Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] A thought for the future...

[James Kahn <james liet net>]

On Mon, 2003-07-14 at 12:15, Douglas McMorris wrote:
> This is by no means something to be considered for the next stable
> release, but i think it would be nice to improve integration with
> nautilus and the desktop in general.
> 
> If we want Rhythmbox to be THE gnome music player, then it would be nice
> to have a way of playing audio files without adding them to the library.
> 
> Heres my idea for how this could be done.  First of all, I think that
> having a small view, similar to the one itunes, wmp, and others have
> would be nice.  It would also work well for album covers and possibly
> goom (see attachment).  the way i invision this working is that if you
> launch a file from nautilus it opens up the small view and plays the
> file... what the user expects to happen (imo if its registered for audio
> files).  The file starts playing and they are asked if they would like
> to add this file to the library (doesn't ask if its already added) and
> that dialog would have a checkbox to always add and not ask again, or to
> never add and not ask again (something like "remember my decision"). 
> There could also be a menu item or a toolbar button that would appear in
> the situation.

I like the idea.  I would prefer it if the file is automagically added
to the library and then played.  Like you said, that's long term...

> It occurs to me that most of the code complexity in rb is the library
> its self which (with the way we use it) is basically a dumbed down
> database.  it seems like using a more mature library for doing a
> databased approach would do a lot for us:
> 
> 1.  dump a lot of the complexity into prove code that we aren't having
> to maintain
> 
> 2.  speed up the speed of queries
> 
> 3.  make it possible to have almost any imaginable for of query. 
> multiply genres, albums, or artist selected, search for a title with in
> a certain genre.  things we already want to do with smartplaylists and
> would leave the door open for tons of ideas later.

I'm not sure how far abstracted from the playing functionality the
library code is, others seem to indicate they are quite closely
intertwined.  If they're not.. ignore me.  I think first we need to
separate the two, and build clean interfaces between them so we can work
on improving the library and player functionality separately.  Perhaps
then we could try different ways of storing the data and compare
performance.  Common sense, I know - but someone has to say it =P.

> one last thing.
> 
> 
> Something badly needs to be done to the documentation work on the code. 
> i tried learning the code base a while back, but quickly got discouraged
> b/c i had no idea what sections were doing and there was no
> documentation on what was going on either.
> 
> I've been following rb for a while and it seems like there have been 2
> spurts of interest, hacking a new UI... then a lack of any activity for
> a while.  look at the changelog no commits in almost a month.  it seems
> to me that most of this is b/c of the lack of good code doc work. 
> whatever we do from the point on needs to be well documented or this
> project will live only as long as those who wrote the code are
> interested.

I agree there.  RB is so comment-free it's scary.  I thought that the
difficulty I am having understanding the code base was because of my
lack of experience, rather than lack of comments - comments would help a
hell of a lot.  Can someone (Colin?) that knows the codebase really well
give rhythmbox-devel a quick rundown on how everything relates to each
other, to help new hackers?

> please understand that none of this is intended as a flame.  i am
> personally looking forward to spending some time hacking on rb my self,
> currently i don't understand the codebase so i'm pretty much useless
> right now.
> 
> let me know what you think... i mostly want to stir discussion and get
> ideas out.
> 
> i think the biggest thing rb is lacking as this point is a concise
> direction and thats something that needs to be discussed and nailed down
> (IMHO)

At the moment rb is lacking more than direction, IMHO - it needs a good
team and leadership.  There seems to be a lot of interest in where it is
heading on the mailing list, but no real teamwork or roadmap.

I think that a list of milestones needs to be compiled so that people
know what to hack on.  The TODO file seems outdated compared to the
ideas that have been discussed on the mailing list.

Cheers,
James.

-- 
James Kahn <james@liet.net>