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List:       kde-doc-english
Subject:    [kde-doc-english] JuK Cover Management documentation
From:       Michael Pyne <pynm0001 () comcast ! net>
Date:       2005-10-09 0:47:47
Message-ID: 200510082047.50877.pynm0001 () comcast ! net
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As suggested by Philip Rodrigues, I've gone ahead and compiled some of the new 
features from the JuK Cover Manager that will be in KDE 3.5, which I have 
recently blogged about.

My non-marked-up version is attached.  If anyone has questions or needs 
clarifications, please let me know.  Also please CC: me, as I'm not 
subscribed.

Regards,
 - Michael Pyne

["juk-cover-manager-docs.txt" (text/plain)]

NOTE: I've tried to use __foo__ to mean underline and //foo\\ to mean \
emphasizing to make markup easier.

-Cover Management with JuK 2.3:

JuK 2.3 (part of KDE 3.5) includes improved cover management code with \
introduces some new possibilities for users compared with JuK 2.2 (which \
was shipped with KDE 3.4).  It also can change the workflow slightly for \
you if you are used to the way covers were handled in JuK 2.2.  So first, \
let's review how things used to be.

-How Covers worked in JuK 2.2:

In JuK 2.2, the cover for a track was strictly tied to its Artist and Album \
information. Although this proved useful enough, and had a few advantages, \
it wasn't a great way to organize the covers. If you wanted to use a cover \
for a different track, you either had to rename the tags in the track, or \
you had to duplicate the cover, wasting hard disk space. And if your track \
had no Artist or Album information, JuK would prevent you from setting a \
cover since it had no information to go by. It worked, but it could be \
better.

-How Covers work in JuK 2.3:

In JuK 2.3, the code was redesigned to add a core component responsible for \
dealing with cover art.  Instead of looking on disk for a picture file with \
a specific name like JuK 2.2, the Cover Manager in JuK 2.3 associates every \
cover with an identification tag, and then uses the tag with your music.  \
It's still not perfect, but it works, and it can save you time while \
allowing you to do more.

-Examples of adding covers:

So just as an example, let's say you wanted to set a cover for tracks you \
just ripped off of your CD. We'll use __Alabama - Greatest Hits III__ for \
the sake of discussion. In JuK 2.2, you could simply select any one of \
those tracks, and import a cover from the Internet by right-clicking on \
that track, and using the Cover Manager -> Get Cover From Internet command. \
As a side effect of the way JuK worked, the cover would then be immediately \
applied to *all* of the __Alabama - Greatest Hits III__ tracks, //whether \
you wanted that or not\\.

In JuK 2.3, the procedure is exactly the same, with one exception: You \
should select all of the tracks you want to apply the cover to first. So \
you would select all the __Alabama - Greatest Hits III__ tracks before \
using the Get Cover From Internet command. Or if you only wanted to set \
cover art to half of the tracks for some reason, you'd only select half the \
tracks before running the Get Cover From Internet command. Don't worry \
about duplicating covers, either: JuK is smart enough to re-use the same \
image, so you won't get 14 duplicate .png images cluttering your hard \
drive.

-Reusing old covers:

But what happens if you forgot to select all the tracks you wanted to tag? \
You could select them and repeat the process, but that would leave a \
duplicate cover on your hard drive because JuK can't quickly tell that the \
cover you've found is the same as one you already have. But that's alright, \
because you can tell JuK to use the cover from another track.

There are two ways of doing this:

1. Open the Cover Manager dialog using the Tagger menu (Tagger -> Cover \
Manager > Show Cover Manager). The Cover Manager will display a list of all \
the covers JuK knows about on the right, and after they have loaded you can \
quickly pare the list down using the search line at the top, or by using \
the list of Artists on the left. Once you see the cover you want to use, \
you can drag-and-drop the cover onto a track to apply it. It should happen \
nearly instantaneously since JuK is reusing the same cover (and you'll see \
the cover while you're dragging it as well). Unfortunately, it can take \
awhile to load the covers in the first place, and the Cover Manager isn't \
really useful for much else besides.

2. I prefer to use this method because it's rather easy. All you do is \
double-click on the track that has the cover you want, in order to start it \
playing. This will cause its cover to show up in the Now Playing bar, and \
you can drag-and-drop the cover to the track you want to change exactly as \
you would for the Cover Manager.

-Dragging covers to more than one track at once:

Also note that you can use drag-and-drop to quickly apply covers to more \
than one track. Just select the tracks you want to apply a cover to, and \
drag the cover onto any one of the selected tracks.

-What happens to my old covers?

You may be wondering what JuK will do if you already have covers from JuK \
2.2.  What happens is that JuK will automatically convert the old covers \
and merge them into the cover management system.

Because this is a time consuming process, it does not happen all at once.  \
Instead, the old cover is only converted when the cover needs to be shown \
on screen.  As the conversion process is happening, JuK will recognize what \
tracks would have shown the cover being converted, and will automatically \
apply the new cover to those tracks.  The end result is that there should \
be no visible changes: JuK will keep the same cover on your tracks that \
they've always had, except that now you can immediately take advantage of \
the new cover management features.

-Removing covers:

Another side effect is that you can now remove a cover from a track without \
simultaneously removing it from all other tracks with the same Artist and \
Album.

In JuK 2.3, the Remove Cover command now only removes the covers from the \
selected tracks.

-Suggested uses:

1. You can now apply the same cover to tracks with Albums that have (Disc \
1), (Disc 2), etc, which you couldn't do in JuK 2.2 without duplicating the \
cover.

2. Applying a "generic" cover to tracks if you simply must have a cover on \
every track, or if you have music that wasn't released as an album but fits \
a genre well.  You could make yourself a cover for that type of music and \
apply it to the songs in question.


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