At last, Giocoso version 2 is now available for download. And it's only taken me four months to write and test it 🙂 My apologies for the delay.
The program has undergone significant revision and bug-fixing and has acquired a bunch of new features. The really big ticket items are, probably:
- It now runs on Windows 10 and 11; and macOS (Sierra to Monterey)
- All selection filters are now independently-usable, thus making complex 'combo filters' possible (such as 'play me a Haydn mass that I've not previously played, so long as it lasts no longer than 35 minutes and is played by the Vienna Philharmonic', which uses the composer, composition and comment filters in conjunction with the maxduration one, all at the same time -something not previously possible)
- A persistent configuration file now means that you can run Giocoso effectively without having to specify dozens of --runtime parameters
- Better 'looks', including a better colouring technique for the caption panel when displaying album art
The complete list of new features, feature changes, the handful of feature removals and some of the big bug-fixes is documented here. Indeed, the complete documentation for the new version is available here. It is still undergoing last-minute updates and revisions but is at least 95% there.
Existing Giocoso users can upgrade by the usual means: giocoso --checkver. Full documentation about what happens during and after that command is run should be read before embarking on the process, I would recommend.
Anyone wanting to try Giocoso out for the first time can install it by issuing these commands in a terminal session:
- cd
- wget https://absolutelybaching.com/abc_installer
- bash abc_installer --giocoso
...but you may want to read the full installation instructions before going much further than that! (So see Section 6 of the documentation).
Enjoy!
Edited to add: Due to extreme daftness on my part, for the first 38 minutes after release, Giocoso version 2 was unable to scan a music collection to create a database, because dummy here uploaded the wrong version of the code. It's now been fixed, but if you downloaded Giocoso version 2 before 9.38pm on July 21st 2022 and find yourself being informed that Giocoso can't find any FLAC files in your music collection, please follow the instructions above for performing a fresh Giocoso installation, which will get you the corrected code. Sorry: I rushed the release, basically!