JeremyLaurenson
1000+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2011
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I am starting this thread as a location to post updates in terms of what is happening with Dapper development, and as a place to ask for features. If you are having issues, please post a ticket to support.map-pin.com - thats where I can track you and not lose track of your stuff.
Below is a quick run-through of what Dapper does at a high level for those who are new:
You can see the list of DAPs I have created profiles for by clicking here, although Dapper is set up to be tweaked to do almost whatever you need it to. There is also a free trial copy there to play with and verify before you take any plunges.
I will be posting updates here as to what I am developing and whats been released.
Version 2.30: Submitted to Apple.
In that vein, 2.30 has been submitted to the App Store and is available on www.map-pin.com now.
It adds the ability to select how much Dapper cleans up the filenames of music it copies over to the DAP in different possible "strenghts".
At each step, more special characters are stripped so that on the highest level only ASCII remains of a filename.
The level of stripping is done manually by user, and my suggestion would be that if your DAP has issues playing tracks in a playlist with "File not found" type errors, you try a different setting. The higher you go, the more music will need to be effectively re-copied.
If you want to just do "the best thing", the fourth level - removing almost all special characters - is my preference.
The reason for this is that a lo of DAPs have issues with either special characters in filenames, or special characters in the entries in their playlists.
By stripping these characters only from the filename (and leaving all tags in tact) on the way to the DAP, this job is made easier for the DAP.
Version 2.31: In development
In addition to the special characters mentioned above, the text encoding scheme used in the playlists themselves also throws off some DAPs. By default we save in whats called UTF8 format, and that works for 90% of the usual characters. We have some users I am working with right now, who have had issues with "non-english" characters not showing up right.
For this we are adding a hook where you can elect to do whatever voodoo you like with an applescript right after the playlists are generated, but before they are copied to the DAP.
By way of an example, this one converts Mac UTF8 to "standard" UTF-8 which in effect solves his issue:
Once I get confirmation back this works I will post to the website as an automatic update, followed by the app store.
-- This script will iterate through all the playlist files saved by Dapper just before they are copied
-- to your DAP. This particular script runs and converts the character encoding of each file from
-- UTF8-MAC to standard UTF8 which solves some issues for some interntional users.
-- You could replace the highlighted line to adjust any parameters of our playlist or just change
--the distination encoding entry below:
set sourceEncoding to "UTF-8-MAC"
set destinationEncoding to "UTF-8"
set filename to system attribute "HOME"
set unixPath to filename & "/Library/Containers/com.map-pin.Dapper/Data/Library/Caches/com.map-pin.Dapper/playlists/"
set folderToProcess to POSIX file unixPath as Unicode text
tell application "Finder"
set fileExt to {".m3u"}
set theTopFolder to (folderToProcess as alias)
repeat with EachFile in (get every file of folder (folderToProcess as alias))
try
copy name of EachFile as string to filename
--
--
--
-- This is where we convert from UTF-8-MAC to UTF-8
set command to "cd '" & unixPath & "'; iconv -f " & sourceEncoding & " -t " & destinationEncoding & " '" & filename & "' > '" & filename & ".new'"
--
--
--
do shell script command
set command to "cd '" & unixPath & "'; mv '" & filename & ".new' '" & filename & "'"
do shell script command
end try
end repeat
end tell
Below is a quick run-through of what Dapper does at a high level for those who are new:
You can see the list of DAPs I have created profiles for by clicking here, although Dapper is set up to be tweaked to do almost whatever you need it to. There is also a free trial copy there to play with and verify before you take any plunges.
I will be posting updates here as to what I am developing and whats been released.
Version 2.30: Submitted to Apple.
In that vein, 2.30 has been submitted to the App Store and is available on www.map-pin.com now.
It adds the ability to select how much Dapper cleans up the filenames of music it copies over to the DAP in different possible "strenghts".
At each step, more special characters are stripped so that on the highest level only ASCII remains of a filename.
The level of stripping is done manually by user, and my suggestion would be that if your DAP has issues playing tracks in a playlist with "File not found" type errors, you try a different setting. The higher you go, the more music will need to be effectively re-copied.
If you want to just do "the best thing", the fourth level - removing almost all special characters - is my preference.
The reason for this is that a lo of DAPs have issues with either special characters in filenames, or special characters in the entries in their playlists.
By stripping these characters only from the filename (and leaving all tags in tact) on the way to the DAP, this job is made easier for the DAP.
Version 2.31: In development
In addition to the special characters mentioned above, the text encoding scheme used in the playlists themselves also throws off some DAPs. By default we save in whats called UTF8 format, and that works for 90% of the usual characters. We have some users I am working with right now, who have had issues with "non-english" characters not showing up right.
For this we are adding a hook where you can elect to do whatever voodoo you like with an applescript right after the playlists are generated, but before they are copied to the DAP.
By way of an example, this one converts Mac UTF8 to "standard" UTF-8 which in effect solves his issue:
Once I get confirmation back this works I will post to the website as an automatic update, followed by the app store.
-- This script will iterate through all the playlist files saved by Dapper just before they are copied
-- to your DAP. This particular script runs and converts the character encoding of each file from
-- UTF8-MAC to standard UTF8 which solves some issues for some interntional users.
-- You could replace the highlighted line to adjust any parameters of our playlist or just change
--the distination encoding entry below:
set sourceEncoding to "UTF-8-MAC"
set destinationEncoding to "UTF-8"
set filename to system attribute "HOME"
set unixPath to filename & "/Library/Containers/com.map-pin.Dapper/Data/Library/Caches/com.map-pin.Dapper/playlists/"
set folderToProcess to POSIX file unixPath as Unicode text
tell application "Finder"
set fileExt to {".m3u"}
set theTopFolder to (folderToProcess as alias)
repeat with EachFile in (get every file of folder (folderToProcess as alias))
try
copy name of EachFile as string to filename
--
--
--
-- This is where we convert from UTF-8-MAC to UTF-8
set command to "cd '" & unixPath & "'; iconv -f " & sourceEncoding & " -t " & destinationEncoding & " '" & filename & "' > '" & filename & ".new'"
--
--
--
do shell script command
set command to "cd '" & unixPath & "'; mv '" & filename & ".new' '" & filename & "'"
do shell script command
end try
end repeat
end tell
