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[zybex]

See, this is perhaps why you should not want me to use your app...   

Nonsense, where would developers be without users that could find the bugs we intentionally put in there? 

This thing I just reported, was literally my first time using Zelda. First time I ran the app.
Everything you just mentioned as "another recent oddity" I have never tried using the API. Presumably I'll stumble over those on my 2nd use.

Cool, feel free to report any issue you encounter.

Overall though I like it Zybex. Nice job. I'd like it better if you could drag to re-order tabs, and to re-order columns in the playlist view.  I especially like what you did with insert function, and with the live wiki below the editing pane. That's nice. It would be good if the Insert Function dialog had grouping like the wiki to make it easier to find things (String Functions, List Functions, etc).

The Insert Function dialog does have a "Category" column which matches the Wiki, you can sort by that. Better yet, just type "list" or "string" on the search panel to quickly filter the list.
Tab/Column reorder: added to the TODO.

[wer]

The Insert Function dialog does have a "Category" column which matches the Wiki, you can sort by that. Better yet, just type "list" or "string" on the search panel to quickly filter the list.

I was thinking more of some links above the list that would automatically jump or even better filter to the desired section. With the column, you have to click to sort, and then scroll through the list to find what you want. The type-filter is good, but it's keystrokes. It's just easier/nicer to be able to pick from a "menu".

[zybex]

Perhaps a dropdown to filter by category, with "all" as the default? Having links is doable, but it's ugly to put 11 individual links there.
Did you see the last post of page 2? Looks like an extra Clean() is the culprit.

[wer]

That could work.  But there are only 11 categories, 12 if you count all.  So a set of text links in a small font (or buttons if you think it looks better) above the table would provide for very quick filtering and a nice visual reference.

All      Cat1      Cat2      Cat3      Cat4      Cat5
Cat6     Cat7      Cat8      Cat9      Cat10     Cat11

Yes I saw about Clean(). Hopefully it will be an easy fix.

[DJLegba]

Thanks for this tool, I found it very helpful.

[zybex]

You're welcome! Happy new year.

[zybex]

Published Zelda v1.3.0: [source code changes]:
- Updated function list
- Reworked settings layout
- Added category filter to Insert Function
- Added empty filter to Insert Field

To upgrade, you can just start Zelda and click on the "new version available" label on the status bar. Alternatively, get it here.

[marko]

The wiki links for Counter(), Math(), Number(), Rand(), Range(), StackCount() and TrackNumber() need to be updated.

[zybex]

Thanks Marko! I knew I forgot something... maybe I should've used your new URL aliases, but I'm afraid that they will not be updated in the future.

Published v1.3.1, fixing URLs for functions in the Number category.
https://github.com/zybexXL/Zelda/commit/ab21346330351bec10868c97d988f07cf67f5d72

[lepa]

Hi zybex,
If you have time and motivation could you add opacity and valign support for font

[zybex]

Is Font valign supported in MC? It's not on the documentation:
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Expression_Language#HTML_Font_Properties

Zelda already supports the Font Alpha attribute for opacity. I haven't tested much though, not sure if it renders the same way as within MC.
There's a valign on the img tag, though the HTML rendering in Zelda doesn't match 100% with MC - close enough until someone complains

[lepa]

Alpha doesn't do anything for me in Zelda i.e. cannot make text invicible in the renderer window. Font valign is implemented. I requested it maybe year ago and got a hit.

I have noticed that image rendering doesn't match but haven't complained about it  Would be a time saver if it would be closer but not complaining...

[zybex]

Alpha works for me and the renderer output matches what I see on MC. Alpha=0 makes the text invisible.
Can you paste some expression using Alpha, and screenshots of how it looks for you in MC and Zelda?

I'll test and add Font valign, thanks for letting me know.
Regarding image valign... even in MC it doesn't work very well, specially when mixing text and images on the same line.

