I wrote this tutorial up some time ago for someone else, and, given the currently circulating thread of Winamp playlists, I thought I would post it.
Basically, it deals with creating and managing playlists using Winamp and Jaws. I'm sure there are no end of ways to create and manage playlists, so, keep in mind that the below instructions are of my own method, and I've been using the below method for quite some time. Hope people get a use out of it. ***Begin Tutorial*** Believe it or not, it's easier to create a playlist with Winamp, than it sounds. First, go to your desktop, or where ever you keep the Winamp shortcut, and enter on it. Once the Winamp window opens, control+tab twice to get to the playlist editor. If you find that you've used the control+tab keystroke twice, and Jaws didn't say playlist editor, then that means you have the playlist editor closed. You can open it in one of two ways. You can press the keystroke of alt+E, or you can press alt+F, then arrow down to playlist editor and enter on it. I think you'll find the alt+E keystroke is easier. Smile. In any case, once Jaws reports that the playlist editor is opened, control+tab up to the playlist editor. Now, this is going to sound weird, but go with me on this. Once you land in the playlist editor, press control+A to highlight everything, then press delete. Don't worry if Jaws doesn't say anything, what you've essentially done is delete any tracks that were in there from the last time you used Winamp to listen to something. Unfortunately, Winamp likes to leave residual ghost images of files it's played in the last instance, and so, in order to create a clean playlist, you have to delete what was previously there. So, now that you've done that, press the letter L for lists, and this will open up an open dialog box. Those of you familiar with downloading from send space, or saving as and the like, will be familiar with this dialog box. When this dialog box opens, you'll land on the filename edit box. Do a shift+tab to go to the file list window just above the filename edit box. Now, depending on where you last took Winamp, you won't know where you'll be in the file list, so a good rule of thumb is to press the backspace key seven or eight times until Jaws stops talking. When he does, do a say line command with insert+up arrow, and Jaws should read out, "Not Selected My Documents". This means you're on your desktop, and you can now go to the folder where the files are that you want to play. So, if the files are in a folder three levels deep into your my documents folder, let's call it Thea's audio files, you would press the spacebar to select My Documents, press the enter key to go into that folder, then arrow or find the folder titled Thea's Personal Files, highlight it, then press enter. Once in that folder, find the next folder, called Thea in Hawaii, enter on it, and finally go to Thea's audio files, and press enter. Be careful here, you don't want to make a common mistake that everyone makes, even me before I realized it, smile, do not touch any of the arrow keys, or the spacebar key, or anything on your keyboard until you've done a select all with control+A, and I'll explain later. Once you've done the control+A, tab to the open button in the dialog box, and press the spacebar to allow Winamp to place all the files you just selected into the playlist. There is an even easier way to create a playlist, if you aren't selective about what it is you're wanting to play, in other words, if you're not actually trying to create a playlist for a party, or just want some music playing in the background while you're cleaning house, or a book playing while you're knitting or something like that, you can just go to your desktop, without opening Winamp, navigate to the folder where the music files are that you wish to play, now, this could be a music album, or an audio book of some kind, and highlight it without going into the folder. Once you do this, press your applications key, which is generally the first key to the left of the right control key (*keep in mind your keyboard configuration my be different from other configurations*), and arrow down to "Play in Winamp", or press the letter P for playlist, and Winamp will open up and start playing the tracks in the folder from the beginning, and in alphabetic order. If you wish to add more folders to the playlist, simply pause the playback of the playlist you just started playing, alt+tab back to the window where your files were located, and navigate to the folder where the other files are located that you wish to add to the playlist. One might do this if they wish to listen to an entire catalogue of an artist like Led Zepplin or Eric Clapton, or an entire series of books, like the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling, arrow down to the folder containing the files you wish to add, and, again, don't go into the folder, simply press your applications key, and arrow down to the option to "Enqueue in Winamp", or press the letter E for End, and the files in that folder will be added to the current playlist at the end of the current playlist. Now, you wouldn't have to do this one folder at a time, as you can, instead of highlighting one folder, highlight several folders at the same time, then press the letter P for Play in Winamp, and the playlist will be created automatically. I won't bother going into selecting and highlighting contiguous and non-continuous files and folders using Jaws. Now, the reason I said not to touch anything once you land in the folder is because Winamp, and, indeed, Windows, in it's infinite wisdom, has a little bug. In most cases, when you're selecting a bunch of files to transfer over to another drive or whatever, say you want all the files except for the first one, a person using common sense would arrow down to the second file, then press control+shift+end to highlight all the files from that point downward. Once