Multiple player dev

[koolskateguy89]

Start of attempt to solve #16 (request to support other players)

• Added checking which player is open (linear time ;) )
• 'Verified' that VLC & Elisa work - if the media file has defined Title & Artist tags

Also extension.js:59 there should be let/var before children as it's previously undefined and was giving JS Warnings in Gnome-SHELL logs.

I still need to check the other players and check which other players support MPRIS, including Clementine & RhythmBox that the issue OP wanted (I mean add it to the players object and check it works).

[koolskateguy89]

I have no idea how to request review....

[koolskateguy89]

So apparently the PR author can't request review so I'm just have to tag you @mheine :)

[koolskateguy89]

Note: I just got a JS ERROR: get_meta_window(...).get_wm_class(...) is null - no idea why.
I'll try and reproduce it tomorrow despite having no idea what caused it 😬

[mheine]

Assigned myself as a reviewer, hoping to add some thoughts and input when I find the time 🧑‍💻

[koolskateguy89]

Thread about checking which player is open

https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/480820

[koolskateguy89]

• Gwenview is an image viewer (seems to also be a video viewer but I couldn't get that to work and gave up after like 5 seconds) so I removed it

• Okular is a PDF viewer so I removed it

• Amarok seems to no longer be maintained and I can't find a way to install it without compiling the source code so I can't confirm it works

• I couldn't install Vvave when following the steps in their README (doing make gave error message No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.) so I can't confirm it works

• Clementine works fine - again as long as the media has defined Artist & Title tags

• Plasma media center requires KDE Plasma to be installed

• So does Plasma browser integration

(I'm on Ubuntu with Gnome Shell and not willing to install KDE Plasma tbh)

Every other player works for me and issue #16 (specifically Rhythmbox & Clementine) is solved :)

@mheine

[koolskateguy89]

However checking the open player is difficult, the thread I posted earlier uses qdbus which when I run, gives an error could not find a Qt installation of '' so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[koolskateguy89]

School starts again for me tomorrow so unfortunately I'll be quite inactive o7

[mavit]

A couple of general suggestions:

• It might turn out to be easier to access DBus directly rather than shelling out to dbus-send.
• Gnome Shell already features an MPRIS client that is used to populate the now-playing info in the notification area. Perhaps this code could be substantially reused?

Hope this helps!

[mavit]

What about players that don't have windows? E.g., https://github.com/mavit/slimpris2/

It make more sense to ask DBus for a list of available players. E.g.,

dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.freedesktop.DBus /org/freedesktop/DBus org.freedesktop.DBus.ListNames | grep -E '^ +string "org\.mpris\.MediaPlayer2\.'