[emms-help] Re: To list or not to list

[Daniel Brockman]

Jorgen Schaefer <address@hidden> writes:

> Daniel Brockman <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> I suck at the algorithms and data structures, but I'm sure
>> there's got to be some way to have the cake and eat it too.
>> Like maybe if we used a list of vectors, or some kind of
>> fancy tree or something.  Or something. :-)
>
> I originally did choose vectors because "previous" is easy.

Ah, that explains it.  I didn't think about that.

> The alternative to them would be a double-linked list,
> which would work sufficiently well for most cases I guess.
> Actually, I think that would be nice to have.

Yeah, maybe the random access isn't all that common.

> I'm not sure whether I have managed to get the abstraction
> layer at the right place to facilitate such a change, so
> possible quite a bit of emms.el would need to change.

Though your abstraction layer is there, I think you're right
that much would have to change.  For example, track indices
are used all over the place.

> It's on my todo list now, but that shouldn't stop anyone
> from implementing it :-)
>
> Another alternative would be to use what Emacs is good
> with, namely, a buffer.

Yeah, I thought about this too but was afraid to say it. :-)
I think it's a really interesting idea with a lot of potential.

> This would enable us to integrate emms-pbi slightly better
> with emms I guess, but I'm not sure that is a worthwhile goal.

I do think that is a worthwhile goal.  People like GUIs ---
at least nice and usable Emacs-based GUIs. :-)

If you don't use the GUI, you shouldn't have to care whether
the tracks are stored in a buffer, a vector, or a list.

> I don't use pbi, and I don't want yet another useless
> buffer lying around.

That problem would be easily fixed by renaming the playlist
buffer to ` *Playlist*' to keep it out of the way.

> But I'm not too fixed on this, so maybe someone can
> persuade me that it is a good idea.

Maybe someone should just start hacking and we'll see where
we end up.  We can do the persuasion later. :-)

-- 
Daniel Brockman <address@hidden>