nncmpp

nncmpp is yet another MPD client. Its specialty is running equally well in the terminal, or as an X11 client—​it will provide the same keyboard- and mouse-friendly interface.

This project began its life as a simplified TUI version of Sonata. I had already written a lot of the required code before, so I had the perfect opportunity to get rid of the unmaintained Python application, and to make the first TUI client that doesn’t feel awkward to use.

If it’s not obvious enough, the name is a pun on all those ridiculous client names, and should be pronounced as "nincompoop".

Features

Most stuff is there. I’ve been using the program exclusively for many years. Among other things, it can display and change PulseAudio volume directly to cover the use case of remote control, it has a fast spectrum visualiser, it can be extended with plugins to fetch lyrics or other song-related info, and both its appearance and key bindings can be customized.

Note that currently only the filesystem browsing mode is implemented, and the search feature is known to be clumsy.

Packages

Regular releases are sporadic. git master should be stable enough. You can get a package with the latest development version using Arch Linux’s AUR, or as a Nix derivation.

Stable versions are present in: OpenBSD ports.

Documentation

See the man page for information about usage. The rest of this README will concern itself with externalities.

Building

Build-only dependencies: CMake, pkg-config, awk, liberty (included), termo (included), asciidoctor or asciidoc (recommended but optional), rsvg-convert (X11)
Runtime dependencies: ncursesw, libunistring, cURL
Optional runtime dependencies: fftw3, libpulse, x11 + xft + libpng (X11), Perl + cURL (lyrics)

$ git clone --recursive https://git.janouch.name/p/nncmpp.git
$ mkdir nncmpp/build
$ cd nncmpp/build
$ cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
$ make

To install the application, you can do either the usual:

# make install

Or you can try telling CMake to make a package for you. For Debian it is:

$ cpack -G DEB
# dpkg -i nncmpp-*.deb

User interface caveats

The ncurses interface aspires to be as close to a GUI as possible. Don’t shy away from using your mouse (though keyboard is also fine). Terminals are, however, tricky to get consistent results on, so be aware of the following:

• use a UTF-8 locale to get finer resolution progress bars and scrollbars

• Xterm needs XTerm*metaSendsEscape: true for the default bindings to work

• urxvt’s vtwheel plugin sabotages scrolling

The X11 graphical interface is a second-class citizen, so some limitations of terminals carry over, such as the plain default theme.

Contributing and Support

Use https://git.janouch.name/p/nncmpp to report any bugs, request features, or submit pull requests. git send-email is tolerated. If you want to discuss the project, feel free to join me at ircs://irc.janouch.name, channel #dev.

Bitcoin donations are accepted at: 12r5uEWEgcHC46xd64tt3hHt9EUvYYDHe9

License

This software is released under the terms of the 0BSD license, the text of which is included within the package along with the list of authors.