1Overview
2========
3
4The Fundamentals
5----------------
6
7Explanation of the GUI elements
8^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
9
10When you start up Quod Libet for the first time, and have configured your
11library, it should look something a little like the screenshot here, which
12is show with annotations. These are all explained below.
13
14.. figure:: images/main_overview.png
15    :align: right
16    :width: 400px
17    :figwidth: 400px
18
19    A basic view of Quod Libet, and its GUI elements
20
21
221. Player Controls
23^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
24
25Provides buttons for seeking, changing volume and changing the currently played song.
26
27By right-clicking, they also provide context menus with advanced options:
28
29 * The volume button lets you choose the active replaygain mode
30   (album, track, automatic).
31 * The seek button can display the remaining instead of the elapsed time
32   and provides options for interacting with bookmarks.
33 * The context menu of the play button has an option to pause playback after
34   the current song.
35
36
372. Current Song Information
38^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
39
40Displays information about the currently playing song.
41
42Again, the context menu contains more options, like rating and tag editing
43for the current song.
44
45There is also an entry called *Edit Display...* which lets you change
46the :ref:`tag pattern<TagPatterns>` used for display.
47This typically includes the people, title, album and maybe file format,
48bitrate etc (including :ref:`internal tags<InternalTags>`).
49This also allows :ref:`text markup<TextMarkup>` for styling of your display area.
50
51
523. The Song List & Browser
53^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
54
55As the name suggests, the song list is a list of matching songs presented
56by the current browser.  Double-clicking a song in the song list will start
57playing it immediately.
58
59The browser consists of a way to filter your
60library (songs), e.g. a simple search or by a list of albums. In the image
61above, no browser is active so only the current song list is shown. You can
62change the active browser by selecting one in the *View* menu.
63
64
654. Playback Order
66^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
67
68The active playback order affects the selection of the next song or what
69happens if you manually switch to a new song.
70
71Note that Play Order Plugins add to this list allowing QL new ways of
72ordering songs, like following your selection or adding songs to the queue
73instead of playing them immediately.
74
75The *Repeat* checkbox can be used in conjunction with the playback orders,
76to repeat the currently selected view of songs after all song have been
77played or skipped.
78
79It's important to note that the playback order will not affect the queue,
80which has its own playback settings.
81
82
835. Song Information
84^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
85
86The area in the bottom-right corner shows information about all songs in
87the song list *or* about your song selection if more than one song is
88selected.
89
90It also shows progress information of background operations like importing
91music.
92
93.. _Queue_Overview:
94
95The Queue
96---------
97
98.. image:: images/queue.png
99    :width: 350px
100    :align: right
101
102The play queue and the song list determine what's played next. Unlike the
103song list the queue consumes songs (from the queue not your library) as
104they are played. That is, once a song starts playing it disappears from the
105queue.
106
107The queue however, takes precedence whenever it has songs. After it's empty,
108playback will continue in the main song list where it left off.
109
110To add songs to the queue, right-click and *Add to Queue*, use the shortcut
111``CTRL+Return`` or select songs in a different browser window.
112
113For more information, see the :ref:`Queue Guide <Queue>`.
114
115
116More Browsers
117-------------
118
119.. image:: images/browser_window.png
120    :width: 350px
121    :align: right
122
123
124Besides the active browser in the main window, you can open as many
125different browser windows as you want by selecting one under *Browse* >
126*Open Browser* or in the tray icon plugin context menu.
127
128In a separate browser, double-clicking a song will result in it being
129added to the queue rather than played immediately (as per the main browser).
130
131See the :ref:`Browsers Guide <Browse>` for full details on browsers and the
132various implementations.
133
134Example usage:
135
136 * Manage playlists by dragging songs across browsers (eg Search browser to Playlist browser)
137 * Edit the tags of some songs while the ones in the main song list get played etc.
138 * Check out other songs by the artist currently playing without disturbing that list.
139
140
141The Library
142-----------
143
144If all your music lives in one folder on your computer, adding your entire
145music collection in Quod Libet is easy.
146
147From the main menu bar, select *File* > *Add a Folder* and browse to the
148top-most folder containing your music.  By default Quod Libet will scan
149your selected folder recursively, adding all the songs found to your
150library automatically. Add more folders if you wish.
151
152Depending on the size of your music collection, it may take a few minutes
153to perform the initial scan.
154
155
156Plugins
157-------
158
159.. image:: images/plugins.png
160    :width: 450px
161
162
163The image above shows the plugin manager, from where you can enable /
164disable / configure all available plugins.
165