This page describes the changes made in each point release of Semplice since its first release as version 2.00 on June 30th, 2024.
Changes are listed in reverse chronological order (i.e., the most recent releases appear first).
Semplice Version 2.05 - September 14th 2024
- Minor bug-fix when converting from one audio format to another. After file format conversion, if the output format was FLAC, the code sought to 'clean' the tags of the output FLAC files. It did so by calling an inappropriate procedure name, however. The bug-fix means the correct code is invoked and thus tag cleaning works as intended following conversion to FLAC.
Semplice Version 2.04 - August 17th 2024
- Minor bug-fix to track tagging: sometimes, the grep statement that determines bit-depth and sample rate would occasionally produce a 'binary file matches' error, which would then prevent the renaming of FLACs to include those two pieces of information (if that option was enabled in the configuration file). This release merely adds the -a switch so that the grep program treats binary files as if they were text files, which resolves the error. I am unable to determine what specific circumstances would trigger the 'binary files' error in the first place: I only encountered it on one FLAC recently purchased. So I don't think it's a widespread issue, but the 2.04 release should mean it's never an issue again, anyway!
Semplice Version 2.03 - August 14th 2024
There are two small enhancements to functionality in this release, as follows:
1. When creating a SuperFLAC (SuperFLAC menu, Option 2), the program now auto-cleans the SuperFLAC as soon as it's been created. Previously, no cleaning took place unless the manual option to clean was taken (press 'K') or the quit program with post-processing option was specified (Quit menu, Option 1); now the freshly-created SuperFLAC is cleaned without you having to do the job manually. The process of 'cleaning' tags firstly removes non-canonical tags (such as 'Copyright' or 'Record Label' and adds one non-canonical tag, namely TAGDATE, which is then assigned the current system date/time in Unix Epoch format, so that a value of 1723631422 can later be converted to a human-readable date of Wednesday, 14 August 2024 10:30:22, thereby letting you know precisely when you created and/or tagged a FLAC into your collection. Thus, SuperFLACs created in earlier Semplice versions lacked a TAGDATE tag, but was otherwise in possession of all the canonical tags. This new release therefore simply ensures that freshly-created SuperFLACs do indeed get created with a TAGDATE tag.
2. When you perform a volume boost with AUTOBOOST enabled in earlier Semplice versions, if a volume boost can be applied to your FLACs, one will be automatically -but you will have no idea how big that volume boost is. New in Version 2.03, therefore, is a very small addition to the status line when an auto-boost is underway that simply tells you how big the volume boost is, like this:
The message at the bottom of the screen used to read 'Performing a volume boost...'. It now adds the words 'of +xdB' to that message, so you know precisely what the automatically applied volume boost is.
Semplice Version 2.02 - August 7th 2024
When tagging FLAC files with album artwork, you are given the opportunity to 'point' to a piece of artwork. Semplice has always checked the file you point to, to ensure that it's a genuine JPG or PNG file, rather than (say) 'word.exe' renamed to be 'word.png' for giggles. Unfortunately, I didn't realise that not all genuine JPGs or PNGs are built the same: most will use what is termed the 'sRGB colourspace', and this is the colourspace that Semplice was originally written to check for as a sign of 'genuine image-ness'. This makes sense: colourspaces affect how devices handle the colour information within an image file and for anything involving computers, the sRGB colourspace is the 'right' one to use.
Unfortunately, not all record companies are entirely consistent on the point, and one recent download I purchased came with album artwork that declared itself to be a JPG but used the CMYK colourspace internally. This also makes sense: the record company has to physically print this artwork when manufacturing its CDs, and the CMYK colourspace is best suited to printing. Trouble thus starts when you point Semplice at a JPG which is internally using the CMYK colourspace (which is not something you'd particularly know was happening, unless you knew how to check!): Semplice simply won't use such images and your FLACs will remain untagged with that particular bit of artwork. You might think you could force the issue using some other tagging program -and, indeed, you probably would be successful in doing that... but if you were to play such a force-fed FLAC in Giocoso (which uses the img2sixel program to allow graphics to display within a terminal, you'd see this sort of output:
You might notice that the image on the right is in a sort-of 'negative' state. This is an sRGB environment trying to make sense of an embedded CMYK image.
I hadn't realised this sort of thing could actually happen... until it happened to me! Version 2.02 of Semplice thus fixes this issue by doing a silent conversion of any CMYK images it finds into sRGB ones, over-writing the originals whilst doing so. The conversion process doesn't change what the standalone image looks like on your computer screen, but merely alters the internal way in which the image handles colours. Embedded art then displays correctly in Giocoso, like so:
Semplice Version 2.01 - July 15th 2024
This release was necessitated by the realisation that ImageMagick (the program Semplice uses to display and manipulate album art when music files are being tagged with album or cover art) comes in two versions. Version 6 uses a program called "convert", for which a command such as "convert -resize 450x450 image.jpg" would be valid. Version 7 puts up a warning message if the 'convert' command is used, saying that its use is deprecated. It also changes the syntax requirements so that the replacement program, "magick", now requires that the commands come in "image - task" order. Issue a command such as "magick -resize 450x450 image.jpg" therefore, and you'll get an error message saying that no image file called "450x450" could be found. Instead, you have to say, "magick image.jpg -resize 450x450": get the image mentioned first, then say what tasks you want applied to it.
The syntax variation means that you can't just alias convert => magick. You literally have to issue different commands, depending on which version of ImageMagick you're working with. Up until very recently, Version 6 was the one used by default in all the distros that Semplice was tested on, so the issue never arose in my testing. The recent release of KDE Version 6, however, means that I noticed some distros are now shipping ImageMagick Version 7 by default.
This release therefore adds code to (1) identify which version of ImageMagick is installed; and (2) issues an appropriate convert or magick command (using different syntax ordering as needed) depending on what version is detected.