Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Helping with ipod support

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Mon, 2004-07-19 at 15:32 +0200, David Zeuthen wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2004 at 11:12:19PM +0200, Christophe Fergeau wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > With respect to iPod reading, the archive at rhythmbox-
> > devel gnome org--2004/rhythmbox--main--0.9 is the most up to date to my
> > knowledge. I'll probably work a bit on it soon to remove some of the HAL
> > code since most of it has been integrated in gnome-vfs 2.7 so it should
> > no longer be necessary to have so much HAL specific code in rhythmbox.
> > 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I haven't really looked at the HAL code in rhythmbox yet, is it in
> CVS?. However, I plan to, at some point, since I want to go ahead and
> add support for a lot of other players, e.g. the standard grey-market
> usb storage things that can play the mp3/wma/whatever files you drop
> in their directory.
> 
> To do so, I need to add a few things in HAL (properties that are list
> of things, e.g. audio formats supported by the player) to do this in a
> nice way. Basically I'm still inclined to write a patch to rhythmbox
> that uses the HAL properties I talked about earlier, basically these
> 
>  <deviceinfo version="0.2">
>    <device>
>      <match key="info.bus" string="usb">
>        <match key="usb.vendor_id" int="0x066f">
>          <match key="usb.product_id" int="0x8000">
>            <merge key="info.category" type="string">portable_audio_player</merge>
>            <merge key="info.capabilities" type="string">portable_audio_player</merge>
>            <merge key="portable_audio_player.output" type="string">mp3 wma</merge>
>            <merge key="portable_audio_player.input" type="string">wav</merge>
>            <merge key="portable_audio_player.localdb" type="bool">false</merge>
>          </match>
>        </match>
>      </match>
>    </device>
>  </deviceinfo>
> 
> such that Rhythmbox can read these which gives extra information,
> basically allowing you to transcode your ogg content to your mp3-only
> player [1] as I wrote about earlier on this mailing list.

You'd need to write your own source list to handle those.

> However, and this is my point, I can't see how the HAL integration in
> gnome-vfs will help, all that code does is just another way of
> querying what volumes you have on your system - and gnome-vfs doesn't
> automount and the user may not run an automounting daemon, so
> rhythmbox will probably still need to mount(1) the volume. [2]
> 
> I hope that you guys are interested in having support for portable
> audio players this way if HAL is used. Thoughts?
> 
> Cheers,
> David
> 
> [1] : OK, you'll lose some quality, but if one is really concerned
> about quality (personally I can't tell the difference, but I may just
> be imparaired :-), one will have his collection of music in a format
> that matches one's portable audio player. And with transcoding, "It
> just works" which I think is in line with the GNOME desktop :-)

I would still make that an option.

> [2] : Oh, and gnome-vfs gives you a nice logo for your portable music
> player (if HAL has tagged the device as one), but that is, so far,
> just eyecandy :-).

Rhythmbox doesn't do the automounting, even with the HAL code, it's not
its job... We only use HAL to tell us if it's mounted, and where it's
mounted.

---
Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net> 
The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg
behind her, like a dog at a lamppost.