[lepa]

I'll test and add Font valign, thanks for letting me know.
Regarding image valign... even in MC it doesn't work very well, specially when mixing text and images on the same line.

there are definitely bugs in MC renderer. font align helps a little there. There is a bug in MC also when Theaterview is rendering text which is not default size. The first and the last row have much more vertical space between the lines


Alpha example. See in picture that alpha="0" marked text is displayed. (using those to be able to align horizontally) in MC alphas are invisible. So it should show only 6,8/10 not 6,8/100
And on lower row "6,8/10" should be invisible

Code: [Select]

<img src="tooltip:CriticRating//imdb-square_top" width="40" valign="bottom">/
/  <font face="Hack" size="90" valign="bottom" alpha="80"><b>FormatNumber([IMDB Rating],1)<//b><//font>/
<font face="Hack" size="70" alpha="50" valign="bottom">//10<//font>/
<font face="Hack" size="70" alpha="0">[v_IMDbVotes]Repeat(/ ,Math(6-Length([v_IMDbVotes])))<//font>/



[zybex]

Hmm, I can't reproduce, it works fine for me. What do you get with this?

Code: [Select]

<font size="200" alpha="100">sample text<//font>
<font size="200" alpha="60">sample text<//font>
<font size="200" alpha="30">sample text<//font>
<font size="200" alpha="0">sample text<//font>
<font size="200" alpha="40">sample text<//font>
<font size="200" alpha="70">sample text<//font>
<font size="200" alpha="100">sample text<//font>

[lepa]

strange

[lepa]

is there some legendary zelda option which i don't have activated

[zybex]

Really strange. It looks like the IE .Net component is not rendering opacity for you... so it's either a different version than what I have, or redirected to another renderer somehow (Chromium?). Even the rest of the text on your first screenshot looks weird, not the same as what I see... it lacks aliasing for one. It shouldn't matter if you use Chrome/Edge/Firefox, the .Net renderer should be independent :/

I assume you are on Windows 10 with .Net 4.7 or above installed?

[lepa]

win10, regex says .net version is 4.8.04084

[zybex]

Does your country/PC write decimals as 1.00 or 1,00? Second one?

[lepa]

yes, i live in comma world. Though in English Windows 10 it seems to be more confused than 7 was with regions and languages. Calculator worked with commas and also in mc i need to replace commas with periods when doing math

[zybex]

That's it then - Zelda is generating this HTML for alpha - notice the dots on the Opacity values:

Code: [Select]

<span style=" font-size: 200%; opacity: 1.0;">sample text</span><br>
<span style=" font-size: 200%; opacity: 0.6;">sample text</span><br>
<span style=" font-size: 200%; opacity: 0.3;">sample text</span><br>
<span style=" font-size: 200%; opacity: 0.0;">sample text</span><br>
On your country those are getting printed as commas, so the browser fails to parse it and ignores it
I've fixed it already and will publish soon.

Thanks for spotting it!
 

[zybex]

Published Zelda v1.3.5:
- Fix Opacity/Alpha for countries using comma for decimals
- Added Treenode, Extract, PlayListTime functions

Please upgrade (restart Zelda, click the upgrade notice on bottom corner) and let me know if it fixes opacity for you.

[lepa]

Oh right, didn't remember that opacity is decimal number outside of MC language... Anyway it is now working thank you for the fix.

[zybex]

Good
Is the rendering in Zelda close to the rendering in MC? Font sizes, images, alignment, etc?
If not, could you send me a full screenshot of how your tooltip looks in MC and in Zelda, and the full code for your tooltip? I could try to iron out the details. PM or email is fine.

A Library backup would work even better as it would contain all your fields/expressions.
With my tooltip it looks almost 100% correct, but perhaps yours is more complex.

[lepa]

It looks about the same. I'm mostly doing theater view screens and there the difference was zooming. I have set it to 80%. There was some reason why it isn't 100% but I can't remember what was and is that reason valid anymore... also theater view renders a little bit differently than tooltip. Zooming only affects text not images on theater view while Zelda zooms both.

E: How to reset zoom in Zelda?

E2: I think that unzooming to 80% in Theater View is related to that Theater View font size must be 12 and that is too big for basic text

[zybex]

On the Expression and 'Text Output' tab, use CTRL+MouseWheel to change zoom. Current zoom level is displayed on the statusbar and is saved/persistent.

On the ' Rendered Output' tab, Zoom is handled by the browser component. You can also change it with CTRL+Wheel but there's no indication on the statusbar (Zelda doesn't receive any notification...). Restarting Zelda resets this zoom to 100%. CTRL+0 doesn't work for some reason, maybe I'll look into it later.


Can't you change the default font size for TheaterView? You can also use <font size="80"//> at the start of your expression. This should then match the rendering with Zelda.

