How do I make spacebar play/pause

I'd like to use spacebar to play and pause in Mplayer10.

Does Mplayer10 allow for keyboard shortcuts at all?

If not, is there a plug-in that allows for it? Or a patch, update, (or even
a crack) anywhwere that allows spacebar to play/pause?

If not... If it is completely impossible to do this simple task, then please
answer me this question- why is it that *ALL* other players have spacebar to
play/pause yet Mplayer10 does not, nor does it even offer the people who've
used every other player the option of spacebar play/pause? Really, why?

> Does Mplayer10 allow for keyboard shortcuts at all?

Checking on the menu, the Play menu lists Play / Pause as Ctrl-P, so yes, it
does. I see Eject is Ctrl-E and Ctrl-H is Shuffle as well, not that these are
particularly useful.

> If not, is there a plug-in that allows for it? Or a patch, update, (or even
> a crack) anywhwere that allows spacebar to play/pause?

You could use a macro utility to remap the spacebar to be Ctrl-P in WMP, but
that would make other things inconvenient, such as editing the CD entries.

> If not... If it is completely impossible to do this simple task, then please
> answer me this question- why is it that *ALL* other players have spacebar to
> play/pause yet Mplayer10 does not, nor does it even offer the people who've
> used every other player the option of spacebar play/pause? Really, why?

Because... Microsoft is the 800 lb gorilla here... because they would love
to sell you an enhanced keyboard with dedicated controls for WMP (such as the
Wireless Desktop Elite I'm using now)... or because WMP is free and they
don't want to put much effort into it any more. Take your pick. Note that the
dedicated keyboard control on the top still isn't as convenient as the
spacebar would be ...

Hope this helps,

JDMaddison
Minneapolis, MN

"JDMaddison" <> wrote in message
news:01AAA1A0-519F-4370-AF0A-...
>> If not... If it is completely impossible to do this simple task, then
>> please
>> answer me this question- why is it that *ALL* other players have spacebar
>> to
>> play/pause yet Mplayer10 does not, nor does it even offer the people
>> who've
>> used every other player the option of spacebar play/pause? Really, why?

> Because... Microsoft is the 800 lb gorilla here... because they would love
> to sell you an enhanced keyboard with dedicated controls for WMP (such as
> the
> Wireless Desktop Elite I'm using now)... or because WMP is free and they
> don't want to put much effort into it any more. Take your pick. Note that
> the
> dedicated keyboard control on the top still isn't as convenient as the
> spacebar would be ...

JD often has good information. Happily, in this case this is something I
had taken a personal interest in back when this changed over five years ago,
and spoke with David (owner of the area about) about it.

This changed because there's no way to get the spacebar sending a generic
message when there's so many potential points of focus such as embedded UI
elements. (WMP6's simple UI, of course, didn't have this problem.) There's
enough points of focus in the player that catching the spacebar can get in
the way of valid library options.

So yeah, it's something that's thought about, but it's not something that
works well in practice.

WMP's free... but I did buy dinner for my teammates last night at 9,
finished up work at 3am... I can't speak to others, but I give my best.
;-)

-Zach
--
Windows Media Development Team (speaking for myself only)
See http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html for some helpful WMP info.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

> There's enough points of focus in the player that catching the spacebar can get in
> the way of valid library options.

Then how can Ctrl-P be caught? Sorry, rhetorical question-- I'm sure there's
a good technical reason or you would have figured it out. From your response,
it does seem like WMP has gotten more complex than the typical user might
need. Showing the album information and cover image is pretty cool, but
embedded UI elements that might be grabbing focus -- what are they and why
are they there? I just want to rip my CD's, label songs, listen to them and
burn compilations for my "legacy" devices. Are the embedded UI elemements the
sort of stuff that when I try to lookup album information, it sometimes tells
me there was a problem on the [web] page and do I want scripting to continue
for this page? Not knowing which page or how it is supposed to work, never
mind what actually went wrong, I have no idea. If I had a choice, I'd disable
all that stuff in favor of some programmable access keys when the library /
now playing playlist was visible.

> WMP's free... but I did buy dinner for my teammates last night at 9,
> finished up work at 3am... I can't speak to others, but I give my best.
> ;-)

Sorry, I was bit hard on you guys. Last week, I ran into a wall burning
playlists from WMP, right before a trip, wouldn't you know, and I tried to
find out the answer from this newsgroup. I literally found messages from more
than a year ago that were complaining about the "Inspecting" problem. Dozens
of messages and the only suggestion was that it might be a codec problem or a
burner incompatibility, or maybe something equally arcane, but ultimately
incorrect.

I didn't have much hope that I could discover the solution when it had been
clearly bouncing up here for so long, but it bugged me enough, I spent a
couple of hours messing around with it.

I was happy to discover that there was an obvious cause and solution. Either
I'm brilliant (maybe), lucky (I hope), or perhaps just nobody with the right
toolset or mindset ever sat down with the source code (I just had an
attitude, not the source) and said, hmm, let's see what might cause
processing to stop with with this keyword "inspecting" the last thing
displayed. Or maybe everyone figured it couldn't possibly be the program when
it's working fine for everybody else?

Sorry, I know that these are inflammatory questions and that I have no real
idea of what the situation really is for you guys. I'm sure it's frustrating
for everyone, and I'm sorry I was not respectful in my previous response.

Thanks for listening,

JDMaddison
Minneapolis, MN

Not very user oriented responses from Microsoft, most users prefer space for play/pause as proven popular by free media players.

Link that is not a link to AutoHotKey installer
Set your first script (AutoHotKey.ahk) to


GroupAdd,mplayer,Windows Media Player
GroupAdd,mplayer,WMPTransition
GroupAdd,mplayer,Windows Media Center
GroupAdd,mplayer,WMCTransition
GroupAdd, wmp, Windows Media Player
GroupAdd, wmp, ahk_class WMP Skin Host
GroupAdd, wmp, ahk_class WMPTransition
GroupAdd, wmp, FullScreenTopLayout
#IfWinActive, ahk_group wmp
Space::Send ^p
Enter::Send !{Enter}
#IfWinActive
#IfWinActive,ahk_group mplayer
Space::Send,{Media_Play_Pause}
#Ifwinactive,