Re: CD burning in gnome

[John McCutchan <ttb tentacle dhs org>]

On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 10:25:24PM -0800, Loban A Rahman wrote:
> Thought I'd just add my thoughts. I liked what I saw on my roommates OS
> X machine. When you put a CD-R(w) in the drive, an CD icon pops up as if
> it is writable media. You can drag files into it, create folders, etc.
> The file manager just caches the data but shows everything in the CD
> window. When I then want to eject the disc (by dragging it to the trash
> or choosing eject from the menu) a dialog pops up saying "data needs to
> be written onto the CD, do it? yes/no". If I choose no, the CDR pops out
> untouched, if yes, the CD-burning software pops up, after I make any
> config changes and click burn, it burns, and then ejects the disc.
> 
> I also like what John said about the xml document. Sorta like the xml
> document that VCDImager uses to make VCD's. So we should have our own
> CD-burning application (either from scratch or incorporate something),
> which uses said standardized xml document. When I do the "eject CDR
> which I've just dragged files into", nautilus generates the xml tree and
> passes it to the burning app, which it launches.
> 
> So, at the gnome-vfs level, we could just have it recognize a CD-R(W)
> and hold all file-system info as we add files and folders. Then, when
> the media is to be ejected/unmounted (i assume gnome-vfs recognizes
> this), it will launch the burning application (perhaps a bonobo
> component?), pass the filesystem info (as an xml tree) and wait for a
> confirmation (burning done!) signal before unmounting/ejecting the
> media.
> 
> How does that sound? Have I made a fatal mistake somewhere?

On the gnome-vfs level, it also needs to understand the xml document aswell,
just like say a tar file, so you can save a CD you want to burn,
say you want to backup all your data to a CDRW every month, so you
open up a new CD session, drag the files you want into it and save it.
Then every month, you open up your xml CD document (which nautilus treats
just like a folder) and drag all the files
again, nautilus will add the new files to the xml document, then you save
the document. Right click on it and select burn, you could also
drag the cd document to the CD icon on the desktop and it would initiate
the burn. Then all other gnome CD applications could just use gnome-vfs
operations as if the xml document were a directory in itself.

John