[jokosher-devel] Jokosher BOF report, and 0.2 direction

["Jono Bacon" <jonobacon gmail com>]

Hi all,

At LUGRadio Live 2006 we had a Jokosher BOF, and in it, Laszlo, Elleo,
Chris Proctor, Aq, Edward Hervey, Christian Schaller and a bunch of
others were involved. We discussed a number of different areas, and
solidified a 0.2 roadmap and release schedule. I would like to use the
results of the BOF as a proposed release template.

RELEASE SCHEDULE

* The proposed release schedule I mentioned on the mailing list was
agreed on. See http://jokosher.python-hosting.com/milestone/Version+0.2
for details.

PROPOSED FEATURES

* LADSPA support - I am happy to look into this, and I think Laszlo
was interested in this too.
* Plug-in support - Aq is keen to work on this. Plug-ins need to be
simple to install and use, and also be able to hook up to a network
repository to get them easily (similar to Eclipse). Some initial
discussion of how the plug-in API works is to define a dbus API of
Jokosher facilities. Plug-in would not be able to modify core chunks
of Jokosher such as the instrument views, but instead present
additional facilities in additional windows. It would also make sense
to identify areas that should be 'pluggable' - such as the export
window in which you can select plug-ins to automatically transmit a
mixed down piece to a website, for example.
* Translations - Translations are important for Jokosher, and Elleo
has written some code to make it happen, and is keen to look over
this. I think we should investigate Launchpad as a means of getting
translations and plugging them into Jokosher.
* DocBook documentation - It was discussed that the wiki is a great
way of working on docs, but the translation from wiki to DocBook needs
to be smooth, and DocBook is important for the generation of different
formats. We need to remember that many studios don't have Internet
access, so we should aim for a printed manual at some point in the
future. DocBook seems to offer a good source for these types of
documentation.
* Packaging hacks - we need to make Jokosher easier for packaging,
and there has been some discussion about this recently. Does someone
from the packaging team want to collate these different requirements
in a single page on the Packaging Team page?
* Multi-platform support - We would like to allow people to make Mac
and Windows ports of Jokosher, and one guy asked about doing this at
LUGRadio Live. A proposed solution is to include Platform.py that
basically maps to platform specific bits, and a different Platform.py
would be included with each platform. We would essentially abstract
platform specific code away behind a platform API.

That pretty much sums up much of the points - I am sure the other
attendees can chip in with things I forgot.

Rock on to 0.2 :)

 Jono