[lepa]

I can't change base font size in TV so I would have to always use font tag when I want to display anythin at my "base font size" also then I couldn't use any stock field for display but everything must be expressions so I can set that "my base font size". It would be too cumbersome even on MC's modifying the look standards. (it is already too much work to try to change how TV looks.. like doing the layouts using invisible monosize font to get it display things at correct place  )

[Chipicui]

zybex
I'm really sorry to bother you but I'm having an unhandled exception starting zelda on windows 7 64 bits.
Any idea why this could happen?

[zybex]

Hi Chipicui,
Please install .NetFramework Runtime 4.7.2 or above, you're likely running an older version.
https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet-framework

[Chipicui]

Thanks zybex!
I'll do it.

[Chipicui]

That was it... it works perfectly now. Thanks a lot!

[InflatableMouse]

I have a small suggestion. The wiki page shows the correct expression (it jumps to the right spot on the wiki page). I noticed however its possible to scroll up and down and it actually shows the the entire wiki page. I didn't realize and got lost because its quite a long page.

I was wondering how you felt about loading only the part of the expression that is used? Im not sure how to explain this, I think it should be possible to load the "index" in an iframe.

I hope I made that clear enough to make sense .

[zybex]

Yes, the browser panel just loads the corresponding wiki page and cleans it up a bit, but most of the page is still there. You can still scroll and click around, and if you're crafty enough you can even end up on youtube or something like that

However, all you have to do is click on some other function (of the expression you're writing) and then again on the function you want, and it will reload the page at the correct location again, so I felt it would be OK to leave it like that instead of trying to scrape just the needed function text from the original wiki page, which can be error prone. Being able to scroll up/down to see related functions might also be useful, I think.

One other way to jump back to the function you want: click the Booklet icon on the toolbar twice (turn Off/On the wiki)

[InflatableMouse]

However, all you have to do is click on some other function (of the expression you're writing) and then again on the function you want, and it will reload the page at the correct location again, so I felt it would be OK to leave it like that

Yeah, its oke and it works fine. I felt it would be more convenient if it loaded just that expression thats all.

[Doof]

Have I said lately how much I love this tool? I seriously love this tool.

I do have one minor "bug" report, though: The FieldQuery help is redirecting to an Interact thread, but the function is in the wiki.

And one semi-major feature request? I was just contemplating writing this myself but thought I'd toss it your way to see if it's something that would fit better into Zelda, since you already have all of the building blocks in place already.

So the idea was a library performance analyzer. It would read in all of MC's user-defined fields, and for each field it would load in the values for every file in the library and record the amount of time it took MC's API to perform the task. Once it's completed this for every user-defined field in the database it presents a report that lists them all alongside their time. It would take some time to run, for sure, but it would help find problematic expression fields that are having the heaviest impact on MC's performance.

The idea really came from Zelda, since it already reports on the timing of individual expressions on a per-file basis. I was just hoping to take that capability and use it to get a birds-eye view of the entire library to see which expressions might be causing MC to periodically become temporarily unresponsive.

Thoughts? Even if it's not something you're interested in adding to Zelda, given your experience in this area, do you think the idea is feasible and worth pursuing?

[zybex]

Thanks for the love 

Funny, I thought I had published the updated wiki links, apparently not. I'll review the list of functions and add a few new ones, then I'll publish an update.

Regarding your idea for a performance analyzer... it's feasible. You can already measure a given field by simply writing it on the left side, eg. "[tooltip]", and then see the API time for each file in the Playlist tab on the right side. Doing the same for all fields... what about simply adding a similar "API" timing column to the "Insert Field" button? It already fetches the value of each field for the current file, so it would be trivial to add the timing there.

A full matrix of "all fields" vs "all files" is a bit cumbersome, I think.

[Doof]

Ah, the idea wasn't to show a matrix of all fields and files. Sorry I wasn't clear. It would just be a two-column table showing field name and average response time.

So, for example, if I have a field that is constantly causing MC to go semi-unresponsive this would help locate that field by allowing you to compare the impact of that field against that of other fields. Currently, the file list shows the API response time of a single expression run against a single file. The idea is to get a report of the average impact of all fields, using some subset of the total library as a dataset, so that comparisons could be run between all user-defined fields to find the heaviest hitters.

