[jokosher-devel] Nearing the freeze

["Jono Bacon" <jonobacon gmail com>]

Hi all,

Well, an exciting time is afoot, and Jokosher is nearing its 0.9/1.0
freeze. There is still confusion as to whether we are 0.9 or 1.0, and
just when we were resigned to us being 0.9 because multi-channel card
support may not go in, it seems that the GStreamer side may be fixed
up and we may well have the support in. Elleo is testing it tonight.
:)

So, where are we? What needs doing? How are we going to make this
*the* Jokosher release for people to use? I really get the feeling
that people are looking at Jokosher for actual recording - more bug
reports, podcasts saying they are considering it (such as the Linux
Action Show) and my test podcast proves we can do it. Now the
dependencies are hitting distros, this is making life *much* easier.
Exciting days. :)

So, here are some things to think about, comments are encouraged:

--> Multi-channel support

 I think if we can get this in, this is essential. Right now
everything we need is in a released gst, but multi-channel support
will require an updated audioconvert and the deinterleave element -
can we use caps detection to see if the correctly patch audioconvert
is available for correct recording - i.e. if the user has an
audioconvert that does not have the bug fixed, can we disable
multi-channel support?

--> docs vs. userdocs

 I have been thinking a lot about the docs sites, and I think doc.j.o
is becoming irrelevent. I suggest we ditch it, make userdocs docs.j.o
and theme it like the main site. I will then poke the site and make
clear separate sections so that official docs appear on the front page
and people can link to development docs.

--> Bugfixing and testing

When we freeze we have a month of bug-fixing, which is essential to
make Jokosher rock-solid. When we released 0.2, we got a lot of
recording bug reports, much of which seemed to be down to dependencies
and certain sound cards (such as the big SBLive bug report thread). I
think we need to encourage as much testing and bug reporting as
possible. Rest assured, I have a plan for this, and I am going to go
on a "test Jokosher, report bugs" pimping mission. It would be amazing
if we could nail the vast majority of our bug reports. :)

--> Stuff left to add

Not much left to hack in, but mainly:

* Mixdown Profiles - Aq is working on this and assures me it will be
in before the freeze. I think Aq needs to hack this, and we should
determine how stable the code is. There is no reason why itcan't go in
and we disable it from the UI if we are not confident it is mature
enough. We not only need the facility, but some actual profiles too,
and I would suggest "update a podcast feed" is the first one to use.

* Freesound - the freesound extension needs some UI love. The code
actually works, and is awesome for demos, but it needs refining and to
have a non-blocking GUI.

--> Effects and presets

I would like to ship some preset packs with Jokosher that can go on
the website and be included. Would be useful to have a preset pack
installation option if we have time to include it. I hope to spend
some time sitting down and making a bunch of presets that sound
decent. I did for 0.2 and managed to get some really nice sounds. Of
course, these are listed at the instrument level, which is cool. :)

--> Accessability

Elleo has been hacking on some pretty incredible accessibility stuff,
and of course, our effects code is so much more accessible now. Would
be good to get a disabled user or two to test this.

So, I think those are the main points. Pretty exciting days, and I am
realy confident that if we can ensure Jokosher works for most people
and we can avoid the recording bugs that we were getting, we should
actually start hearing things recorded in Jokosher. :)

As ever, thanks for all your efforts folks. We have an awesome
application and an awesome development and user community forming. :)

 Jono