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1997-09-04
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Notify CD Player
for Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0
Version 1.20
Copyright (c) 1996-1997, Mats Ljungqvist
mlt@cyberdude.com
http://www.artech.se/~mlt/software/index.html
--- Contents ---------------------------------------------------------------
1. Introduction
2. Legal stuff
3. How to install
4. How to use
- The fast left-click functions
- The right-click context menu
- CD Info/Program
- Options
- CD Database Editor
5. DB plug-ins
6. Feedback, suggestions, bug-reports
7. 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.
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 disc/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.
- Database plug-in. Currently features the XMCD CDDB (local and remote)
and ODBC. (Note: These have to be downloaded separatly and installed
using the instructions provided with them)
- Can be set to exit when the CD is removed for seamless operation.
--- 2. Legal stuff ---------------------------------------------------------
Notify CD Player is *FREEWARE*. That means, You don't have to pay me
anything and I'm not forced to give You support. Deal? :)
I do give support when I have time, but I can't guarantee You anything
and it might take a while before You get an answer.
No *REGISTRATION* is needed, but I always apreciate e-mail's telling me
that You use the program.
I take no responsibility by *ANY* damages caused by this program!
--- 3. How to install ------------------------------------------------------
Installation is done by copying the NTFY_CD.EXE to a choosen location.
(Preferably the WINDOWS directory or You will have to change the
reg file described below)
Thats it if You don't want to replace the standard CD Players actions.
To replace default Autoplay program and to map the .CDA extension to
Notify CD Player import the NTFY_CD.REG file by double-clicking the icon
in the Explorer.
You can also just copy NTFY_CD.EXE over the existing CDPLAYER.EXE in
Your Windows directory.
--- 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 disc, 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 disc starts to play again.
Change to the next track by clicking one time on the icon.
Stop the disc 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 disc 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 disc.
- 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 disc
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.
The buttons are pretty straight forward I think, but the Internet DB
can be worth mentioning. This button is only shown when the CDDB
database plug-in is used.
The options on this button is:
- Get from Internet. This option queries the remote server for info
about the current disc.
- Send to Internet. This option send this disc information to the
central CDDB repository by e-mail.
The CDDB database has a number of remote servers on the Internet which
You can query for disc information. The database is quite large so
it can be inconvinient to store it on the local disc. This database
currently consist of more than 13,000 discs!
- Options
---------
The options dialog is where You configure the fast left-click
functions, as well as specifying what information to show in
the ToolTip.
Time display in tooltip
-----------------------
Specifies what time information to show in the tooltip.
CD Info display in tooltip
--------------------------
Specifies what disc information to show in the tooltip.
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.
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 disc 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 disc 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 i choosen.
- Remember status. Causes the player to remember certain status flags
such as repeat and random between runs.
- Full status check. Can be used on older CD devices or devices with
bad drivers that doesn't send notification messages when a disc is
available etc.
- 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 cool!
- 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 disc with more than 25 tracks is used. This
option prevents this.
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 disc is in the drive or when the full status check
option is used. A value of 1 is ok.
Categories
----------
Choose this to alter the default set of categories. Note! Do not do
this if You use the XMCD CDDB plug-in!
DB Options
----------
Is only available if You use a DB plug-in that has an additional
options dialog. See the plug-in documentation for information on
how to use the dialog that shows up when selecting this button.
- CD Database Editor
--------------------
The CD Database Editor is used to alter disc information or to export or
import disc information.
The discs have a right-click context menu where You make an alias, change
the category of that disc or delete that disc from the DB.
--- 5. DB plug-ins ---------------------------------------------------------
There is currently two DB plug-ins available.
- ODBC plug-in uses an ODBC datasource residing in a MS Access database
or an SQL Server database.
- CDDB for use with the XMCD CDDB format. This plug-in can handle both
local file versions as well as the remote server query function.
Check out the homepage for more info on these plug-ins.
--- 6. Feedback, suggestions, bug-reports ----------------------------------
All feedback, suggestions and bug-reports to mlt@cyberdude.com
Please include "Notify CD Player" as well as "BUG, SUGGESTION or FEEDBACK"
in the subject line.
There is an option that can be set in the CDPLAYER.INI file under the
[NTFY_CD] section that causes the app to generate a logfile on
C:\NTFY_CD.LOG
It is:
[NTFY_CD]
LOGFILE=1
Set this and mail me the results if You have any problems!
Also don't forget to include the version You are using. This is found in
the about box. Also include any DB plug-ins You are running.
--- 7. 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 Developer Studio.
Well, thats about it, happy playing!