News

EasyH10 Forum was merged to PMPlib Forum (2007-01-07)

EasyH10 Forum was moved to the new location and merged to PMPlib Forum. You can use the same user name and password to log-in to the new forum as the account information was imported to the new forum. The posts were also taken over to the new forum although I removed some posts that do not fit to the new forum.

The reason for this migration is because the old server (sourceforge.net) has too tight security to maintain the forum: no write access, no sendmail, no session support, etc. Therefore, the old forum could not provide search, email notification, and attachment facilities.

EasyH10 and PMPlib are closely related projects. I hope the forum integration will also bring benefits to exchange information about portable media player.

EasyH10 1.5 released (2006-10-09)

EasyH10 1.5 was released. The changes since 1.4 are:

• [common] Added Hebrew support, which arranges artist/album/title/genre names in reversed order. Although the H10 firmware can't display a string in right-to-left language correctly, EasyH10 tries to improve this situation by flipping Hebrew letters in the database. EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] activates this routine automatically when running on the Hebrew locale, but one can disable it by setting LanguageRightToLeft variable to -1 in easyh10.ini. EasyH10 [CUI] uses the routine only when option -b (--bidi) is specified. The flipping routine was written by David Kohen.
• [POSIX CUI] Added automatic detection of a system character-encoding. EasyH10 detects the character encoding of the current system if it's not specified with -e option.
• [POSIX CUI] Options -n, -i, and -c for database construction were removed for simplicity. EasyH10 [CUI] now has two options: -C (database rebuild) and -U (database update).
• [POSIX CUI] Show an error message when EasyH10 cannot initialize the routine for converting multi-byte characters to UCS-2.
• [POSIX CUI] Crash fix for MP3 files without read permission.
• [POSIX CUI] Crash fix for MP3 files with compilation flags enabled but with empty artist names. This fix was submitted by Carsten Pfeiffer ( #1539139)
• [POSIX CUI] Bug fix for an incorrect usage of returned codes from iconv.
• [POSIX CUI] Updated the man-page.

EasyH10 1.4 released (2006-06-13)

EasyH10 1.4 was released. The source and binaries are available at EasyH10 Stable release. The changes since 1.4 beta 1 are:

• [Win32 GUI] Updated the translation DLLs (thanks to Oliver, Guillermo, Simon, Ariel, Gijs, Kristian, Wojciech, and genexk).
• [Win32 GUI] Added MSVCR71.DLL in the installer distribution.
• [Cocoa GUI] Updated for the tuner conversion (thanks to barrywardell).
• [CUI] Implemented the tuner-conversion routine.
• Updated the documentation.
• [Win32 GUI] Disabled an experimental BiDi support for now, which caused some trouble (thanks to Samuel and Hyperman for the reports in the forum).

I was trying to release this before my journey on the last half of May, but couldn't. Apologies for those who has been working on and waiting for this release.

EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] 1.4 beta 1 released (2006-04-30)

After a break of the development, the beta test for EasyH10 1.4 has been started. The major update in this release is tuner-preset converter, which imports/exports the tuner preset in H10 player from/to a local file.

• Added importing/exporting function of tuner presets.
• Added an item in the system menu to change translation DLLs manually.
• Added an option to keep the dialog opened after the completion.
• Supported H10 UMS 5GB/6GB firmware 2.52 officially.

The remaining tasks for EasyH10 1.4 release are:

• Preparation for the CUI versions.
• Documentation update.
• Translation update.
• Bug-fixes.

Please report bugs and comments for this beta release.

EasyH10 [Cocoa GUI] beta 2 released (2006-02-11)

An updated version of EasyH10 [Cocoa GUI] was released by barrywardell.

• Fixed crash on startup when H10 mount point didn't have "H10" in its name.
• Added tooltips.

A big news for Mac users: EasyH10 [Cocoa GUI] (2006-02-08)

I'm aware that there has been a great demand for EasyH10 GUI version on MacOS, considering the user group who use fascinating/stylish PCs such as iMac. Although EasyH10 CUI works fine on MacOS environments, I couldn't prepare EasyH10 GUI version for MacOS users simply due to the limitation of my skill and time.

The other day, Barry Wardell (barrywardell), who also joined the EasyH10 project as a developer afterward, started a long-waited effort to implement the Cocoa GUI frontend for EasyH10. As the result of his excellent work, I am pleased to announce that EasyH10 GUI has been successfully ported to MacOS. DMG package (easyh10-1.2.1_cocoagui-b1.dmg) is available at EasyH10 Development release. Many thanks to barrywardell and special thanks to adamti91, frokost, supernaut1, and astroboy64!

Please remind that this is the initial release of EasyH10 [Cocoa GUI]. Comments and bug reports are greatly welcomed. Use the forum for further discussion about this release.

EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] version 1.3 beta 1 released (2006-01-23)

A new development (unstable) version was out. EasyH10 becomes a more maniac tool with this update.

• Regular Expression Playlist (REP) is supported. REP creates a playlist dynamically based on folder/file names and achieves this feature request. See this document as for the usage.
• Automatic shuffle playlist is supported. If you want a playlist with music tracks arranged randomly, simply name it as "*.sfl.*" (e.g., "all.sfl.m3u"). This new feature becomes more powerful when it is applied to REP: you can easily create a playlist which plays all tracks in a random order. See this document as for the usage.
• Hebrew translation (lang_13.dll). Many thanks to Ariel Karlinsky!

