[gui-talk] Fwd: A couple of tips to improve your MaPlEr

[Steve Pattison]

MaPlEr is an accessible media player available from http://www.mar-dy.com/MaPlEr/MaPlEr.php  -Steve.

From:	David	
		
		
		


You will have noticed, that MaPlEr displays information like Artist, Album and Track title, when playing your songs. Each of these informations are displayed in their respective columns. Unfortunately, the speech synthesizer in the screen reader, does not always split these informations, hence often you will have the full line of information read as one long phrase, making it a bit hard to distinguish the one column from the other.

This can easily be fixed:
Thing is that MaPlEr standard ships with the 'split character' between columns set to a single dash, that usually will have little effect on most voices in your screen reader. Here is how to fix it:

1. go to Settings (Alt-S)
2. Choose Optical Settings.
3. Tab to 'Character between columns', and here type the period sign on your keyboard followed by a Space (". ").
4. Press Enter.

Your speech now will make a small pause between each information, making it somehow more comprehendable to scroll through your playlist.


...

MaPlEr has the ability to remember the last four played playlists. You easily can access them by going to the File menu, and pressing 1 through 4.

On the other hand, if you want to switch between these even more quickly, here is a suggestion:
1. Go to Settings menu (Alt-S).
2. choose Keyboard (K).
3. Choose Define Shortcuts (E).
4. Scroll down to File - 1.
5. Press a wanted hotkey, for instance, CTRL-1.
6. Repeat the two previous steps for File -2, File- 3, and File -4.
7. Press Tab, and press Enter on OK.

From now on, you can press the newly defined hotkeys (in the example Ctrl-1 through Ctrl-4), and quickly switch between the last four playlists. 

When is this feature useful? Well, say you are listening to an audiobook. It is defined by MaPlEr as a playlist, and the software will keep track of where in the book you are, at any given time. 
You now get tired of the book, and want a break, in which you want to listen to some music. Your second playlist now will be holding your music. After half an hour of music listening you want to go back to your audiobook, and simply switching back to your playlist that holds the book, will put you where you left your reading. With the above defining of hotkeys for this switch, it is done in a swift to 'pop' between your playlists. 

Start playing around, and you will soon find your MaPlEr gets even a greater tool.