Really Quick Player 1.0

Really Quick Player (RQP) is a simple "audio player" plugin for Far Manager which helps to pre-listen and sort audio files.

Its main goal is to work with audio files as files and not being another multipurpose player. That's why it doesn't have a playlist, equaliser and any other redundant functionality. But it has the following features which could really help with sorting of audio files:

(de)select files on the Far's panel during a playback
demo-mode with a partial tracks playback
add files to an external playlist or playback them with an external player

Installation

The installation process is the same as for any other Far plugin: make a subfolder in the Far's Plugins folder and put a suitable RQP version into it.

Also you'll need:

BASS 2.4 library: put bass.dll (bitness should match bitness of Far) near the RQP's dll file and all BASS' subplugins into the bassplugs subfolder
tags.dll to read tags (included with the plugin)
To play MIDI files, a SF2/SFZ sample bank is required. You can find it on the Internet, then place into the %windir%\System32 (and SysWOW64 for Win x64) folder.

On the first launch the plugin will try to import settings from a previous (Far 2) version.

Known issues

It's impossible with the current Far Plugins API to properly enumerate files on a virtual file panel (e. g. archives), therefore it was implemented through a hack (glitches are possible).

Techinfo

There is a number of options which cannot be changed through the UI: colors, UI elements characters etc. You can use the sample RQP_Def.Farconfig to change them and then apply with the /import Far's command line switch.

Brief options description:

Option	Description
ButtonsChars	Player buttons' characters
Colors	UI colors (see below for details)
PanSliderChars	Panning slider's characters
PosSliderChars	Time position slider's characters
RedrawPanels	A flag which controls if Far's panels redraw during the files navigation and selection. Mostly obsolete
TagsTemplate	A tags template. You can see its description in the documentation for tags.dll
VisibleLinesMask	Visible parts (lines) of the UI (see below)
VolSliderChars	Volume slider's characters
DescriptionFile	A file name for a description file. It could be either absolute or relative path, environment variables are supported. Default is `descript.ion`
AutoLoop	Turns on loop mode automatically for OGG files with `ANDROID_LOOP=true` tag (Android ringtones usually)
FirstRun	A technical flag, its absence will trigger a search and import of previous (Far 2) version settings

Additional details about some parameters:

Colors is a byte array, every byte specify a background (high nibble) and foreground (low nibble) color of some part of the UI. Order of the colors is: base background, button, highlighted button, text, highlighted text, volume bars, volume slider, pannig slider, position slider, time, border, title and 2 values are reserved.
The volume slider could consists of 1-15 characters (excluding the "empty space" character).
VisibleLinesMask is a bit-mask for a so-calles mini-mode which hides some lines of the UI. Only low 8 bits of the value are used, the least significant bit controls the first (upper) line (excluding the border). By default this mode is disabled (all bits are set). You can change them if you want to hide unneeded UI lines.
You can use RQP_Unicode.farconfig to set alternative Unicode characters for a better UI experience. You'll need a font which supports all of them (FiraCode NF is recommended).

Build

To build the plugin:

Put BASS library files inside the lib\bass subfolder. You'll need at least the BASS library itself and tags.dll.
Put DlgBuilder.hpp, farcolor.hpp, and plugin.hpp files (they are part of Far plugin SDK) into the lib\Farapi3 subfolder.

Links

Topic on Far Manager's forum (in Russian)

Discussion on Far Manager's forum (mostly in Russian)

PlugRing

Legal

This plugin is provided "as is". The author is not responsible for any consequences of use or misuse of this software.