Currently, only EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] version is available at EasyH10 Development release. If you have a comment or opinion about these new features, please post it in the forum. Enjoy!

EasyH10 version 1.2.1 released (2005-11-25)

Although this is a minor bug-fix release, it must be a good news for Linus users. By courtesy of Masaya Kato, I am pleased to announce that EasyH10 version 1.2.1 is released with RPM/SRPM packages. You can install the binary RPM package or build your own binary package from the SRPM package. Enjoy!

• Fixed a crash bug when a folder whose name ends with ".mp3" exists (Thanks Arlen for the bug-tracker report).
• Distributing RPM and SRPM packages, which are also distributed in this page (Thanks Cachu).

EasyH10 version 1.2 released (2005-10-31)

This is an update release for the new H10 2.51 firmware that iRiver released last week. This update also includes a useful enhancement for MP3 files that iTunes generates for omnibus albums.

• [common] EasyH10 now oficially supports H10 5GB/6GB UMS 2.51 and H10 5GB/6GB/20GB MTP 2.51 firmware.
• [common] Added TCMP (compilation flag) handling for ID3v2 tags. The TCMP field is mainly generated by iTunes to indicate that an MP3 file is a part of an omnibus album. EasyH10 automatically sets "Various artists" as an artist name and "ARTIST - TITLE" as a track-title name for MP3 files with TCMP field embedded. This enhancement is based on a patch submitted by Espen Matheussen.

EasyH10 version 1.1.1 released (2005-10-22)

This is a minor bug-fix release.

• [common] Fixed a crash-bug caused by an access to the outside of an array when using "find missing" function for playlist conversion.
• [Win32] Forced to ignore case when searching for missing files in playlists because filenames in FAT32 are not case-sensitive.

Thank you very much for the bug report, ctkatz.

EasyH10 version 1.1 released (2005-10-21)

As iRiver released H10 20GB MTP firmware 2.50, they revised the database specification a bit. The change was so minor that I have no idea about why they had to change the database specification. However, the change was also enough to make EasyH10 1.0 incompatible to the new firmware. This is the update release for H10 20GB firmware 2.50 although it was just less than two weeks ago that I have released EasyH10 1.0...

• EasyH10 1.1 now supports H10 20GB MTP firmware 2.50. Thank you very much for providing me with database files, Nikhil, Barry, Dan, and Jose.

Please update the setup program to "easyh10-1.0-2_win32gui_setup.exe" (2005-10-15)

Update on 2005-10-19: This found out to be false positive. You don't have to worry about the Trojan even with previous 1.0 and 1.0 beta 8.

I got a report from a user that AVG free 7.0.344 detects a Trojan horse "Dropper Agent.RT" in the setup program distributed in EasyH10. I believe this detection is false positive, but summarize the current situation:

• AVG free 7.0.344 detects a Trojan horse "Dropper Agent.RT" in "easyh10-1.0b8_win32gui_setup.exe", "easyh10-1.0_win32gui_setup.exe", and "uninstall.exe" (installed in "C:\Program Files\EasyH10").
• I got only one report the day before yesterday for the first time since 24 September 2005, when EasyH10 1.0 beta 8 was released.
• The segment that AVG free 7.0.344 detects as "Dropper Agent.RT" seems to derive from Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS), which is the software to generate the setup program of EasyH10. More specially, zlib library included in NSIS distribution seems to propagate the Trojan(-like) segment to the setup program. See this detection result.
• AVG free 7.0.344 detects nothing in "easyh10.exe". EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] executable itself is surely safe.
• EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] zip archive is not be affected by this problem for the same reason.

I'm not sure "easyh10-1.0_win32gui_setup.exe" actually infected by the Trojan horse or not at this moment. But I suspect the detection result of AVG free 7.0.344 because:

• Macafee Virus Scan, which I use daily, did not detect a Trojan in these binaries.
• I have not received any report for about two weeks except the day before yesterday.

Therefore, I presume the detection is false positive (i.e., AVG free 7.0.344 detected an innocent code segment as "infected"). However, in order to make assurance double sure, I regenerated the setup program "easyh10-1.0-2_win32gui_setup.exe" with the latest NSIS 2.10. I confirmed that this setup program is not detected as "Dropper Agent.RT" by AVG free 7.0.344 any more. If you use EasyH10 setup program, please uninstall the previous version and install "easyh10-1.0-2_win32gui_setup.exe" just in case. You don't have to update zip archive version, "easyh10-1.0_win32gui.zip".

Sorry for the inconvenience this may cause you. Thank you for the report, wulfs. Nyaochi.

EasyH10 1.0 released (2005-10-10)

I am very pleased to announce that EasyH10 finally hits 1.0 today, 10 October 2005. I wish you a pleasant music life with H10 and EasyH10!

