Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Re: Monkey-media and library backend

[Dave Rigby <djor101 york ac uk>]

Jorn Baayen wrote:

>Hello
>
>Browsing some of the gnomesuport RB forums it's very cool to see so many
>people interested. However, 'just' taking over the project without any
>gtk/glib experience is not going to work. The rhythmbox code in itself
>is not the easiest thing in the world, and then gobject also requires
>getting used to - if you just dive in fat chance you would a) not get
>the big picture b) not understand much at all c) mess everything up.
>I am willing to function as project 'leader' for the coming couple of
>months, as in reviewing patches, helping out setting up a new
>architecture, giving advice, etc. I don't think I would code myself
>though, or organise things - just canal stuff. And then once I see some
>of the new developers found their way I will just pass on the job.
>  
>
That's great, one thing the discussion was lacking was someone with 
previous experience of the project who can say things like 'had that 
idea, won't work because....' Having you onboard 'just' as a project 
leader is something that we will need.

I'm aware that the project is quite complex, in terms of Glib / GTK+. 
While I have little experience of either technologies, I have a fair 
amount of OO programming expericne in C++ and (gasp!) VisualBasic (I 
know, it's horrific, it's a terrible secret to have but it does have a 
varely similar callfack system to GTK+). I've also used straight C for 
quite a lot of programming, so there's some experience there.

In fact, I've spent a reasonable amount of time this week reading up on 
GTK+/GLib/gstreamer/musicbrainz, and well as looking over the src code 
of monkey-media and (net)rhythmbox, and will probably continue that over 
the weekend / next week. Hopefully then I'll be in a reasonable position 
to see what needs doing from a architectural/technical point of view.


>I read sisob's UI page, I quite like what's up there, apart from:
>1 - these checkboxes just need to go
>2 - not being able to queue (related to 1 ofc ourse), but this is
>something very major for me. While the RB head UI is a mess, I kinda
>liked it because I could play directly from the lib and queue easily,
>both at the same time. A 'current playlist' view might work, however we
>should also have a 'queue' (context)menu item then.
>
Sounds sensible, I think the combination of a 'current playlist' and an 
'enqueue' context menu option should sort us out.

>3 - we need an easy search ui (first search result should be selected
>also, and pressing return should start playing it - a la xmms)
>
Yes. The search/filter box (whatever you want to call it) should 
intelligently filter both the artist and album views. So if you type in 
a word that matches an artist, it will highlight that artist in the 
artist list.

>4 - the source selector needs some way to indicate which source is
>playing 
>  
>
Well this is basically the 'current playlist' is it not? If now, we 
could highlight the appropaite souce in some way?

>I'm not going to go back into that myself though, I just wanted to touch
>the subject. The UI here would probably be very cool already.
>  
>
Glad to have you involved again!

Regards

Dave


>Cheers.
>
>sön 2003-04-06 klockan 20.02 skrev Dave Rigby:
>  
>
>>Hi rhythmbox developers,
>>
>>In case you didn't know, a numbr of people have become interested in 
>>getting involved in rhythmbox, and trying to get development going again 
>>- see the forum threads below:
>>
>>http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2599
>>http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2611
>>http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2610
>>
>>While historically there has been a lot of disagreemenet in UI, etc I'm 
>>more interested in the core features, such as net radio, system 
>>notification stuff, tag editing, etc. Discussion has been made about how 
>>to approach 'unfiying' the split, and in particular the relative states 
>>of the net-rb, rb and monkey-media HEAD branches. We were wondering if 
>>anyone could give some idea of the relative states of these three 
>>branches, in terms of:-
>>
>>1. Library backend - People have said that rb CVS has quite a mature 
>>backend, how true is this? what features does rb have over net-rb?
>>
>>2. Monkey-media - The HEAD cvs has support for a xine backend, what 
>>other changes does it have compared to the snapsot in net-rb? What 
>>changes has the snapshot in net-rb had done to it?
>>
>>I want to steer clear of the UI issue for now, but as a general point if 
>>people wanted to change the rb HEAD to an interface similar to net-rb 
>>(discounting the additional features that net-rb currently has), how 
>>difficult to you think that would be?
>>
>>While I can see from the Changelogs what files and routhly what has 
>>changed, In these points I'm interested in the general changes made, as 
>>well as changes from a technical point of view (class restructuring, etc)
>>
>>Many Thanks
>>
>>Dave Rigby
>>
>>    
>>
>
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