[clug] Open Source Music Player with specialty features

[Paul Wayper]

Hi people,

As some may know, one of my more obscure hobbies is teaching Irish Set 
Dancing. After my regular music player (a Rio Karma) died recently I'm looking 
at getting a Netbook running Linux to play music in class.  I'm basically 
wondering what it would take to make a music player with these features:

* Big display mode - title, artist and album should take up most of the 
screen.  This needs to be read on a netbook from six feet away by people who 
need reading glasses.
* Playlists - tracks need to be grouped both by album (and artist) and also by 
the Irish Set Dance that is danced to that music.
* Easy controls - pause/play, start of track, next track, previous track.  If 
the number keys 1-9 could instantly skip to that numbered track in the current 
playlist that'd be great.
* Pause at the end of every song.
* Random state saved per playlist - i.e. some playlists are always played in 
sequence, and some should offer a random ordering each time.
* Optionally, name a playlist with a simple code, then type in that code to 
fetch it.  So typing "/bvj" would get the Balleyvourney Jig Set playlist.

I'm competent at Perl and reasonably competent at Python, so I'm happy to 
write this up myself.  If someone can give me any tips on toolkits to look 
into or programs to look at then that'd be very useful.  I'm assuming 
GStreamer is going to be a good way to go.

Thanks in advance,

Paul