State of the Coaster

[Sean Harshbarger <harshy dersoldat org>]

Every once in awhile, a State of the Coaster address is needed to let
people know the project is still alive. 

First off, we have to fend off a rumor about the project.

The current assumption that Optimystic is the Coaster replacement is
false. It is someone just writing a front-end to the libburn library and
is not our doing.

Libburn is in a state of brokenness as many are aware of. This is do to
the major cleanup and reconstruction of the code so that more features
can be easily added. Libburn _does not_ burn at this time.

With that note on the table, when libburn is released, you will see
phase 2 of the coaster project released. Libcoaster, which is the very
simple and basic library that is designed to allow a user to "centrally"
configure their burners, will be released.

Phase 3 should follow suit. The ETA on that is not known. I hope no more
then a month after libcoaster to have the Coaster-UI out on your
desktops.

Now to some feature explanations and other goodies.

Libcoaster: This is not intended to be a wrapper for libburn, but just a
very simple configuration library for gnome in the burning arena. This
also includes a control-center capplet. There will be two ways to use
this. A coder could choose to use the simple API I am writing to pull
configs and even pull up the capplet, or the app can just pull the gconf
keys for the values. It just depends on what is needed. Coaster will
take full advantage of this library and I hope to see other applications
use this to their advantage. Simple preferences like eject disc after
burn, burn speed, and even session type (tao, dao) will be selectable in
the capplet. More advanced options (debug, force) will have keys stored
in gconf for those power users in us.

Coaster: A nice flowing HIG compatible GUI that will present the user
with a very simple and straight forward interface to create discs.
Audio, data, mixed, vcd, and even dvds will be supported at some point.
Coaster's launch will have at the least Audio and Data. Mixed CDs will
depend on libburn at the time.

All in all, a very exciting project that will be simple, yet very
flexible, is on the verge of being ready for your enjoyment. All in all
let us remember that patience brings great things.

-Sean Harshbarger (Coaster Developer)