Custom Now Playing-format in Messenger 2009?

(I have already posted this to microsoft.public.msn.messenger, but since no
real solution was provided there, I decided to post my question here as well.)

Hi, as some of you may already know, it's possible to customize the format
of the 'now playing' PSM by using a different plug-in than the standard one,
for example http://www.msgpluslive.net/scripts/view/58-Now-Playing

In previous versions of Messenger, all your contacts would then see this
custom format in their contact list. However, in Messenger 2009, the contact
list always displays "<song> - <artist>", ignoring any custom format
(although the custom format is still shown in a conversation window). Is
there any way to disable this and revert back to the old behaviour, maybe
through an undocumented registry setting?

Thanks and kind regards

Tim De Baets

I tried your suggestion, by sending the following string to Messenger:

\0Music\01\0Title - Artist\0\0\0\0

instead of

\0Music\01\0{0} - {1}\0Title\0Artist\0\0

However, this didn't work, as I already expected. Messenger keeps ignoring
the custom format, and continues to use the default "{0} - {1}", which
results in " - " being displayed (certainly not desirable). In fact, this is
exactly what happens when you use a plug-in that doesn't expect this
behaviour, see http://msghelp.net/showthread.php?tid=88798&pid=949027 for an
example.

As I'm using a plug-in that I have written myself, this isn't really my
problem; I'm just looking for a way to stop Messenger from ignoring the
custom format. Messenger 2009 is overall a big improvement, but I fail to
understand why this cool feature was crippled without offering an option to
make it work again like in pre-2009 versions.

Regards

Tim De Baets

"mynetx" wrote:

> Hello Tim,
>
> The Now Playing info is stored in a \0-separated string. One of the
> fields contains templates how to show the rest of the fields, like
> {0} - {1}
> Artist
> Song Name
>
> Instead of filling the actual fields for 0, 1, etc, with data and adding
> the custom display format in the format field, you could try to set the
> Now Playing info like this:
> Artist - Song Name
> <empty>
> <empty>
> This works around the data fields for artist and song name so Messenger
> *has* to use the custom format.
>
> mynetx
> Windows Live Enhanced
> http://blog.mynetx.net/
>
>
>
> Tim De Baets wrote:
> > (I have already posted this to microsoft.public.msn.messenger, but since no
> > real solution was provided there, I decided to post my question here as well.)
> >
> > Hi, as some of you may already know, it's possible to customize the format
> > of the 'now playing' PSM by using a different plug-in than the standard one,
> > for example http://www.msgpluslive.net/scripts/view/58-Now-Playing
> >
> > In previous versions of Messenger, all your contacts would then see this
> > custom format in their contact list. However, in Messenger 2009, the contact
> > list always displays "<song> - <artist>", ignoring any custom format
> > (although the custom format is still shown in a conversation window). Is
> > there any way to disable this and revert back to the old behaviour, maybe
> > through an undocumented registry setting?
> >
> > Thanks and kind regards
> >
> > Tim De Baets
> >
>