Notify CD Player for Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 Version 1.51 Copyright (c) 1996-1998, Mats Ljungqvist mlt@cyberdude.com (Please see section 7 for contact guidelines) http://www.artech.se/~mlt/software Snail: Mats Ljungqvist Patron Pehrs v. 27 S-141 35 HUDDINGE SWEDEN --- Contents --------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Introduction 2. Legal stuff 3. How to install/uninstall 4. How to use - The fast left-click functions - The right-click context menu - CD Info/Program - Options - CD Database Editor 5. Command-line options 6. Support mailing list 7. Feedback, suggestions, bug-reports 8. Credits --- 1. Introduction -------------------------------------------------------- Notify CD Player is a CD player for regular audio CD's (including mixed data/audio) and resides in the systray (Also called Notify Tray). It works on Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0. Built in support for the Internet based CD database CDDB which currently has more than 100,000 CD entries. (http://www.cddb.com) The CDDB database was originally developed by Ti Kan (ti@amb.org) and the CDDB server by Steve Scherf (steve@moonsoft.com) Fast operation of the most commonly used actions by left-clicking a configurable number of times on the icon. It has an extensive amount of functionality in the context menu shown by right-clicking the icon. Tray displays current "play" status. Other features include: - Compatible with the CD database used by the standard CD Player. - Configurable tooltip and caption CD/track information display. - Configurable track menu that shows the actual track names. - Programmed play. - Random/Repeat (Whole or Track). - Skip function to change position inside a track. - CD DB Editor with Export/Import functions. - Responds to different Windows requests to allow autoplay etc. - Can be set to exit when the CD is removed for seamless operation. --- 2. Legal stuff --------------------------------------------------------- Notify CD Player for Windows NT and Windows 95 Copyright (c) 1996-1998, Mats Ljungqvist (mlt@cyberdude.com) This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Source code should be available at http://www.artech.se/~mlt/software/src/ --- 3. How to install/uninstall -------------------------------------------- Run the NTFY_CD.INF install file by right-clicking the icon in the Explorer and choose "Install". Use the control panel "Add/Remove Programs" applet to completely uninstall Notify CD Player. --- 4. How to use ---------------------------------------------------------- - The fast left-click functions ------------------------------- The fast left-click functions include the five most commonly used functions on a CD player. I.e. Play, Pause, Next, Prev, Stop. These functions is accessable by clicking a configurable number of times on the icon in the tray. The default settings are: Play/Next 1 click Pause/Resume 2 clicks Prev 3 clicks Stop 4 clicks So to start playing Your CD, if it's not already playing due to Windows autoplay, You can click once on the icon. Note how the icon change from the "stop" icon to the "play" icon! To pause, click two times on the icon. The icon changes to a "pause" icon. To resume click one or two times (in this case Play/Next is the same as resume). The CD starts to play again. Change to the next track by clicking one time on the icon. Stop the CD by clicking four times. The icon changes back to the "stop" icon. The number of clicks are configurable in the Options dialog found under the Options command in the context menu. - The right-click context menu ------------------------------ The right-click context menu contains everything Notify CD Player can do besides the fast left-click functions. The common Play/Stop/Next/Prev etc are all there, so are a Tracks menu, open and close options, repeat, random etc. Tracks ------ Choose the Tracks submenu and You'll see the names of the tracks (if You have any DB with data in it) or the default "Track 1" names along with track lengths. You can choose which track to play by selecting it in the tracks menu. The tracks menu can also be configured to be a separate column in the context menu and then the Tracks submenu will dissapear. The tracks menu can also be divided into submenys if the CD You currently have in the player has more than 25 tracks. This function can be disabled in the options dialog if You have a high screen resolution and therefore doesn't need to break up the tracks. Other ----- The Other submenu contains less used commands. The functions found here are: - Play whole which causes the player to bypass any playlist You might have set up in the CD Info/Program dialog, but it doesn't remove the playlist from the configuration for this CD. - Repeat Track causes the current track to be repeated. - Set absolute position can be used to move to a specified track and a specified position on that track. For example if there is some interesting sound at a specific position on a certain track this can be used to find it again. - Skip lets You cue inside the current track. - CD Database Editor brings up the database editor described below. - CD Info/Program ----------------- The CD Info/Program dialog plays a central role in Notify CD Player since it's the place where You enter information about the CD playing, like Artist, tracks etc. This is also where You set up a playlist where You can program tracks in a certain order or play the same track many times etc. - Playlist tab: This is where You enter the name of the CD and it's tracks. This is also the place where You program the CD - More CD info tab: This tab handles additional information about the CD. - More track info tab: This tab handles additional information about the track. Internet DB: - Get from Internet. This option queries the remote server for info about the current CD. - Send to Internet. This option send this CD information to the central CDDB repository by e-mail. NOTE: The mail is sent using MIME and