Sansa Playlist Editor

version 0.01

Copyright 2007 Assaf Gordon

About

This is a GUI program that allows creating playlist files on Sandisk's Sansa Audio Players.

License

This program is released under GPLv2

Requirements:

• modern unix OS
• perl
• GTK-PERL (The GTK interface for Perl)
• Sansa Player in "MSC" mode (i.e. USB-DISK mode)

Installation:

• To install "GTK-PERL":
  • On Debian/Ubuntu, use Synaptic to install the package named "libgtk2-perl".
    (or run "sudo apt-get install libgtk2-perl").
  • Other distros should have a similar package as well.
  • Or, Install libgtk-perl by yourself - see http://gtk2-perl.sourceforge.net/
• Download sansa-editor
  • (This is just a text file, a perl script)
  • Save it in an accessible folder (e.g. "/usr/local/bin" if you have enough permissions)
  • make it executable (e.g. chmod a+x sansa-editor)

Using the Playlist Editor

• run the sansa-editor file (you did make it executable, right?)
  If it is not executable, run perl sansa-editor on a terminal.
• The Editor only displays files that are already on the Sansa player. It does not copy files from your hard-drive to the player. So put all the desired files on the Sansa player before running the playlist editor.
• The editor tries to auto-detect the mounted Sansa player (by scanning all the mounted devices, looking for a mount point that contains "MUSIC" and "PLAYLISTS" sub-directories). So mount the Sansa player before running the playlist editor.
• When you run the editor (and after it successfully detected the Sansa Player), you will see the following window:
  • [Folder Tree] - all sub-directories that exist on the Sansa player, under the "MUSIC" sub-directory.
  • [File List] - files in the currently selected folder. only MP3 and OGG files are displayed.
  • [Playlist content] - files on the current playlist.
  
• Adding files to the playlist:
  • Click on the desired folder on the [Folder Tree]
  • Select the desired files from the [File List]
  • Click "Add Selected Files To Playlist" button
  • Files will appear on the [Playlist]
• Saving a playlist:
  • Click "Save" or "Save As", a [Save file dialog] will appear.
    the default folder is the "PLAYLISTS" folder on the Sansa Play, so there should be no reason to manually change the folder.
  • Just enter the playlist name (can contain spaces and other non-alpha-numeric characters) and click "OK".
  • There's no need to add the ".pla" extension (it is added automatically).
  ("Save" vs. "Save As" - if you already saved the playlist onces (and therefor gave it a name), "Save" will simply update the same playlist. "Save As" will always ask for a new playlist name.)
• Opening a playlist:
  • click "Open". An [open file dialog] will be shown, select the playlist to load and clock "OK".
  • All files listed in the playlist are loaded in the playlist window.
  • Files that actually exists, have a [Check-Mark] left of the file name.
  • Files that don't exists on the Sansa Player (maybe you deleted the folder, but did not update the playlist) have [X mark] left of the file name.

Frequantly Asked Questions

Q. Can my Sansa be damaged in any way by using the Playlist Editor ?
A. Theoretically, yes. If there's a bug in the program, it might delete some critical files, rendering the player into a useless brick. However, the program only reads the 'MUSIC' sub-driectory, and writes unicode-text files in the 'PLAYLISTS' sub-directory of the Sansa player, So chances of 'bricking' the player are slim.
Nevertheless, Please remember that this program COMES WITH ABSOLUTLY NO WARRANTY WHATSOEVER.

Q. What about encodings ?
A. The Sansa uses FAT32 (called 'vfat' on linux) filesystem. The editor assumes that files are stored in UTF-8 encoding on the Sansa drive.
The Playlists (*.pla) files are saved in UTF16-LE encodings.
The conversion between UTF8 and UTF16-LE is done internally with perl's beautiful encoding mechamisms.
The Editor was successfully tested with the following setup:

• Sansa e280, Firmware 1.02
• Ubuntu 6.10, locale = "en_US.utf8"
• Files (on Sansa) in English and Hebrew file names (which means UTF8 characters in file names were actually used).
• Playlists (on Sansa) in UTF16-LE encoding referenced both English and Hebrew files, and were successfully read by the Sansa player.

Q. How can I hack the Editor's code ?
A. I suggest the following:

• know Perl (this is a Good Thing, regardless of the playlist editor)
• read the GTK-PERL documentation
• Install (on Debian/Ubuntu) the "libgtk2-perl-doc" package, which contains:
  • PerlDoc pages for all GTK objects (e.g. run: "perldoc Gtk2::SimpleList" on a terminal).
  • nice perl/gtk samples in "/usr/share/doc/libgtk2-perl-doc/examples".
• Read the sansa-editor source code. It is only ~600 lines of code, and most of it is documented.
• ask me specific questions, if you'd like (my email is shown inside the sansa-editor file).

Q. Can it run on Windows(tm) ?
A. Currently, no. But with some hacking, it should work(tm).

• Perl is of course available for windows (see http://www.activeperl.com).
• Gtk-Perl has a port that should work(tm) on Win32 (see http://gtk2-perl.sourceforge.net/win32/)
• In sansa-editor file, at least the following will have to be modified:
  • all the path/folder manipulations (e.g. slashes and backslashes).
  • auto detection of the sansa player drive (which is a driver letter on Windows, but a mount-point on linux)
  • UTF8 encoding (as Windows uses 16bit Unicode, AFAIK)

Q. What's next ?
A. Not much, actually. many improvements can be made, but since I don't even own a Sansa, my incentive is pretty low...
(this Playlist Editor was written for someone else...)
If anybody wants to take over the project - please do so.
Critical bugs - I'll try to fix, if you send enough information.