality with jscript panel and one of marc2003's scripts.
https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,110499.0.html

Doesn't work on WinXP. ;)

Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2017-11-20 17:21:08
Pretty much nothing works on XP - the obvious exception being foobar itself.

It's about time people let it go.  :o
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: J.Fleming on 2017-11-20 18:13:25
Hmmm, a very bizarre statement. I've got everything I need running fine on XP. Even foobar and a ton of plugins, VSTs, etc.:

foo_dynamic_range
foo_playcount
foo_quicksearch
foo_ui_columns
foo_uie_albumlist
foo_uie_biography
foo_uie_elplaylist
foo_uie_esplaylist
foo_uie_lyrics3
foo_uie_panel_splitter
foo_uie_vis_channel_spectrum
foo_uie_vis_peakmeter_spectrum
foo_uie_wsh_panel_mod
foo_wave_seekbar


All works great.

Except of course images in foo_uie_biography.

I keep an older comp with XP and it suites my needs perfectly. Not going to "let it go" because someone says so because "nothing works" on it lmao. ;)

XP to me represents the last version of windows that didn't really have too much anti-user stuff in it. Now, it seems everything is going anti-user. Windows 10, Mozilla, etc., all (try) to take away power and control from users while claiming that things have been "improved," lmao you can't get more Orwellian than that. ;)

Anyways this is going way off topic. Of course I don't expect you or any developer to take time and effort to make any of your stuff work on XP, that would be silly. Just wanting to try and see if there's a way to get image download working again in foo_uie_biography for last.fm. :)
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: marc2003 on 2017-11-20 18:54:17
With the exception of foo_uie_biography, none of those components require internet access so of course they still work.

But if you want to keep up accessing online services in the year 2017, you need to use something a bit newer than 16 years old. Most websites these days are enforcing the use of https through protocols that XP doesn't support.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: chamber32 on 2018-09-02 16:26:04
I know this is old, but is there somewhere I can still download this from?

Thanks,

c32

Your download link doesn't work. :-[

For me the download link works. I can give one more:
http://speedy.sh/cYfsT/foo-uie-biography-lastfm-fix.7z

I have to give one more advice. If somebody uses cached files, you have to remove all old *.lmfl files from cache directory(set in Biography component settings). That files contains ![CDATA[...] markups and will not be displayed correctly.

Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: kan on 2018-09-04 21:04:10
I know this is old, but is there somewhere I can still download this from?

foo_uie_biography_lastfm_fix2.7z
https://ufile.io/zbym4

with fix for "#apos;"  issue
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: chamber32 on 2018-09-12 00:26:54
Thanks!
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: alwayswrming on 2018-10-07 22:23:26
You can edit the url to one of the following...

(https://i.imgur.com/6tMWWPp.png)

Or you could just install JScript Panel and use my bio script which has that menu.

Component (foo-jscript-panel) and scripts (js-marc2003) are in my sig.

when i add your jscript panel, then import last.fm bio.txt using r-click > configure > tools > import i get this error

Error: JScript Panel v2.1.7.2 (Last.fm Bio by marc2003)
JavaScript runtime error:
'_' is undefined
File: <main>
Line: 10, Col: 1
<source text only available at compile time>
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: kode54 on 2018-10-07 22:39:50
marc2003 probably won't respond here, even though I re-enabled his account shortly after he disabled it, just because I didn't want him to think he was unwelcome. A bit of drama occurred with a moderator, and rather than cool off, marc2003 decided to rage quit the forum. I do not even follow his Github, if it still exists, to see whether he still updates his scripts.

Just for your information, you replied to a post from two years ago, and the poster hasn't visited this forum in almost a year.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: mjm716 on 2018-10-08 07:15:38
when i add your jscript panel, then import last.fm bio.txt using r-click > configure > tools > import i get this error


Much better bio panel: https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,112914.0.html

much more forward thinking, customizable, stable and better support.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: kaiser78 on 2022-02-21 03:59:21
I know this is old, but is there somewhere I can still download this from?

foo_uie_biography_lastfm_fix2.7z
https://ufile.io/zbym4

with fix for "#apos;"  issue

Please reupload this file. Thanks.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: chamber32 on 2022-02-21 11:26:49
I'm not the one who provided the link, but you might try this, don't know if it's the version you want:

https://github.com/catlinman/foobar2000/tree/master/user-components/foo_uie_biography (https://github.com/catlinman/foobar2000/tree/master/user-components/foo_uie_biography)

Dave
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: kaiser78 on 2022-02-21 11:39:18
This version doesn't work at all :-(
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: xdemonessx on 2022-12-11 03:43:20
I know this is old, but is there somewhere I can still download this from?

foo_uie_biography_lastfm_fix2.7z
https://ufile.io/zbym4

with fix for "#apos;"  issue

I know this is a longshot but can anyone reupload foo_uie_biography 4.2.5 with the last.fm "#apos;" fix? All the links are dead. I've been using a portable version of foobar2000 for a very long time and would rather not go through the hassle of updating everything for a very minor fix.

You are mistaken.

Yes. You are right. I did not test it thoroughly and made a mistake.  There is no need to use Wireshark, you can check it directly from browser using API request:
http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/?method=artist.getInfo&api_key=554ae27e0b90079f4fa22a825cf2b200&autocorrect=1&artist=Abba
and it did not work at the time I was checking it.
Second I forgot about cache of Biography component. Coincidence this two has led me to wrong conclusion that this is a culprit.

You gave me a hint and I had one more look at this issue and found a solution. A real one this time :).
It used to be <![CDATA[...]]> markup in XML that exist no more in last.fm API response. Fortunately it can be corrected using hexeditor as well. All bytes <![CDATA[...]]> should be filed with zeros so component puts nothing in this place.
Fixed Biography component:
http://www.filedropper.com/foouiebiographylastfmfix
changes:
-bytes <![CDATA[...]]> changed to 00
-version change from 0.4.2.4  to 0.4.2.5
and it DOES work this time.

Or can someone explain how to hex edit the dll?

Thanks.
Title: Re: [Not my release] Biography view
Post by: xdemonessx on 2022-12-12 00:21:11
This version doesn't work at all :-(

Here's the version I'm using (4.2.5) https://www.mediafire.com/file/3bf23ebw6l2ff7e/foo_uie_biography.dll/file

Title: foobar version 2.1 and biography view version 0.4.2.4
Post by: mgiessmann1959 on 2024-01-05 11:42:12
Hello,

when i updated to version 2.1. the old biography view does not work anymore. In 2.0 everything works.
Have anyone an idea for a solution?

Thanks

Michael