xml xspf playlists – 233 days old

[Bad Haircut]

Well you can stick yer spiff (xspf) file format playlist where the sun don't shine. Sweet jesus, what convoluted non-working pile of exasperating cack they are to work with.

Meanwhile, in m3u land life is much more sensible and actually does what it's told and works. I've wasted hours.




Rant over. I'm over it now.

[Grogan]

I hate XML configuration files. It's supposed to be human readable, but it doesn't make a lot of sense if you're not familiar with the specific context. (i.e. If you wrote the program that writes the XML settings to the file, you'll know what the property types and attributes etc. are). The syntax makes it quite cumbersome for hand editing.

[Bad Haircut]

All I wanted to do originally was edit an older existing VLC playlist xspf file because radio streams come and go; and I'd started to notice that some streams when added didn't show up at all using identical syntax (streams were definitely there working). And I'd noticed the order was scrambled. So it was hard determining what was VLC and what syntax error. So I followed what I had and compared it to the VLC / xspf wikis - which couldn't be more straightforward, including explaining simple parameters.

Long and short of it VLC had a clean bill of health relating to these problems a few versions back. So after hours of fannying about I just used the old playlist and re-saved it in m3u format and quickly edited it and put everything in personal preference order. Added and subtracted streams, etc, etc. Worked perfectly in VLC.

Then saved that new m3u list in xspf format a) to have a backup list and b) to see where the fuck I'd gone wrong originally.

Again, short of it, the 'new' xspf file syntax looks absolutely fuck all like a) anything remotely resembling the two wikis instructions and b) the existing file format that worked for over 18 months. Similar but different at the bottom after the closing /tracklist tag.

</tracklist>
<extension application="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/playlist/0">
        <vlc:node title="Radio Playlist 031012.m3u">
            <vlc:item tid="0"/>
            <vlc:item tid="1"/>
            <vlc:item tid="2"/>
            <vlc:item tid="3"/>
            <vlc:item tid="4"/>
            <vlc:item tid="5"/>
            <vlc:item tid="6"/>
            <vlc:item tid="7"/>
            <vlc:item tid="8"/>
            <vlc:item tid="9"/>
            <vlc:item tid="10"/>
            <vlc:item tid="11"/>
            <vlc:item tid="12"/>
            <vlc:item tid="13"/>
            <vlc:item tid="14"/>
            <vlc:item tid="15"/>
            <vlc:item tid="16"/>
            <vlc:item tid="17"/>
            <vlc:item tid="18"/>
            <vlc:item tid="19"/>
            <vlc:item tid="20"/>
            <vlc:item tid="21"/>
            <vlc:item tid="22"/>
            <vlc:item tid="23"/>
            <vlc:item tid="24"/>
            <vlc:item tid="25"/>
            <vlc:item tid="26"/>
            <vlc:item tid="27"/>
            <vlc:item tid="28"/>
            <vlc:item tid="29"/>
            <vlc:item tid="30"/>
        </vlc:node>
    </extension>
</playlist>

It actually makes sense what's there now, but not in a month would I have figured it out with a) what worked before b) what was actually there originally c) wikis and forums.

Anyway; you live, you learn, get bored, go a bit mental, die, etc, etc, etc.