• [POSIX CUI] Fixed a bug that playlist conversion fails when playlist files point to a large number of music files. Many thanks for providing the test environment, Benjamin.
• [CUI] Added new option -I (--install) to copy a model template file specified by -t option into the player as "easyh10.model".
• [CUI] EasyH10 now assumes that the model template file specified by -t option with non-absolute path exists in one of the following locations:
  1. The current directory
  2. /usr/local/share/easyh10/model/
  3. /usr/local/share/easyh10/
  4. /usr/share/easyh10/model/
  5. /usr/share/easyh10/
• [CUI] "make install" now installs documents such as README, COPYING, etc.
• [Web site] All web contents are much improved in terms of English presentation. Many thanks for the hard work, Brad Fisher (BirdFish).
• [Web site] Updated EasyH10 logo by klima.

EasyH10 has been successful while it is a young (five-months-old) project. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of those who involved in this project.

EasyH10 logo, banner, web, and icon degisn (2005-10-01)

We are calling for your help to improve EasyH10 logo, banner, web pages, and icon. Please see this thread. Now closed. Thanks. Nyaochi

EasyH10 version 1.0 beta 8 released (2005-09-24)

EasyH10 now officially supports H10 MTP models shipped in EU countries. Since MTP models are now shipped even outside of North American countries, we decided to change the terms to distinguish UMS and MTP players as follows: "Intl" -> "UMS"; and "NA" -> "MTP". Please uninstall the previous version before installing this version so that the old template files (H10Intl*.model and H10NA*.model) are removed from the computer and disapper in the selection.

• [common] Changed the name of model templates as follows: "Intl" -> "UMS"; and "NA" -> "MTP".
• [Win32 GUI] EasyH10 now detects H10 5/6 GB EU-MTP models properly thanks to inayat's report.
• [Win32 GUI] Improved the setup program to uninstall the previous version before an installation.
• [Win32 GUI] Fixed the uninstall program that could not remove the entry from the Control Panel.
• [CUI] Fixed the problem that the command-line parser did not work at all in some operating systems. Thanks guno.

I'm wondering when the firmware update for UMS players will come, but going to release 1.0 RC 1 next week after conducting some tests. As I'm not a native-English speaker, it would be appreciated if you could help me improve the English expressions especially in: top page (exclusing News section); manual page; tutorial page; EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] users's guide; EasyH10 [CUI] manual; and EasyH10 manpage. Please contact me in advance to discuss the most convenient way for you to revise these contents. Thank you.

EasyH10 version 1.0 beta 7 released (2005-09-13)

This is a bug-fix release. Please use this version if you are using EasyH10 [CUI] on POSIX-like environments.

• [common] Updated the model templates for the North American H10 5/6GB 2.10 players.
• [common] Fixed a bug where EasyH10 could not skip ID3v2 tag correctly. EasyH10 could not obtain stream information from MP3 files with ID3v2 tag. This bug does not cause any trouble in H10's functionality (because the information does not seem to be used by H10) but should be fixed. Thanks for the report, Derek.
• [common] Fixed a crash bug reported in this thread. EasyH10 crashed when \Media\Music or \Music directory does not exist. Thanks for the report, dave_di.
• [CUI POSIX] Fixed a serious bug where EasyH10 generates an invalid database reported in this thread. This bug was introduced by version 1.0 beta 6 release. Only the CUI version for POSIX-like environments was vulnerable. Thanks for the report, phillip.

EasyH10 version 1.0 beta 6 released (2005-08-29)

This release contains several usability enhancements and bug-fixes:

• [CUI] EasyH10 now can be compiled against non-patched libid3tag that may be installed in your operating system by default. This makes it possible to prepare EasyH10 pre-compiled packages. EasyH10 built against non-patched version, however, cannot make use of:
  • ID3v1 tag for a field which is empty (unset) in ID3v2 tag but filled in ID3v1
  • parsed result from an erroneous tag.
  The patch that EasyH10 uses against libid3tag takes measures to such problematic MP3 files but might be no use for most users. You can compile EasyH10 [CUI] with either libid3tag with/without the patch. EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] will be compiled against libid3tag with the patch enabled.
• [CUI] Long options (--update, --playlist, etc) are now supported.
• [CUI] -U option is renamed as -C. It is now the synonym of -Cis options. You don't have to specify -is with -U any more.
• [CUI POSIX] Fixed a bug around database update mode. EasyH10 could not update an existing database correctly on POSIX-like environments.
• [CUI] Fixed a bug around playlist update mode. EasyH10 always reconverted playlists.
• [CUI] Changed the default character encoding from "ISO-8859-1" to "UTF-8".
• [CUI] Added the manpage for easyh10. See "man easyh10".
• [CUI] "make install" now copies *.model files into ${PREFIX]/share/easyh10/model directory.
• [CUI] Updated the manual for the CUI version.
• [Win32 GUI] Two new translations are included into the official distribution: Spanish translation by Guillermo López Leal; and Norwegian translation by Kristian F. Schmidt.
• [Win32 GUI] Fixed a installer bug that could not copy the model template for the North American H10 6GB.

Other news.

• The EasyH10 debian package will be available by courtesy of Benjamin Seidenberg. He was keenly working on this and improved EasyH10 [CUI] a lot.
• EasyH10 has a new developper, Dudy Kohen, who is currently working on a decent Hebrew support.

EasyH10 version 1.0 beta 5 released (2005-08-10)

This is a bug-fix release.