they're selected, the person would copy or cut the files, go to the destination where they want the file placed, then paste them in there. Only one problem, you suddenly notice that the last file that was at the bottom of the list, is now at the beginning of the file list. In fact, it doesn't correct itself until you refresh the screen with F5, or until you back out of the folder and come back in. This is a common problem with Windows, Winamp, and some MP3 players, like RCA's line of MP3 players, especially the really cheap earlier versions. One would highlight an entire list of files in a folder, paste it onto the MP3 player, and the last file would invariably play first, then loop back to the beginning of the book. In essence, the person would have to place the files on the MP3 player, one at a time. Frustrating, to say the least, and I should know, I used to own one. Smile. Well, this is what Winamp does, so arrow through the files using your up and down arrows to see if the files in are their correct order. If you find that the last file has been placed as the number one file, simply delete it with the delete key, press the letter L for list again, and when the dialog box pops up, shift+tab to the file list window, and arrow down to the file you wish to add. Once highlighted, press the enter key, and the file will magically appear at the bottom of the list. If you don't really care what file is played first, go ahead and leave it the way it is. This may sometimes be the case with music files, or movies that don't join into each other, like sequels and stuff. Which ever the case, this is how you add files to the playlist. Once the files have been added, some of Winamp's earlier versions used to place the person back in the Winamp main window, and if that's the case, control+tab back up to the playlist editor, and if you've been taken back to the playlist editor after adding the files, congratulations, and just skip to the next paragraph. So now that the files are added, you want to save the playlist so you can go back to it when you need or want to listen to it. To do this, press the control+S keystroke, like in most applications, and you'll get the save as dialog box again, but this time, it'll be to save the file, as opposed to opening it up, like the last dialog box. First do a shift+tab to go to the file list, and again, backspace seven or eight times to get to your desktop. Once in the desktop, navigate to the folder where you wish to place the playlist file. If you want to keep the file on your desktop for easier access, then do nothing and tab to the file name edit box. Those of you who are going to place this file into a folder other then the desktop, navigate to the folder you want to place the playlist file in, similar to the way you looked for the files to add to the playlist, and, once in the folder, tab to the filename edit box. Now that both of you are on the same page, enter the name of the filename you want to give the playlist. Do not add an extension, Winamp will automatically do this for you. So, let's, for the sake of argument, name the file, "Thea's Carnal Cravings", evil grin, type that in, and if you want Winamp to use the default file extension of M3U, you need do nothing else except to press the enter key and you're done, the playlist is set up and saved on your hard drive, and you can listen to the files you've placed in the playlist when ever you want. At this point, you can now just arrow down to the bottom of this message for the notes on playlists that I've included at the bottom of this message. If you don't want to save it using the default extension, you have to tab once to the file types combo box, and select the type of extension you wish to give the file name. There are several playlist extensions to choose from, and usually Winamp will handle all of them, unless you've got another program set to handle playlist files. In any case, arrow up or down to the file extension you want Winamp to place on the end of Thea's Carnal Cravings, then tab to the save button, and you're done. the file is now saved in the folder you wanted it to be saved in. If you want the file extension to remain M3U, then by all means, do like the other person did, and press the enter key once you're done entering the file name in the edit box. Now, some notes on playlists, what they are, what they do, and some tips or tricks that may or may not help you in listening to them. First, a bit about what playlists are. Playlists are exactly as the name denotes, a list of files that Winamp should play in the sequence you specified. You told Winamp what files you wanted to add to the list of files to play, told Winamp where to find those files, and which order to play them in. This is the purpose of a playlist file, so you don't have to keep coming back to Winamp when you've finished the last file, and having to open or enter on the next file to open. The playlist file actually is only a shopping list of sorts, or, for the technically inclined among you, they are essentially databases you've just created using Winamp with the following information: Name of file to play; Location of file to play; order in which to play the file; It probably has a whole bunch of other information in it that I haven't specified here, but there's a fine line between a tutorial file, and chicken scratch you don't understand. Besides, I probably wouldn't understand it enough to explain it myself. Smile. So, basically, that's all a playlist file is. You cannot expect to save a playlist file on your computer, then cart it away on a USB stick, or e-mail it to a friend, and expect them to play the file on their computer, or you plug in your USB stick and expect it to play on the other computer. No folks, you must include the files, right along with the playlist file if you have any hopes of the playlist actually working on someone else's computer. In terms of handling