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Borewit / listFix

listFix() - Playlist Repair Done Right
GNU General Public License v3.0
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"Open Playlist Error" Dialogue Flagged Upon Opening a Broken Playlist Containing a Special Character in a Track Path #266

Open touwys opened 4 months ago

touwys commented 4 months ago

STEPS:

  1. Prerequisite: For editing, choose a broken playlist that contains at least one track which is located in a path that contains a special Windows character.

    Note: In this particular instance, the path contains the special dot • character that is produced using the Windows keyboard combination Alt+7. This character stands applied to numerous music library folder names, and consequently happens to be in the path.

  1. Double-click the playlist to open it in the Playlist Editor.

  2. The 'Open Playlist Error' dialogue gets flagged. (Screenshot attached.)

Screenshot: 'Open Playlist Error'

Screenshot: Example of • Character in Folder Names

Device: PC OS: Windows 7x64 Ultimate listFIX(): 2.10.0 "Portable"

Borewit commented 4 months ago

I assume the "•" is the Unicode bullet character: U+2022. That required a playlist format which supports Unicode characters. M3U does not support Unicode, M3U8 does support Unicode (that's the difference).

image

Handling of such impossible conversions (causing data loss) could probably be better.

touwys commented 3 months ago

Thank you, @Borewit :

I assume the "•" is the Unicode bullet character: U+2022.

According to AI, it is the same as "Alt+7" Windows Key Code.

Errors trying to make impossible conversions (causing data loss) could probably be better.

Do you mean that it is probably better to convert all the current m3u playlists to the m3u8 format so that the special characters could well be read within listFix?

Borewit commented 3 months ago

Do you mean that it is probably better to convert all the current m3u playlists to the m3u8 format so that the special characters could well be read within listFix?

That is true, but that is not what I meant, corrected my unreadable sentence. You can consider m3u8 as an improved version for m3u. m3u does not support unicode, but which non-unicode character sets it does support is not defined.

I once had media player Dune HD, which did not understand the m3u8 extension, only m3u. The funny thing was that they implemented the M3U with UTF-8. Reading M3U with UTF-8 text encoding is M3U8. So saving the playlist as m3u8, and then renaming the extension to m3u was the trick that make that media player to read path with special characters.

But what I meant is that listFix() could theoretically be improved to warn the user when he tries to save data which does not fit in the target format. Yet due to the fact that it is not even clear what does and what does not fit in .m3u, so a solution on the best known convention is the maximum achievable.

touwys commented 3 months ago

Thank you for the explanation. It also lifts some of the fogginess I may have had, prior.

Now looking for a mass m3u to m3u8 playlist converter. I know of two apps, which I have, that are capable of exporting the m3u playlists to m3u8 format but, pending further investigation, I'm aiming for something decidedly easier to use.