[Nautilus-list] Audio preview

["Gene Z. Ragan" <gzr eazel com>]

Comrades,

I have spent the last couple of days reworking the way that we handle audio previewing.

I have done this for a few reasons. The first is that we are getting several bugs about run away processes causing audio preview to continue even after icon prelight has ended. Another issue is the possible absence of SOX, play and mpg123 libraries and executables. We currently hard code the name of play and mpg123 into the siurce code. The final issue is the lack of extensibility in our current design. We are not well equipped to handle new audio file formats.

In order to address all of these issues, I have created a threaded audio playback mechanism. This would require nautilus to use the audiofile library in gnome cvs.  This library is based on the SGI audio file library and is pretty decent. In the absence of a real media architecture in gnome, this library is a good stand in.  The code itself could easily be modified to use a different audio library and sound output should the need arise.

A short term drawback is that we would lose previewing of mp3 files. This would be easy to fix. I could quickly submit a module to the audiofile library to handle the parsing of mp3 files.  This small drawback is pretty minor in terms of the gains we would get form using a library as opposed to hardcoded application names.

Does anyone have any feedback or suggestions?

Thanks!

Gene