Using that information, a user could sort the output by response time and find the expression fields that are really hammering on MC and causing potential performance issues.  I assumed it won't make sense to bother with default fields since a user has no control over those.

I think we're on the same track there with what you're suggesting about the Add Field window. The only difference would be that this would do the same for the entire list and present the average response time instead of single-file response time.

[zybex]

Published v1.40:
- Add SetField and ListFilter functions
- Add missing wiki links
- Refresh Playlist tab only when it's the current tab
- Refresh only values of visible expressions on Playlist tab

The performance analyzer goes into the TODO. I checked it today, and MC's API doesn't provide any info about a field type - so I have no way to select only the user-created fields. This means the analyzer would need to list all fields, or provide a way for you to select which fields you want to analyze.

[Doof]

The performance analyzer goes into the TODO. I checked it today, and MC's API doesn't provide any info about a field type - so I have no way to select only the user-created fields. This means the analyzer would need to list all fields, or provide a way for you to select which fields you want to analyze.

Oh, bummer. Another option would be to maintain an internal list of stock fields and then filter those out? But I'm happy to hear the idea has merit and is under consideration!

Confirmed the wiki link for FieldQuery is working now! Thanks!

[john greenwood]

Newbie question here.  So far I have only used Expressions singly (e.g. rules for inserting text into fields).  I would be interested in creating mini-programs. I assume your program has a way to save a function I have created. But how do I call a function within JRiver?  Couldn't find the answer in the Wiki.

[zybex]

MC doesn't have the concept of functions, it's all inline code. There's no way to have a library of functions.
You can however have field [AA] which is a calculated field with some expression, and then use [AA] as part of another expression on field [BB].

Zelda saves all tab contents automatically on exit and restores them at startup, but it does not save them to MC.

[zybex]

Published v1.4.1:
- Comment out lines starting with ##
- added option in Settings to enable/disable comment lines
- Add Decimal() function

You can now comment text or code lines by starting the line with ##, as shown in screenshot below. Note that while these lines will be ignored in Zelda, you need to remove them before putting the code in MC as they will not be ignored there.

[lepa]

Thanks for update. Commenting is a good addition. Any chance to get dark mode color preset. I know you can change some colors but hard coded colors doesn't easily play with darker backgrounds

[zybex]

I can add a Dark mode theme, but it actually requires quite a few changes and testing time, as it's not just a matter of flipping a switch and let windows do it. Many icons will also need a dark variant. I'll get to it.

[zybex]

Published v1.5, adding support for MCWS connection. This means that you can now connect to a Linux/Mac server too, even if the tool still only runs under Windows.

Zelda v1.5.1 (25.03.2023):
- Add MCWS connection support
- Save/Restore window size and position
- Update Scintilla.Net control

Reminder: Zelda has an auto-upgrade feature, just click the red "new version" notification on the lower-left corner.

[lepa]

Thanks for update. MCWS doesn't seem to find all my playlists. Namely my Test list is missing. It reappears if I change to automation object

[zybex]

Is it a smartlist or playlist?
Can you please share the playlist definition and full path?

Also, does it show up in this browser call?
http://<yourHostname>:52199/MCWS/v1/Playlists/List

... and does it look something like this?

Code: [Select]

<Item>
    <Field Name="ID">649401942</Field>
    <Field Name="Name">fix</Field>
    <Field Name="Path">Categories\fix</Field>
    <Field Name="Type">Playlist</Field>
</Item>

[lepa]

It is playlist. If I duplicated it then the TESTI was found but no items for it and the duplicate TESTI (1) was not found at all

MCWS itself founds it. Location is Playlists root

<Item>
<Field Name="ID">743619254</Field>
<Field Name="Name">TESTI</Field>
<Field Name="Path">TESTI</Field>
<Field Name="Type">Playlist</Field>
</Item>

[zybex]

(ಠ_ರ) ?

What do you get for this one?

Code: [Select]

http://<yourHostname>:52199/MCWS/v1/Playlist/Files?playlist=743619254&action=JSON&fields=key,date,date%20imported,date%20%28release%29,date%20%28year%29,name,filename,file%20size,media%20sub%20type,media%20type
Actually, please check the logfile in %TEMP%\Zelda, maybe there's an Exception logged there. It's possible it's some char in one of your filenames/metadata causing a decoding issue.