Play queue shouldn't follow browser

[peter099]

Steps to reproduce

In "Paned Browser" mode i select album to play with double click. While the album is playing if i select another album (just select it), when the currently playing song end the next song that start playing is from the currently selected album and not from the album that i was selected to play.

Expected Output

The songs from the selected album to continue playing even if another album is selected.

Actual Output

Test System

Which version of Quod Libet?

version 4.5.0

Which operating system

OS: MX Linux

If it's audio-related, what back-end?

Additional Information

I don't know if this is a bug or a feature but it is very annoying. If it is a feature there should be a option to disable this.

[jej]

It's a feature. I don't really like it too. You can open another browser to browse the library asynchronously, or use the queue only playing mode. Hope it helps.

[slosd]

I've been using quodlibet for many years and this happens to me on a regular basis. There are two ways to avoid it:

1. As was already mentioned, you can open another browser.
2. You can exclusively use the queue for playback.

Some rambling

I never developed a habit to do either one.

In the case of (2) the reasons are: I use the "Random Album" plugin which doesn't work with the queue; also it's easier to double-click an album than to drag&drop it into the queue, so I end up doing that automatically without thinking about it. When I start looking through other albums at some point it's too late to switch playback to the queue.

As for (1), I think this feature is not as easily accessible as it should be. You have to expand the main menu item, then expand the browsers menu item and finally choose a browser. I personally have the plugin which hides the menu bar enabled, so I additionally have to press [Alt] to show the menu bar. There are keybindings to open the browsers, but I think this should be easy and fast with a mouse as well.

It might be worth coming up with a UI that communicates to the user clearly "This main browser drives playback" but also "Here's an easy way to browse your library". Off the top of my head that could be a "duplicate current browser" button that's always visible.

Back to topic

• Conceptually this isn't complex. Current playback would not only be defined by the playing song but also a snapshot of the song list when the first song was "activated".
• You might lose track of what's going to be played next. If we introduce UI to visualize the snapshot there will be three lists which hold songs to be played (snapshot, queue, songlist in browser). That seems unnecessarily complicated to me.

[afontenot]

I'd be curious to hear from any one who actually uses this "feature", if they exist. What do you like about it? How do you utilize it? Do you use a workaround (like opening another browser) when you want to look at your collection while playing music?

I ask this because I'm planning a substantial rewrite of the player code that would move to playing from a queue by default. I think I can do it in such a way that other than the single behavior described in this issue, everything else pretty much behaves the same for anyone who just uses the default settings. So if there is anyone who relies on this behavior, I'd like to figure out a way not to break it for you.

[bassstorm]

I'm the one who finds this "feature" is more than annoying. I don't use Queue often, and surprisingly find playlists out of sight (maybe because of great here-and-now search capabilities + my fav is Album View, which gives a bit more than plain playlist). So yes, after a while I adopted "new browser" exploration, though it's still not an ideal UX after all.

[afontenot]

I'm the one who finds this "feature" is more than annoying.

Thanks - could you clarify one thing? What exactly are the benefits of the feature to you? Is it

• Not having to look at / think about / play from the queue?
• When a song is playing, you start looking through your collection to find the next thing you want to play, and leave it open it the browser so it will play next? (Kind of making the browser function as a makeshift queue.)
• Something else?

[bassstorm]

Well, being an old-school guy, I prefer software to be predictable. In this specific case, my ideal flow would be that another selection starts to play only when I say so forcefully (by double-clicking on track or using play queue). Essentially that means views should be stateful. When I play view results, I expect an app to play chosen entities no matter what active view is opened currently. So, this is about having active UI view and active play view concepts.

Typically, I browse collection not to start playing something else immediately, but to do side activities, e.g. look at recent additions, or tag things, or explore connections, and whatnot. Should I find a thing, I decide how to proceed better: play as queue if it's just a bunch of tracks and I don't mind to interrupt the flow (rarely), or remember it to play just after ongoing album is finished. Kind of. I know, playlist should work best for me. But these are also spoiled by that "play follows active browser". And UX is far from ideal around moving tracks between views and playlists, though I haven't used it for a while so that may be not up-to-date opinion :)

Sorry for cumbersome explanation. Perhaps not a typical QL user talking here :) P.S. You actually did a good job summarizing the problem statement in linked issue #4157.

[elcste]

Personally I have learned to adapt to QL, by doing things like using complex searches with |(artist1, artist2) and adding a new term to that search in order to keep existing albums available to play. So it would be a little adjustment for me to have to enqueue tracks. But all in all, I use QL despite this feature, and it would be a good adjustment :-)