Genral Concept

Hi,

a few days ago I downloaded the beta version of Player Pro and I did some tests. The most remarkable feature to me, which makes it really interesting, is the possibility to form playlists of shows, so that these shows are presented in the order given by their position in the playlist. This is already a valuable feature. But the concept is really lousy!
It is some kind of handling an exception. In Player Pro the playlist is something new that cannot be compared to anything existing. And the shows are separated ba a pause of “dead air”, which is not acceptible.
I suggest to treat a show exactly like a picture or a video. Use objectoriented modelling and employ the Composite Pattern (Gamma et.al). Then you have a Superclass VisibleThing with subclasses Picture and Video. This is the situation now. Then a Subclass Playlist of VisibleThing should be incorporated, which models an Ordered Collection of VisibleThing (in the next recursive layer, of course). And the method present is propagated to the content of the Ordered Collection. So a Tree is modelled which is handled ba the present-Method in an recursive way. Of course, auto-recursion and as a consequence infinite loops must be avoided, but this is simply done.
Following this suggest leads to a satisfactory behaviour of FM itself. A Collection of shows can be handled completely like a picture or a video, including sound, ducking etc. And a Collection of shows can be rendered completela like a simple show, leading to the formats for rendering. This would make FM a really outstanding tool, nothing to be compared with.
I hope, these hints can be understood, please ask for more details if necessary.
Best Regards, JR