the text is encoded using Quoted-Printable. If your mailserver has a problem with this you can disable it by setting No_MIME in the [CDDB] section of CDPLAYER.INI to 1. - Options --------- The options dialog is where You configure all the different functions found in the player. It consist of a number of tabs described below. General tab =========== This is where You configure the general (whoha!) options! Misc options ------------ - Stop CD on exit. Causes Notify CD Player to stop playing before exiting. - Stop CD on start. Causes Notify CD Player to stop playing when starting. - Exit on CD remove. Cause Notify CD Player to exit when the CD is removed. This can be pretty nice when used together with Windows autoplay since the Autoplay function will start Notify CD Player again when a CD is inserted. - Prev always prev track. By default Notify CD Player restarts the current track if prev is choosen and more than five seconds have been played of the track instead of selecting the prev track. This option causes the player to always choose the prev track and never restart the track when prev is choosen. - Remember status. Causes the player to remember certain status flags such as repeat and random between runs. - No insert notification. Can be used on older CD devices or drivers that doesn't send notification messages when a CD is inserted/removed. This option is also needed if You have disabled the insert notification in Windows 95. - Tracks menu as column. Causes the tracks menu to dissapear and appear as a second column in the context menu. Check it out! It's pretty neat! - No bitmap in menu. Turns of the bitmap shown in the context menu. - No menu break. By default Notify CD Player breaks up the tracks menu into submenus when a CD with more than 25 tracks is used. This option prevents this. - Artist/Title in menu. Show artist and title at the top in the popup menu. Default CD Device ----------------- Specifies which CD device to use by default when starting up and no other device is specified on the command line. Only used by users with multiple CD devices. Left button number of clicks ---------------------------- This is where You configure the number of clicks to use for the fast left-click operations. A value of 0 disables that function. Poll status every ----------------- Is used when no CD is in the drive or when the full status check option is used. A value of 1 is ok. External program to run when a new disc is inserted --------------------------------------------------- Enter the path to an program You want to run when a new CD is inserted. Artist and CD title will be sent as argument 1 and 2 to the program. This can be used to update the .plan file to include the name of the CD You are currently listening to or whatever. Tooltip/Caption tab =================== Caption ------- - Show info on active caption. This option displays the same information as the tooltip in the caption (title bar) of the active window. - Font. By selecting this option You can choose the font to use when displaying info in the caption. This is where You configure what is to be shown in the tooltip and the active caption. Tooltip and Caption buttons =========================== Press one of them to select information regarding that type Time display ------------ Specifies what time information to show in the tooltip or caption. CD Info display --------------- Specifies what CD information to show in the tooltip or caption. Database tab ============ This is where You configure different database options Notify can use. What type of local database to use ---------------------------------- - CDPLAYER.INI database. This will use the regular CDPLAYER.INI as local database. Note that INI files are limited to 64K under Windows 95. - CDDB local database. This will enable the use of the CDDB local database format. This format will create a number of directories in the path specified in the CDDB Local tab and store CD entries in one of the two formats available. Use this if Your database exceeds the Windows 95 limit on the INI file. What to automaticly query when a new CD is inserted ----------------------------------------------------- - Local database. This will query the local database for CD information each time a CD is inserted. - Remote CDDB database server. This will query the remote CDDB server configured in the CDDB Remote tab if the CD was not found in the local database. What to store in local database ------------------------------- - Store changes in local database. This will store modifications to the CD entry in the local database. - Store remote query result. This will directly store a found CD entry in the local database after querying the remote CDDB server. CDDB Local ========== This is where You configure the local CDDB database (if used) The path where the local CDDB database will be stored ----------------------------------------------------- This is the path where the CDDB database will be stored. The player will create directories in this path as they are needed and store files in the format specified below. Type of local CDDB database --------------------------- This specifies the type of local CDDB database to use. The Unix format is faster but wastes much space on FAT partitions. The Windows format is not as fast but wastes less space since it will store multiple CD entries in each file. A complete local database can be downloaded from http://www.cddb.com CDDB Remote =========== This is where You configure the remote CDDB server used by the remote query function. Protocol -------- - HTTP. Uses standard port 80 HTTP protocol to query for CD information. - CDDB. Uses the CDDB server protocol on port 888 to query for CD information. May not work on many firewalls. - Port is only used by the CDDB protocol and should, for the moment, always be set to 888. Server ------ This specifies the fully qualified hostname of the server to query for CD information. For an updated list of servers, check out http://www.cddb.com/sites.html