You can download it here:

Portable app: http://download.sarine.nl/Programs/gmpc/11.8.16/GmpcPortable_11.8.16_English.paf.exe

Installer: http://download.sarine.nl/Programs/gmpc/11.8.16/gmpc-11.8.16-win32.exe

Files: http://download.sarine.nl/Programs/gmpc/11.8.16/gmpc-11.8.16-win32.7z

Again, big thanks to avuton for building these.

A screenshot says more then 1000 words:

See http://musicpd.org/mantis/view.php?id=3394.

Am I this wrong? I know I am direct and often somewhat blunt.. But this guy frustrates the f*** out of me.
Because If I am supposed to accept this crap from users, I should not have users..
Please tell me If I am crossing the line..

What you want todo is draw something ‘on top’ off an existing widget, preferable without modifying that widget. In the end I made the following solution:

You have a special container class (GmpcWidgetsOverlay), you pack the widget  that should have the highlight in this widget. This container overrides the expose event, first calls the widget that is contained, then optinally draws the highlight on top. (this seems to work very well.)

So now in GMPC if you press ALT key, on the play buttons and status icons you get a small box with the key you should hit to activate it. It aint perfect yet, but so far it works:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106

using Gtk;
using FixGtk;
 
namespace Gmpc
{
	namespace Tools
	{
		public class BindingOverlayNotify : GLib.Object, FixGtk.Buildable
		{
			private Gdk.ModifierType keys = 0;
			public string name {get; set; default="";}
			// Buildable stuff
			public void set_name(string name)
			{
				this.name= name;
			}
			public unowned string get_name()
			{
				return this.name;
			}
			public void key_pressed(Gdk.ModifierType key)
			{
				keys |= key;
				state_changed(keys);
			}
			public void key_released(Gdk.ModifierType key)
			{
 
				keys &= ~key;
				state_changed(keys);
			}
 
			public signal void state_changed(Gdk.ModifierType cur_state);
		}
 
	}
	namespace Widgets
	{
		public class Overlay : Gtk.EventBox, Gtk.Buildable
		{
			public Gdk.ModifierType modifier {get; set; default = Gdk.ModifierType.MOD1_MASK;}
			public bool show_overlay {get; set; default = false;}
			public string overlay_text {get; set; default= "left"; }
			construct{
				this.set_app_paintable(true);
			}
			private Tools.BindingOverlayNotify notifier = null;
			public Tools.BindingOverlayNotify binding_overlay_notifier {
				get{
					return notifier;
				}
				set {
					if(notifier != null) {
						notifier.state_changed.disconnect(key_changed);
					}
					notifier = value;
					notifier.state_changed.connect(key_changed);
				}
			}
 
			private void key_changed(Gdk.ModifierType cur_state)
			{
				if((cur_state) == modifier) {
					show_overlay = true;
				}else{
					show_overlay = false;
				}
				this.queue_draw();
			}
 
			public Overlay()
			{
			}
 
			public override bool expose_event(Gdk.EventExpose event)
			{
				// Draw the child of this box.
				var w = (this as Gtk.Bin).get_child();
				w.expose_event(event);
				// 
				if(show_overlay)
				{
					var ct = Gdk.cairo_create(window);
					int pw,ph;
					var l = this.create_pango_layout(overlay_text);
					Gtk.Allocation cell_area = this.allocation;
					l.get_pixel_size(out pw, out ph);
 
					ct.set_source_rgb(0.8,0,0);
//					Gdk.cairo_set_source_color(ct, this.style.bg[Gtk.StateType.SELECTED]);
					ct.rectangle(1, cell_area.height/2-ph/2-0.5, pw+4, ph);
					ct.fill_preserve();
					Gdk.cairo_set_source_color(ct, this.style.text[Gtk.StateType.SELECTED]);
					ct.stroke();
 
					ct.move_to(3, cell_area.height/2-ph/2-1.5);
					Gdk.cairo_set_source_color(ct,this.style.fg[Gtk.StateType.SELECTED]);
					Pango.cairo_show_layout(ct, l);
					ct.stroke();
				}
				return false;
			}
 
		}
	}
}

As you can see in the above code I needed to make a quick hack in vala to fix the Gtk.Buildable bindings. (replace abstract with virtual) with this fix, you can use this widget from GtkBuilder.
There is also a notification object (also usable from gtkbuilder) that notifies the widgets off the key press.

