[arch-general] kaffeine [sigh] is there an alternative that:...

[Joe(theWordy)Philbrook]

I'm no longer a kde fan, I used to be until almost everything they changed
for kde4 ticked me off... Over all I'm just as glad they did because
otherwise I wouldn't have discovered E17 (or XFCE) which are currently my
two main desktop environments.

However, kde has some apps that I'm still addicted to: One of them is the
old kde3x version of kaffiene for playing my music files. I never really
embraced most of it's advanced features, and frankly I dislike using
playlist files. What attracted me to kaffeine was when I discovered that
with the kde3x version I could use the keyboard to do an:
File->Open URL->PathToMusicDirTree

Where PathToMusicDirTree is the top most directory of a multi directory
structure that contains only music files and directories to more music
files. And kaffeine would open not only any music files within
"PathToMusicDirTree" but recursively any music files in any of it's
subdirectories. 

I could add and delete files to and from this directory tree and know that
the next "File->Open URL->PathToMusicDirTree" would result in kaffeine
playing all of them. At most all I needed to do was to set shuffle and
repeat options to enjoy my background music for as long as I wanted it.

That is all I ever wanted of a music player...

Since kde4 I've learned that I really need to build a playlist by
repetitively using "File->Open URL-> NonRecursiveDir" until
I've added each and every subdir of "PathToMusicDirTree" one at a time.
Worse, I need to rebuild the playlist file every time I want to add or
remove music from my files...

But every time I've tried an alternative it either insists on making me work with
playlists, or only wants me to control it via the {many expletives deleted}rodent
pointing device. or both.

Worse still with the version I added to my Arch install (extra/kaffeine 1.0pre3-1)
the command "Playlist ->Save As" doesn't work. So I have to work with
playlists I create from one of my other distros. Another odd thing about
this version of kaffeine is that "File ->Play Audio CD" only likes to play
the first track...

Could somebody recommend another media player I could try that will let me
create temporary music lists on the fly by typing the path to a parent
dir containing multiple music directories???

One that understands keyboard commands for it's functions???

And hopefully one that doesn't force me to break out a microscope to read
any displayed text or labels on some prettified gui representation of some
livingroom sound system where I don't even know which knob or button it
wants me to click on is supposed to do what???

-- 
|  ~^~   ~^~
|  <?>   <?>       Joe (theWordy) Philbrook
|      ^                J(tWdy)P
|    \___/         <<jtwdyp at ttlc.net>>