HTTP Path --------- This is the path to the CGI script that runs the remote query. Should almost always be /~cddb/cddb.cgi. This is only used for HTTP queries. Proxy ----- This is where You configure Your proxy server if needed. - Use proxy. Check this button to enable the use of a proxy server. - Proxy server. Enter the fully qualified hostname of the proxy server. - Proxy port. The port that the proxy server listens to HTTP requests on. - Use Proxy Authentication. Check this button to enable support for proxy servers that require authentication. - User. Fill in your proxy user name here. - Ask for password. Check this if you don't like the fact about storing your password in the CDPLAYER.INI file described below. - Password. Fill in your proxy password here. Be aware that the password "encryption" used to store the password in the INI file isn't exactly rocket science so you store it there on your own risk! Besides the source code used to store the password is free and the mangling of it is reversable so anyone with access to your CDPLAYER.INI and the source code could easily steal it! NOTE: Proxy authentication uses the "Proxy-Authorization: Basic :" standard where and are sent base64 encoded. If your proxy doesn't use this standard, proxy authentication will not work. Timeout for remote operations ----------------------------- This specifies the general timeout (in seconds) for all the remote operations. e-mail tab ========== This is where You configure e-mail information used by the submit feature. E-mail address -------------- Your e-mail address. SMTP server ----------- The fully qualified hostname of Your mail (SMTP) server. Note: If Your server doesn't like the MIME headers that Notify will send You can disable them by adding a No_MIME=1 to the [CDDB] section in CDPLAYER.INI Categories tab ============== Choose this to alter the default set of categories. - CD Database Editor -------------------- The CD Database Editor is used to alter CD information or to export or import CD information. The CDs have a right-click context menu where You can send the entry to the Internet reposiroty, make an alias, change the category of that CD or delete that CD from the DB. Note that the DB Editor might be slow on LARGE local CDDB databases. The export/import functions do NOT work between local CDDB databases and the CDPLAYER.INI format. --- 5. Command-line options ------------------------------------------------ Notify CD Player supports a number of command-line options which can be used when starting up. If the program is invoked as a second instance it will send the commands to the already active instance. Using the command-line options makes it possible to make keyboard shortcuts that pause or selects the next track etc. -PLAY [track path] Starts playing the disc from the start or from the track number specified by track path. Track path must include a drive specifier. If the disc is paused it will continue. Example: "NTFY_CD -PLAY Z:\TRACK03.CDA" will play track 3 on drive Z -PAUSE Toggles pause mode. If the disc is playing it will be paused, otherwise it will continue to play. If this is the first instance it will start the player in pause mode. -STOP Stops the playing -NEXT Selects the next track in the playlist or restarts from the first track if the last one is playing. -PREV Selects the previous track in the playlist or restarts from the last track if the first one is playing. -RANDOM Toggles random mode -REPEAT Toggles repeat mode Some of them can be used together, You could probably figure out which ones. Some of them work a little different when controlling an already running instance than they do when controlling the startup of the first instance. --- 6. Support mailing list ------------------------------------------------ There is a support mailing list setup at MIDRANGE dot COM that I monitor. To subscribe to the mailing list send email to "NOTIFYCD-SUB@midrange.com" (subject and body of the message are ignored). To unsubscribe from the mailing list "NOTIFYCD-UNSUB@midrange.com". Mailing list services provided by MIDRANGE dot COM. MIDRANGE dot COM is a non-commercial organization dedicated to the free exchange of ideas and information amoung computer users on the internet. For more information, send email to 'info@midrange.com'. --- 7. Feedback, suggestions, bug-reports ---------------------------------- All feedback, suggestions and bug-reports to mlt@cyberdude.com or to the mailing list mentioned above. Please check the FAQ page at http://www.artech.se/~mlt/software/faq.html before sending a question! Your question might already have an answer! If you are submitting a bug-report, please check http://www.artech.se/~mlt/software/bugs.html before you send it to make sure you submit a new bug. To get on the list where I send announcements about new versions, please use SUBSCRIBE NOTIFY-LIST in the subject line. To submit a suggestion, please use NOTIFY-SUGGESTION in the subject line. To submit a question, after checking the FAQ, please use NOTIFY-QUESTION in the subject line. To submit a bug-report, after checking the BUG list, please use NOTIFY-BUG in the subject line and include a logfile of a failing session. To enable the logfile add LOGFILE=1 in the [NTFY_CD] section of CDPLAYER.INI as shown below: [NTFY_CD] LOGFILE=1 The resulting logfile is written to C:\NTFY_CD.LOG Also don't forget to include the version You are using. This is found in the about box. --- 8. Credits ------------------------------------------------------------- I would like to thank everyone that have supplied me with valuble feedback and suggestions for new features as well as the beta testers which at times have gotten their hands on more or less useless version of this program. Thanks for Your patience! :-) Thanks to vginkel@idirect.com for the bitmap used in the context menu. Notify CD Player is written in plain C with plain Win32 and MCI API calls using Microsoft Visual C++. Well, thats about it, happy playing!