playlist files, I guess it depends on how many files you've actually got in the playlist. for example, if you've got a hundred files in the playlist, as I sometimes do when I place entire television series in the playlist and listen to them as I go along, I will often delete the file I've just listened to, to make it easier for me to find my spot, which I'll explain later in a few seconds. To do this, once you've gone to the next file after the one you want to delete, go to the playlist editor, arrow up to the file you've just listened to, and simply press the delete key to remove it. Once the track is removed from the list, control+S to save the playlist again, where it will ask you if you want to save over it, and you say yes to that question. This will ensure that your changes take affect for next time you open up the playlist. Now, about what I said earlier about making it easier to find your place. As you may or may not know, pressing the letter M in Winamp, while a file is open, will insert a place marker, or bookmark in the track, so you can come back and listen to the track from that point forward. To do this, press the letter M, and a dialog box will open up, asking you to name the place marker. Go ahead and type the name of the place marker, then press enter to add the place marker to the track. To recall or return to the place marker later on in the day or when ever, press alt+shift+M, and a dialog box will open up with the list of place markers for the current track. Select the one you wish to go to, and press enter on it. Now, the reason I said that I would talk about it later on, is this. On some occasions, you'll find that you've entered on the playlist file, press alt+shift+M to bring up the list of place markers, and Jaws said something funny like, "There are no place markers for the current track". you ask yourself, hey, what gives, I just put a place marker on this file three minutes ago. I just went off to tell my aunt Lucille that I had a nasty rash and needed her to bring me some Salve when she came over later for her visit, and now this darn thing is telling me that I didn't do what I remember doing so clearly? Well folks, remember what I said about what playlists are... In simple terms, they are just a laundry list of files to play in the order you specify. The key word being files, with an S on the end. You see, playlist files play the tracks back to back, with no break between tracks, so you may not have known it, but you've gone three or four files into that book, and didn't realize it. Heck, I'd imagine that Thea's Carnal Cravings must be an intoxicating book. Smiles. Suffice it to say, what you've essentially done was put a place marker in the fourth file, and now trying to recall the place marker in the first file, where you did not place the place marker? Make sense? Lord I hope so...Grins. What you have to do is advance to the fourth file, where you did put the place marker, then recall the place marker when the fourth file starts playing, or what ever. I should let you know that the keystrokes for advancing and regressing back in a playlist are the letters B and Z, respectively. Press the letter B to skip to the next track, and the letter Z to skip back to the last track you just listened to. In any case, this can be rather frustrating if you have to go through 88 files to get to the 89th file where you placed the place marker, so, as I said, I like to delete files as I go along listening to them, to make it easier down the road. Keep in mind, if you find you've deleted a file accidentally, you can always re-add the file back onto the playlist, so it isn't a total loss. Now I will first tell you that you must be in the Winamp playlist editor before these keystrokes will work. Alt + down arrow, moves track down in the playlist Alt + up arrow, moves track up in the playlist Alt + Control + down arrow, move the selection to the current track Now to move the track up or down, I think it must be first selected, but not certain of this. This is where the Alt + control + down arrow keystroke comes in. Since I have never really used these keystrokes before until now, I am not sure how it is all suppose to work. Another keystroke I noticed was available was control + I, this will invert your playlist. Once you make any changes to your playlist, in order for it to be there next time, lets not forget to save it. The following information will create an html text file outlining how many tracks are in the playlist, the average time of each track, and the total play time of the playlist, along with a track listing of the tracks in the playlist. While in the playlist window, press the keystroke of control+alt+G to create an HTML file of your playlist, which you can then convert to a text file, or highlight and select the tracks you want to copy and paste to another program. Make sure, you're in the playlist window by pressing control+tab to cycle through the open windows. One can also do this to obtain the track listing on a commercial CD. When you place the commercial CD into your drive, open the My Computer Icon on your desktop, and press the applications key, which is the first key to the left of the right control key, on most modern keyboards, or right click on the CD/DVD drive you placed the commercial CD into, and arrow to the option to play in Winamp. At this point, the CD should start playing. Pause the playback with the C key or the spacebar, and follow the steps above to obtain the track listing. Please note that some commercial CD's may not produce a track listing if it is not listed in the Winamp source site's archive, if the CD is so brand new as to not have been introduced into the site's database, and/or if you have set Winamp's preferences incorrectly. ***End of Tutorial*** Scorpio For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/ Send any questions regarding list management to: blind-computing-ow...@jaws-users.com
