Re: Integrated CD ripping/playing [task vs object]

[Curtis Hovey <sinzui cox net>]

On Mon, 2005-01-17 at 17:40 +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> I would expect to see the audio CD showing the data as wav files.
> Providing there is a right click option for play and for compress to
> [file] and/or I can drag the file onto my ogg encoder why should I be
> troubled with detail. That makes it the same as a wav file on disk.
> 
> In the longer term I would as an end user also expect that if I dragged
> my file from a CD to my ogg player/mp3 player/etc that it automatically
> got converted to a suitable format according to the device information
> know by HAL. I don't see why it is the users problem to know how to do
> such a conversion or perform it (or indeed to know it happens) - the
> logical operation is "put music in player" not "transfer bits". If I
> drag a file to the printer I don't have to right click  "convert to ps"

I think this is a valid approach for an object-based approach to
presenting the data.  But I would prefer a task-based solution as hp
suggested some emails back in the thread.  

Ripping (and burning) happen less frequently then the task of listening,
so I believe the player app should be driving the solution.  I'll be
happy to use Alan's ideas about how to handle this, but after I've
ripped the audio, I must go to the extra step of playing it.  I rip to
make music portable so I can listen to it with using other apps and
devices, so I think SJ should provide a service to those apps.

I use RB to listen to my music, and it will start sound juicer to import
(rip) CD audio into the collection.  The problem is that I don't have
enough disk space to convert all my CDs to a portable form.  So when I
want to binge on '60s or '80s music [1], I stop RB and play the disc
through some app.  Every CD app I have used can identify my disc, but
stores its metadata in a DB I cannot query.  I really want to query RB,
and I want it to tell me what album I need to find. [2]

>From a task perspective, SJ provides an excellent service for any
player-library app.  Muine, for example, could do the same.  I'm in
favor of ditching GNOME-CD, but I don't need SJ to be my music player
when GNOME already has other music players.  By breaking the tasks up
into reusable apps, users and distros can put their ideal media solution
together without duplicating code.

I can make a similar argument for burning.  I want to select a playlist
in RB and be asked whether I want to make an audio disc or a data disk.
RB doesn't need to do the burning, some other nifty app can do it.

[1] Other than David Bowie, the '70s were a total waste of time.  Yeah
there was some punk, but nilists don't waste their time thinking in
decades.

[2] I believe there is a RFE in bugzilla already. (Maybe I put it
there.)

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sinzui cox net
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