Giocoso Version 3.06 Released

A new release of Giocoso has been made available, fixing a recently-discovered minor, but annoying, bug. This brings the current version of Giocoso up to 3.06.

The bug was that if you used any of the non-default methods of selecting music to play from the Play Music menu (such as Option 2, where you specify filters to control the selection, or Option 5, where a playlist is used to determine what to play and in what order), the number of 'selections' to be played would be remembered if you halted those non-default plays early and then switched to using Option 1's 'play music with defaults' menu option. For example: take Option 2 and say 'play only music that lasts less than 10 minutes': maybe that will generate a list of things to be played that numbers 1345. After playing 4 things from that list, you interrupt the play (by issuing an Autostop request, for example) but do not quit Giocoso. Then you take Play Music option 1: the default, randomised selection of music now takes place... but Giocoso will still declare that there are 1345 items to be played (the top right-hand corner will display something like 'Selection 1 of 1345'). That's because it's a bug of omission: the default play method didn't explicitly set the limit on plays, so if another play option did, the default play method was stuck using that number of selections.

The bug-fix is, of course, that the default method of play now explicitly goes back to the Giocoso configuration file and reads whatever SELECTIONS= from there.

The bug has lain undiscovered all this time because I generally did not flit back and forth between play modes ...but, as my last blog post explained, that's precisely what I've just started to do: on some days, or at some point during the day, I will want to explicitly say 'play me something I've not played before', meaning 'take Option 2 and specify the unplayed works filter there'. Once a few of those plays have completed, I want to go back to doing routine randomised plays, regardless of unplayed status, which involves stopping the Option 2 plays and taking Option 1 afresh -and it was that switch in play modes that alerted me to the problem. The workaround, if you don't feel like upgrading, is to quit Giocoso and re-launch it... but the bug-fix in Version 3.06 makes that unnecessary.

As ever, upgrading Giocoso consists of taking the Administration menu, Option 4 and following the prompts. You should see an indication that two files need updating: ablibgioplay.sh and ablibgioparse.sh, though the message to that effect is fleeting! Agree to install the update when asked, supply the sudo password when prompted ...and then quit Giocoso when the upgrade is complete, ignoring any temporary errors that might be displayed as you do so. When you re-launch Giocoso, a fresh version 3.06 should be working properly for you once more.