Hi Donna, You're welcome. Most Mac users know about AppleScripts as something they can add to extend the functionality of their applications -- not as something they program. There is, for example, a huge repertoire of AppleScripts at a site called "AppleScripts for iTunes" that are donationware. Most of these are written by the site's owner, Douglas Adams. Up till last fall, when Apple gave users the ability to move tracks into the audiobooks library by editing tracks with "Get Info" (Command-I) and changing the Media Kind setting on the Options pane from "Music" to "Audiobooks", the standard way to turn tracks you had ripped (as AAC format) from CD into "Audiobooks" was to get the "MakeBookmarkable" AppleScript from this site, put it into your ~/ Library/iTunes/Scripts folder, and then highlight your tracks and select "MakeBookmarkable" from the AppleScript menu of iTunes. There are many other useful scripts for Mac users at that site that can be used to check for duplicates, put playlists into folders, replay the last bit around your current position in a track, etc.
Anna's suggestion to use the LCD panel is useful if you have paused your track. This is a player status window above the songs table. If you start playing a track and then pause it midway (by using the space bar as a play/pause toggle key), you can stop interacting with the songs table, VO-Up arrow to the LCD section and interact, and then use VO-arrow keys to read off the song name and artist and other information like the elapsed time and the time remaining. The "Show Current Song" button in the LCD area highlights the currently playing song in the songs table. This can be useful if, after a a song has started playing, you continue to browse with your VO-arrow keys and highlight other tracks in the songs table. However, you're most likely to want to use the "Show Current Song" Command-L shortcut, which works from anywhere in iTunes. The shortcut works whether the track is actually playing or only paused. So, in trying to create a ringtone and determining the start and stop times to use, you can use the RestartAt AppleScript to set the start time for your ringtone, listen and pause the track where you want to end it, then check the elapsed time in the LCD panel and use that for the stop time that you enter on the options panel along with your start time. Then just play the track through and make minor adjustment to the start and stop times on the options pane. The LCD area can also be used to monitor syncing and downloads onto your iPod or iPhone. If you want an overview of iTunes, a good source (although it covers iTunes 7, not 8) is at Tim Kilburn's VoiceOver pages for this: http://homepage.mac.com/kilburns/voiceover/itunes7.html There are also some good descriptions of the most useful key combinations in his iTunes 6 write-up: http://homepage.mac.com/kilburns/voiceover/itunes6.html Some of these details will not be accurate for iTunes 8, and there will be no mention of the newer features (such as the ability to copy, cut, and paste in playlists, or other additional features in the contextual menu, nor of the current ways to navigate the iTunes Store.) There are quite a lot of other good tips and tricks and information about other apps. Just check the sidebar of Tim's web page. Cheers, Esther Donna Goodin wrote: > > Hi Esther, > > Thanks so much for explaining all this. I hadn't really been > following the > Apple Scripts tread, figuring that was for users more advanced than > I. :) > > What about Anna's suggestion that this info can be found in the LCD > area? I > tried looking there, but only saw three items, Audiovisual, and a > couple of > others. But no play info. One of the buttons was something like Show > Current Song. I did press this, but nothing seemed to happen. > Best, > Donna --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