• [common] Fixed a bug around playback order when using "track number" ordering. Not all users affect this problem, but the previous versions might arrange tracks in a wrong order. If you have omnibus albums that contain music tracks performed by different artists, you might get a messed-up playback order. (Thanks Moneycat!)
• [website] Updated out-dated information on this web site. EasyH10 Users' Manual now includes detail description about all functions. Several external links are added to "Links" page.

I'm going to take two-week holidays. So this is the last update before my holidays. If you need a support or help concerning EasyH10, post it to EasyH10 Forum or this thread, and someone may help you. Although I may not respond to your bug reports for two weeks, don't hesitate to send an email to me.

EasyH10 version 1.0 beta 4 released (2005-08-08)

Although I have just released version 1.0 beta 3 the day before yesterday, this is another serious bug-fix release against "incorrect displaying" problem reported in this thread.

• [common] Sorted out "incorrect displaying" problem, which shows a messed-up information during playback even though song naviation in the MUSIC mode works perfectly. This problem was found to be caused by an unknown database specification. Thank you for providing database samples, MyGoul and David!

When sorting path names, file names, title names, etc. to generate H10_*.idx files, the previous EasyH10 converted upper-case letters into lower-case to make the sorting order case-insensitive. This rule is compatible with a requirement for calculating CRC values: we must convert upper-case letters into lower-case. However, this was not true for sorting strings: we had to convert lower-case letters to upper-case. The difference becomes obvious when a user has following folders:

a) \Media\Music\Artist\Album I\
b) \Media\Music\Artist\Album II\

The previous version arranges these path names in a) to b) order because lower letter 'i' comes after '\' in the ASCII table. In contrast, the new version arranges these path names in b) to a) order because upper letter 'I' comes before '\' in the ASCII table. H10 players are so naive that they cannot work properly even with this small difference of sorting order.

I suppose that this update finally fixed all problems that I know at this moment. Should you have other problem with EasyH10, please let me know as soon as possible.

EasyH10 version 1.0 beta 3 released (2005-08-06)

This is a serious bug-fix release.

• [common] Fixed a bug that calculated CRC value incorrectly when the length of an artist, album, title, or genre name exceeds its limitation. This bug found to be related with "empty entry" problem, which makes some songs inaccessible from MUSIC mode. I got a report from RtOaNn at misticriver that EasyH10 version 1.0 beta 3 sorts out the problem. (Thanks, RtOaNn)
• [common] Improved sort stability for generating H10_*.idx files, using reverse order of entry IDs.
• [Win32 GUI] Included updated translation for Italian users. Now all translations are updated for EasyH10 1.0. (Thanks, klima)

I still got two bug reports concerning "incorrect displaying" problem, which shows a messed-up information when playing a song even though song naviation in the MUSIC mode works fine.

EasyH10 version 1.0 beta 2 released (2005-07-28)

This is a minor bug-fix release.

• [common] Improved WMA parser to prioritize Content Description rather than Extended Content Description for obtaining an artist value. Some WMA files have two different artist names in one file. (Thanks, jkidd)
• [Win32 GUI] Included updated translation for Frence, German, and Korean users.
• [CUI] Bug-fix in parsing -T option values.

I got one bug report that is fixed with this release after the release of 1.0 beta 1. If I don't get any bug report by 31 Jul 2005, EasyH10 will move to 1.0 Release Candidate.

EasyH10 port for Medion MDJUKE220 (2005-07-28)

Welcome to EasyH10 world, Medion MDJUKE220 users! As is discussed in this thread, I ported EasyH10 to support Medion MDJUKE220 player. Although MDJUKE220 has the similar database specification as iriver H10 does, the specification difference forced me to fork the source code from version 1.0 beta 1. In the future I want to merge this patch into the official source code, but didn’t because EasyH10 for iriver H10 is in the beta stage for releasing 1.0. Enjoy EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] for MDJUKE220.

By the way, I’m not so eager to provide EasyH10 variants for other models due to the limitation of my leisure time. I will put efforts to eliminate the technical difficulty (i.e., reverse engineering and analysis of database specification) but will not do some time-consuming tasks such as changing dialog items, hints, messages, and icons. These tasks should be done by users who actually own the players and can take responsibility for them. This statement does not mean that EasyH10 project will not support other models but is short on staff to maintain ported versions. If you are interested in maintaining EasyH10 port for your model, please let me know and join the EasyH10 project.

EasyH10 version 1.0 beta 1 released (2005-07-23)

This is the first beta release towards EasyH10 version 1.0 final. I will concentrate on bug-fixes and stabilization and not include any additional functions to EasyH10 version 1.0. This release contains a number of enhancements and bug-fixes:

• [common] Added search function for missing files referred in playlists. This function searches for music file(s) in the music folders based on the file name and chooses the most probable music file based on the concordance of path names. You don't have to care about path name in playlists any more.
• [common] Added "album" and "all" shuffle modes. "Album" shuffle arranges tracks within an album in a random order, but you still get a numerical order of CD when selecting all tracks by an artist or all titles in your player. "all" shuffle arranges all tracks by an artist and all titles in the player in a random order, but you still get a numerical order of track numbers when selecting a track in an album.
• [common] Added gussing function for missing files referred in playlists. This function tries possible combinations of the absolute path to a music file described in a playlist and the root path to music folders.
• [common] Added skipping behavior when any of music files referred in a playlist is not found. The previous version did nothing but cancel playlist conversion.
• [common] Added eight methods for obtaining media information in addition to conventional tag information. This enhancement forces EasyH10 to parse path/file names as track title/artist/album/genre names.
• [common] Performed a set of tests on different enviroments (Fedore Core, FreeBSD, Mac OS, etc.)
• [Win32 common] Fixed one bug with playlist update mode.
• [Win32 GUI] Added /C command-line option for configuration-only purpose.
• [Win32 GUI] Fixed bugs around /I option.
• [Win32 GUI] Added a horizontal scroll bar in the report window.
• [Win32 GUI] Added version information in the title bar.
• [Win32 GUI] Added warning messages that report the failure reason for playlist conversion.
• [Win32 GUI] Added Italian translation contributed by klima (Thanks klima).
• [Win32 GUI] Improved the application icon (Many thanks klima!).
• [CUI] Improved configure script to check the availability of libid3tag specialized (patched) for EasyH10.
• [CUI] Added a new option (-w) to specify a character encoding for music files with non-unicode tags, in addition to the existing option (-e) to specify the system encoding. This differentiation is useful when a user writes non-unicode tags in e.g., CP932, EUC-JP, EUC-KR, Shift_JIS, Big5, etc on a modern system with UTF-8 encoding.
• [CUI] Fixed WMA parsing bug on big-endian machines (e.g., PowerPC).
• [CUI] Fixed several bugs in CUI version (Thanks, Glenn).
• [Linux CUI] Started to distribute a binary for linux environments (Many thanks, crashd!).

Although I performed a set of tests with this release, it may contain a few unknown bugs. Should you notice any bugs and problems, please let me know as soon as possible. The release plan for EasyH10 1.0 is:

1. Update the web site for version 1.0
2. Release 1.0 beta 2...x (only bug fixes and translation updates)
3. Release 1.0 RC (next weekend, hopefully)
4. Release 1.0 Final

Due to my poor release planning and management, EasyH10 1.0 beta 1 is not fully translated in some languages. The contributors did update their translation texts for EasyH10 0.16 beta, which is skipped for this release. Sorry for the inconvenience and discourtesy for the translators, but I put a higher priority for EasyH10 1.0 beta 1 to be tested by as many users and made a decision to release it today. I will update the language DLL as soon as I received the updated translation.

EasyH10 version 0.15 beta released (2005-07-16)

Due to the change of setup program, if you installed EasyH10 version 0.14.1 beta with the MSI installer or setup.exe, please uninstall it from the Control Panel before installing version 0.15 beta.

I pleased to announce that EasyH10 version 0.15 beta was released especially for one major bug-fix: database entry problem.

• [common] Fixed one suspicious point that could generate a problematic database. Jean-Luc Fradet contacted me to report an entry disappearing problem and provided me the database files. I analyzed the database content and found one possible reason that may introduce this problem. After I sent him to a test version of EasyH10, he confirmed that his problem finally disappears with this new version! I wish the same will happen to other users with this version. Many thanks to Jean-Luc!
• [common] Added warning messages to report which music files are missing in playlist conversion.
• [Win32 GUI] Moved from the MS Visual Studio .net to Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS) for building an installer. The previous installer might display funny characters.
• [Win32 GUI] Added version information in the title bar.
• [Win32 GUI] Added horizontal scroll bar in the report window.

If you still have a problem with EasyH10 version 0.15 beta, don't hesitate to contact me. I will fix it.

EasyH10 version 0.14.1 beta released with a crash-bug fix (2005-07-12)

Soon after the release of EasyH10 version 0.14 beta, I got a crash report from Tim Ragnwald. Thanks to his detailed report, I could easily locate the typo that caused the crash for MP3 files with empty artist field. Many thanks to Tim Ragnwald.

EasyH10 version 0.14 beta released, users' forum, final call for help (2005-07-12)

I'm pleased to announce that EasyH10 version 0.14 beta is released with both Win32 GUI and CUI versions. I assume this version to be virtually EasyH10 1.0 release candidate 1 even though I didn't get any critical evidence from users in that it could sort out "duplicated entry problem" or "missing entry problem". This release includes a few significant changes.

• [common] Fixed a serious bug around sorting database entries. The previous code worked well in most cases, but in theory, was not perfect and might cause "duplicated entry problem" for some users.
• [common] Wrote the H10 database specification. It's hosted by Crashd at MisticRiver.
• [Win32 GUI] Added two more error messages for beginners. Users will get a warning when they push [OK] button without connecting H10 player and a error message when they didn't choose any model template.
• [Win32 GUI] Added a simple installer (based on Windows Installer) for beginners (easyh10-0.14_win32gui_setup.msi for Windows 2000/XP, easyh10-0.14_win32gui_setup.zip for Windows 9x). Of course you can use the simple zip archive (easyh10-0.14_win32gui.zip) as usual.
• [Win32 CUI] Added Win32 binary distribution (easyh10-0.14_win32cui.zip).

I also wish to thank the following contributors who always support me with enthusiasm.

