Semplice – Absolutely Baching

Semplice Version 2.01 Released

Posted on 14th July 202415th July 2024 by hjr

As previously promised, an upgrade release of Semplice Version 2 has now been made available. It fixes the issue whereby several distros now appear to be shipping Version 7 of ImageMagick (the image manipulation program) rather than the Version 6 that was being shipped on all distros when Semplice Version 2 first shipped. If you try issuing Version 6 commands when you have Version 7 of ImageMagick installed, you get ugly warnings about 'convert is deprecated in IM7'.

Since it's not entirely clear to me which distros have decided to run with ImageMagick 7 and which have chosen to stick with ImageMagick 6, I've had to add code to Semplice which works out what version is installed and then use the appropriate image editing commands accordingly. [...]

Semplice Version 2 Released!

Posted on 30th June 202430th June 2024 by hjr

Finally!

Today, I'm releasing Semplice Version 2, and simultaneously retiring Version 1 (it's still downloadable, installable and documented, but I wouldn't recommend anyone use it now and I'm certainly doing no further development work on it to fix bugs or add new features or offer support on it: it's dead, Jim, and Version 2 is where it's at now!!) [...]

Reaching the limits

Posted on 22nd April 202422nd April 2024 by hjr

The graph at the left tells a tale! The context for that tale is that since June 3rd 2021, I've been using Giocoso to play (almost exclusively) only those recordings which have not previously been recorded as having been played, in an attempt to ensure that by the time I come to kick the bucket, I can say, hand-on-heart, that I've listened to every recording I ever bought. On the one hand, the tale is of good news: the graph shows that only 7.1% of my entire collection has not yet been played by Giocoso. So, I've played around 93% of it, which is pretty good going.

It's even better going when you consider that for much of the time since June 2021, I've had time restrictions on my plays: in other words, I've told Giocoso 'play unplayed recordings that last less than 20 minutes' or something similar. As a result, I haven't listened to Wagner's Ring cycle with Giocoso, but I know for certain I've played those recordings multiple, multiple times in the years before 2021. Which is to say: even the 7.1% I haven't 'officially' played contains substantial chunks of recorded music which I know I've played using different tools... so the amount of my collection which is truly unplayed is significantly less than 7%. [...]

Work in Progress: Semplice Version 2

Posted on 18th March 202429th March 2024 by hjr

It's finally time to mention what I've been up to for the past couple of months: re-writing Semplice, my digital music file manager. It's the tool that lets you tag your FLACs, volume boost them, merge them into 'SuperFLACs' (and split them back out into per-track FLACs if you prefer), convert them into MP3s or most other audio formats, analyse them to make sure they're really high resolution FLACs, and much more besides.

To be honest, I didn't think there was a lot wrong with the original version of Semplice (currently sitting at version 1.02). There wasn't a huge amount of functionality that was missing, in other words: it was more that the user interface was a bit klunky and old-fashioned, particularly in light of the user interface advances I'd implemented when developing Giocoso Version 3. So, Semplice Version 2 was going to be more of a user interface refresh than anything else... but, as I suspected it would, mission creep has resulted in a few additions to Semplice functionality that it turns out I'm rather fond of! [...]

A minor detail...

Posted on 18th July 202318th July 2023 by hjr

I am old-school. I remember doing X server stuff in 1987. I like X Server. The ability to pipe a desktop across the ends of the Earth, courtesy of X and a bit of Ethernet never ceases to amaze me.

But X is old-hat, not just old-school and Wayland is the new kid on the block, stealing its milk money and cigarettes. [...]

New Year Software Releases

Posted on 14th January 202314th January 2023 by hjr

A little late (but a birthday bash in Bruges will do that to a man!), but Happy New Year for 2023, and by way of making up for my tardiness, I give you two new software releases.

First is Semplice 1.01. The program has acquired the usual slew of bugfixes and minor tweaks and twiddles, but also a couple of nice enhancements and new features. The main new features are: the ability to extact and/or display embedded album art; the ability to create spectrum analysis graphs of the audio signal in a FLAC; and the ability to directly edit the contents of any cuesheet embedded within a FLAC. See the changelog for details. [...]

Semplice Version 1.0 - Now Available for Download

Posted on 26th November 202227th November 2022 by hjr

It's only three months late (!), but Semplice, the all-new, all-singing, all-dancing FLAC manager for Linux, Windows, macOS and Raspberry Pi, has just been released and is available for download, with instructions for doing that available from its web page.

In a nutshell, Semplice allows you to (1) tag FLACs; (2) apply volume boosts to FLACs; (3) concatenate per-track FLACs into single-file, whole-composition SuperFLACs; (4) split SuperFLACs back out into being per-track FLACs; and (5) convert audio files from and to about 7 or 8 different audio codecs (so, FLAC to MP3, for example; or SACD's DSF to super hi-res FLACs). [...]