Differences to Foobar2000 0.8.3
Foobar2000 0.9 has reached final status and is now the only officially supported version. However, for a variety of reasons 0.9 might not be an option for some people. And while old scripts can be used in the new Foobar2000 with (generally) only minor adjustments, making new scripts fit for the old version requires a significant amount of work, because especially the Columns UI part of the Tagz language has seen huge improvement. In this chapter we look at all the necessary changes to make Dark Connections work with Foobar2000 0.8.3.
Changes to the Preferences Dialogue
The complete Foobar2000 configuration window has seen major changes between 0.8.3 and 0.9. Following are the most important things to keep in mind.
Foobar2000 doesn’t ask you to choose the desired UI on first startup but always uses the default interface. You can change to Columns UI in the Foobar2000 / Preferences window on the Display page. Here select Columns UI from the User interface module combobox.
- To enable the scripted playlist animation make sure to check Show dynamic info in playlist further down on the same page.
Columns UI config is a single page with lots of tabs. Importing and exporting of FCS files is done on the Other tab. The settings for playlist font, empty-background colour and selected-line frame colour reside on the Playlist view tab hidden behind the Playlist view display settings button.
Overview of Tagz Changes
Don’t try to load a new script with the old version of Foobar2000. All you’ll get will be an error message. The changes made have been too large to keep compatibility. Following is a list of the four types of differences in 0.8.3. We’ll talk about the details when looking at the individual scripts.
- No field remapping.
- Colour script syntax is completely different.
- Defining and accessing global variables has a different syntax.
- Some functions are missing and some non-tag fields have different names.
If you want to port back Dark Connections yourself and not only download the FCS, understand that some time is needed. It might be as time-consuming as building the 0.9 script.