As I said it aint done, but seems to be nice allready.

Because off lack of time on my side and the magic vanishing action of  LibertyZero I strongly doubt I will will be able to make a release this month. (Crap)

But a changelog so far:

What’s New in 11.11

• New sidebar. (more info here) Different view, ordering into categories, etc.
• Removing status bar, moving status icons into sidebar.
• Changed collapsed mode. (more info here)
• Fixed keybindings for browsers and keybinding highlight mode. (more info)
• Move to libglyr. This is a big one. It removes a lot of functionality from GMPC and into GLYR.
  Metadata is something that is in constant flux, providers appear, gone missing, break api, etc. Having
  this in a separate library is good for GMPC maintainability.

• – Remove metadata cache (now in libglyr)
• – Remove metadata plugins (now provided by libglyr)
• – Add separate Backdrops metadata type.
• – Remove pixbuf cache (to be done)
• – Replace metadata selector. (to be done)
• AutoMPD: Run GMPC without setting up MPD. (More info here)

Improved in 11.11

• Tooltips over sidebar.
• Slight improvement to startup times.
• Removal off old, deprecated code.

I have fixed the keybindings for the browsers (this has been in git for a time now), and if you press alt, you get a nice overlay with what number to hit. If a number is shown twice, you can switch between the two by hitting the key twice.  So to get to the wikipedia lookup, you can get to it by hitting alt-1 when on now playing, so if you are on play-queue, hit alt-1 twice to get to the wikipedia lookup.

I am still looking for some help on GMPC, LibertyZero seems to have vanished leaving me with a 1/2 done sidebar.  I am currently working on getting glyr working, this should replace all the input plugins.

But I am looking for somebody to write a nice metadata editor. (glyr frontend)

Currently it is running debian and gmpc git. (11.8 mostly) runs just fine.
Below some photo’s to proof it.

Especially the fullscreen mode is very very nice.

This means the following changes:

• No more breadcrumb bar, or dropdown menu.
  IMHO most screens are wide-screen, this wastes space.
• Small mode now shows a button list on the left. The status-icons are also visible here.
• No more re-order. or resizing of pane.

In the future:

1. Items in the sidebar will be grouped.

• Now Playing
• Play Queue
• Database
• File browser
• Artist browser
• Album browser
• metadata browser
• search
• Plugins
• ….

1. The exact grouping to be used here is something that needs to be though out. Ideas are welcome.!!!!!
2. Sidebar plugins (LibertyZero). Allow you to add things to the sidebar. Like play stats. (Code mostly there)
3. Better key-bindings. (this is crazy atm, and hard to fix with the reordering).
4. Tooltips on the icons in sidebar.

Some screemshots (please keep in mind these are WIP):

The people on #gmpc will know I have been saying this for years. Nothing is as annoying as having to wait for a program to start up and splashscreens are stupid. GMPC will do a cold start in 230 ms (on my work laptop with a normal hdd) and a warm start off 199ms, it is directly ready to use. Though this can be tricky and YMMV (esp. opening and checking the sqlite database seems to take different times on different machines)

Also with stuffkeeper I have been working hard to keep the startup times short (opening the SQL database is however taking up a lot of time) and is still significantly shorter then 1 second.

But I am happy they are finally looking at this. Boot times are often not that important, people only do that once a day, or in my case once every X weeks. (I either leave it on, or put it in standby). However applications you are using constantly, closing and opening it. It is one of the biggest things annoying me when using f.e. thunderbird or firefox. If I open it, I have to wait seconds before I can use it.

I cannot wait for the future, I really like gnome3 (although because of memory constraints I switched back to openbox for now, gnome3 gets terribly slow if you have programs running using up all your 4gig of memory) and if they can speed up general usage it would be only better.