• [Win32 GUI] English dialog and messages are revised by Tim Weston.
• [Win32 GUI] Simplified Chinese translation from genexk.
• [Win32 GUI] Korean translation from 1121 at MisticRiver.
• [Win32 GUI] Other translation are revised by Oliver Schmidt (German), Simon Auger (French), and Tim Ragnwald (Swedish) for this release.

The next topic. I opened a forum to exchange information about EasyH10 and iriver H10 player. Although there's a EasyH10 thread at MisticRiver, it becomes too huge to exchange information. Therefore, I opened a special forum to ask a support, report a problem, submit a translation, etc concerning EasyH10. Please feel free to use it!

Since I'm planning to release 1.0 final by the end of this month, this will be the final call for help before releasing EasyH10 1.0.

• Bug report especially related with entry duplication bug. If you experience this bug, please make a report in this thread.
• Translation. See call for translation in the forum.
• Compiled package or binary of EasyH10 CUI on different operating systems (e.g., MacOS).

EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] Swedish translation released (2005-07-03)

I am pleased to announce that EasyH10 was translated into Swedish by Tim Ragnwald. As usual, download Swedish language DLL and put lang_29.dll into "lang" folder. Thank you for the effort, Tim Ragnwald.

EasyH10 [CUI] Version 0.13 beta released (2005-07-01)

I am pleased to announce that EasyH10 [CUI] Version 0.13 is released with true multi-platform support. I compiled EasyH10 [CUI] on several POSIX-like operating systems such as Fedora Core, Debian Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS X, etc. woring on different CPU architectures such as Intel x86, AMD64, IBM Power PC, etc. I confirmed that EasyH10 [CUI] produced bit identical databases and playlists for all platforms tested so far. Although I distribute only the source code of EasyH10 [CUI], I'm pretty sure that you can use iriver H10 player on your favorite OS as long as you could compile it.

This release also includes a number of improvements and bug fixes for the CUI version.

• Microsoft Riff WAVE support for database construction.
• Much improved progress report.
• Much improved build script.
• Better usage of iconv library to reduce failure case.
• Bug fix around CRC calculation on big endian machines (e.g., Mac).
• Automatic supplement for path to a model template.
• Automatic supplement for pathname to a model template if no model template was specified.

I also wrote a manual for EasyH10 [CUI]. I hope this release will break through the limited support of operating system.

EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] Version 0.12 beta released (2005-06-28)

Having forgotten the fact that iriver H10 does support WAVE audio playback, I added WAVE file support to media database construction. EasyH10 now recognizes song information in LIST/INFO chunk: title (INAM); artist (IART); album (IPRD); genre (IGNR); year (ICRD); and track number (itrk). Another major change is command-line options which are useful for automated processing.

• Microsoft Riff file (WAVE) support.
• Added command-line options:

  /R

  Press [OK] button automatically and start processing immediately.

  /F

  Same as "/R" option but don't wait user's [OK] button even after an error report.

  /I <filename>

  Specify a .ini file from which EasyH10 load the setting.

• Include German and French translation into the official distribution.

EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] French translation released (2005-06-21)

I am pleased to release the French language DLL presented by Simon Auger. He worked out the translation in spite of the difficulty regarding caption length from English to French. Let's enjoy the French-translated EasyH10 by downloading the language DLL and putting lang_12.dll into "lang" folder. Thank you, Simon.

If you are happy to contribute EasyH10 project as a translator into your native language, please read the instruction in Download page and contact me.

EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] Germany translation released (2005-06-19)

As soon as I put out a call for the translation, three Germany users contacted me to provide Germany translation for EasyH10. I was a bit surprised but very delighted to get such quick responses from users. I asked the translation to Oliver Schmidt who contacted me the most promptly.

I am pleased to release the Germany language DLL presented by Oliver Schmidt. If you are a Germany user, enjoy the Germany-translated EasyH10 by downloading the language DLL and putting lang_7.dll into "lang" folder.

As I wrote in Download page, EasyH10 is being translated into French and Danish. If you are happy to translate EasyH10 into your native language, please read the instruction in Download page and contact me.

EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] Version 0.11 beta released (2005-06-14)

Since the last release of EasyH10, I've got few bug reports and feature requests. I would like to freeze the functional expansion and release the version 1.0 early because I'm getting busier these days. In the first step toward the version 1.0, I release EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] version 0.11 beta, which will be the basis of the stable version.

• Updated the model files for H10 Int'l firmware 2.05
• Fixed several mistakes in dialog messages.
• Added multi-language support for translating EasyH10's dialog and messages into other languages (EasyH10 has been working on platforms in various languages though). I translated dialogs and messages into Japanese and included the language DLL in the distribution.

Before releasing EasyH10 version 1.0, I would like:

• To fix known/possible bugs and problems as possible
• For dialogs and messages to be translated in as many languages as possible
• To improve this web site to be comprehensible and informative
• To fix English errors in this web sites, dialogs, and messages.
• Prepare binaries (rpm, bin, etc.) for various operating systems.

So it would be grateful if you could report a problem (see FAQ), translate EasyH10's dialogs and messages into your daily-use language, revise my English in the dialogs, messages, and web sites.

Better than nothing... (2005-06-11)

I've been waiting for the Compile Farm to be ready for about three weeks since my home directory was missing. EasyH10 CUI source code is almost completed, but I cannot test the code because I don't have environments other than Windows XP.

Recently, SkaMike (at MisticRiver) provides me with a linux environment for testing the EasyH10 CUI version. Thanks to this, EasyH10 CUI is now successfully compiled on a linux environment. I confirmed that the CUI version generated a valid database from music files.

Although more tests and experiments for the source code are needed, I release the current source code as it is, hoping that it will work fine or be fixed by some excellent hackers. If you are interested in the CUI version, please download the source code from the download page and play with it. I have no idea whether this source code can be compiled or work on Mac OS X either.

By the way, SkaMike also told me that EasyH10 Win32 GUI worked perfectly on WINE. This might be an alterative way to use iriver H10 on linux environments.

iriver H10 Int'l firmware 2.05 (2005-06-09)

iriver released a new firmware 2.05 for H10 [5GB/6GB] International models. I confirmed that it is safe to apply the model template for H10 firmware version 2.04. Please specify the model template for 2.04 until I release an update version in the future.

EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] Version 0.9 alpha released (2005-06-07)

I'm pleased to announce EasyH10 0.9 alpha, which finally supports H10 US 5/6/20GB models. I confirmed that this version worked fully (i.e., database conversion and playlist conversion) with an H10 US/UMS 20GB player (Many thanks, SkaMike).

• Added supports for US 5GB/6GB/20GB models working on the UMS mode (Thanks, SkaMike, nille1234, kekow, and Enik). You must use "UMS trick" and have your H10 player recognized as an external HDD.
• Abolished "database template" and introduced "model template" instead to support the broader differences between Int'l and US H10.
• Removed the generation function of database templates as we come to know all variants of H10 models.
• Added a log-viewing window in the processing dialog. This should report the error occurred during database construction and playlist conversion.
• Improved the behavior of ID3 tag parser (libid3tag) with irregular MP3 files. This will reduce the number of unrecognized media files. (Thanks, easy~wave)
• Fixed one more problem around database update. The previous EasyH10 needlessly tried to obtain media information from files that are played on the player. Removing the usage of H10DB.upd, EasyH10 now stores time-stamp of each file in H10DB.dat.
• Enabled database cleaning that removes unused database entries when updating a media database. I thought EasyH10 had been using this routine, but found it disabled.
• Added an experimental (untested) support for Windows 98SE/ME. Alghouth I got a report that EasyH10 come to at least show up the preference dialog (Thanks, Daniel), I have no idea whether EasyH10 generates a valid database or not. It would be appreciated if you could just report me the result because I don't have the test environment.
• Implemented automatic creation of playlists and database folders in case they do not exist.
• Fixed [Cancel] button in the processing dialog.
• Improved the progress report a bit.

EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] Version 0.8 alpha 2 released (2005-06-03)

I found a serious problem in version 0.8 alpha 1. Please make sure to update it.

• Fixed a serious bug around database reading routine. EasyH10 0.8 alpha 1 introduced this bug and always failed to update the media database.
• Improved the compatibility of database reading routine with iriver plus. This reduces the failure of template generation.

EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] Version 0.8 alpha 1 released (2005-06-03)

I released EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] version 0.8 alpha 1 mainly for fixing "duplicating bug".

• Implemented automatic removal of unused/undisplayable trailing space from title/artist/album/genre values. Some bad-mannered encoding/tagging softwares pad spaces to the values. Let us assume a character '_' to represent a space. What if some files have artist name 'Beatles', and some have 'Beatles__'? H10 player treats these as separated artists, 'Beatles' and 'Beatles__', which are displayed in the separate place but the same superficially. The former EasyH10 differentiate these values even though you cannot see the trailing space in the H10 display. I think this is the fault of tagging software but support this case because it is the root of what you call "duplicating bug" (Thanks Tim and Airwave).
• Small bug fix around sort stability.
• Improved the progress report a bit.
• Implemented manual setting of the code page for converting multi-bytes characters into UCS-2 characters (it's only for debugging purpose and hidden)

I believe that I fixed all known problems in this update and would like to move to the beta stage in the next release if we don't find any problem.

EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] Version 0.8 alpha released (2005-05-30)

I released EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] version 0.8 alpha.

• Implemented automatic detection of H10 location. You don't have to copy EasyH10 executable into your H10 player any more. Just run EasyH10 from your local folder.
• Implemented "Safely remove when completion", which ejects your H10 player from the PC when EasyH10 finishes all processes.
• Added tool tips (aka. hints) for each dialog component.
• Added "file name" ordering, which arranges tracks according to the file name.
• Added "fill unknown" option, which fills the album, artist, and genre fields with 'Unknown' when EasyH10 could not obtain the value of these fields. I hope this hides what-we-call 'duplicate bug'.
• Improved sort stability when creating database indexes (H10DB_*.idx). I hope this hunts some problems.
• Added the edit box to configure the location of database, music files, and playlists.
• A number of internal (invisible) changes in the source code for linux and Mac OS support. Although EasyH10 [CUI] came to run successfully on Cygwin environment, the final test on real POSIX-like environments has been delayed due to the problem on my account at the compile farm. For this reason, I could not release the source code for the CUI version at this moment. But the day EasyH10 works on linux and Mac OS X is approaching...

I would like to move to the beta stage, and release version 1.0 in near future. Please report bugs and suggestions that should be sorted out or added before 1.0 release.

EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] Version 0.7 alpha 3 released (2005-05-23)

I found several bugs in EasyH10 Version 0.7 alpha 2. Please make sure to update it.

• Fixed several serious bugs for database update. The process of database update was completely broken: it continued to add hidden track number at the beginning of track titles everytime it updates database; and it assigned the wrong global playback number. (Thanks, Tayeh)
• Improved media information retrieval for MP3 files. I got several reports that EasyH10 could not read a few MP3 files that iriver plus could. I examined these MP3 files and found that: they have both ID3v1 and ID3v2; album fields was filled in ID3v1 but did not exist in ID3v2. I think these file were generated by a wrong encoder or tag editor but supported them. (Thanks, Tayeh)

EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] Version 0.7 alpha 2 released (2005-05-22)

This is a bug-fix release of track number ordering.

• Improved the behavior of track number ordering when a music file does not have the track number. If EasyH10 detects two music files which have identical album name and track number (e.g., 0), it will arrange tracks according to the filename, hoping that the user assigns the track number at the beginning of each filename.
• Fixed a problem of track number ordering when an album consists of songs from various artists (e.g., omnibus albums). EasyH10 now neglects the artist name for track number ordering. (Thanks, kuro)

EasyH10 project page launched (2005-05-22)

I launched the EasyH10 project home page. Please report a problem (content, English, etc.) as I prepared this web site in a hurry.

EasyH10 project is now hosted by sourceforge.net (2005-05-20)

EasyH10 project was accepted as an open source project in sourceforge.net. I commited the source code into CVS and am now preparing the official web site of the EasyH10 project.

EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] Version 0.7 alpha released (2005-05-18)

EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] Version 0.7 alpha was released with new features and bug fixes:

• Improved database construction to force track number ordering even when an user selects "All" at the "Album" or "Artist" selection screen (Thanks, Zeruda)
• A new feature to force random track ordering (i.e., shuffle)
• A feature to convert only playlists that are updated from the previous conversion
• A bug fix around PLS playlist (Thanks, floweeh)
• Fixed a bug where EasyH10 does not deal with a playlist whose music description starts with '\"
• Added the support of M3U8 playlists. This should improve the situation of character set problem for some users (Windows FAT32 stores filenames in UNICODE).
• Fixed a problem where EasyH10 always update the database even though an user did not specified to do
• New GUI layout

EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] 0.6 alpha 4 released (2005-05-16)

An experimental update for international users:

• Changed the code page (CP_OEMCP to CP_ACP) for converting multi-byte characters to unicode characters. I'm not sure it's correct choice or not because it does not make any difference in my Japanese environment, but got a positive report from Russia (Thanks, Badger and frekje).
• Improved the install instruction a little (Thanks, erialor).

EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] 0.6 alpha 3 released (2005-05-15)

Another small bug-fix release:

• Fixed a bug introduced by the previous change. Version 0.6 alpha 2 could not retrieve filesize, sample rate, and bitrate of MP3 files. This bug does not affect H10 playback, but may cause some problem when iriver plus read the database generated by EasyH10

EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] 0.6 alpha 2 released (2005-05-14)

Small bug-fix release:

• Fixed several crash bugs

EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] 0.6 alpha released (2005-05-14)

I released EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] 0.6 alpha to sync with the H10 firmware 2.04, which revised the database format.

EasyH10 [Win32 GUI] 0.5 alpha released (2005-05-14)

I integrated playlist conversion into H10DB. So I renamed H10DBupdate to EasyH10, hoping that it will free users from iriver plus and make your H10 simpler. The change log:

• Implemented playlist conversion (m3u->plp, pls->plp)
• Added configure dialog
• Improved the stability of database writing (Thanks, Sugawara)
• Fixed the problem for the specific Latin characters (Thanks, BiSigle)

H10DBupdate 0.4 alpha released (2005-05-09)

I decided to give the highest priority to the development of H10DBupdate, a Win32 GUI version of H10DB.exe. Today I released H10DBupdate 0.4 alpha to get more feedback from users, which is necessary for the development. I will resume the development of the CUI version after finishing the Win32 GUI version.

• Minor bug fix for incorrect ID3v2 Unicode string (Thanks, harp)

H10DB 0.3 alpha released (2005-05-08)

This is an enhancement update of H10DB with some new feature:

• Incremental update of an H10 database (i.e., reading media information only from the updated files)
• Update mode that retains/discards rating, recent playback, and favorite information
• Decent command-line options

H10DB 0.2 alpha (internally) released (2005-05-07)

H10DB now supports WMA file. This is an internal release.

H10DB 0.1 alpha released (2005-05-05)

This is the memorable first release of H10DB, a H10 database generation tool with command-line interface. This version can only:

• Create an H10 database from MP3 files without iriver plus
• Force to order songs according to the track numbers with some tricks
• Dump the H10 database for analysis purpose

But it successfully solves the track ordering problem in my MP3 collection.