Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Support for flash based mp3 players

[christey csee wvu edu]

>> So are we talking about portable players that show up as USB mass
>> storage devices like iRivers, or the kind that use their own weird
>> filesystem and transfer protocol?
>
> Sorry, Brain malfunction, i had intended to say usb flash based players,
> particularly those that are flash storage based without internal DBs.

Sorry, I should have been clearer.  There are two major types of USB flash
based players: those that are Mass Storage devices and those that aren't. 
If it is, then Linux treats it like any other USB disk drive, and
transferring files to it is much simpler.  If it isn't, you'll have to
reverse engineer its transfer protocol to get files on and off it.  (In
the case of Iriver, you can replace the firmware to turn one type into the
other.)  If you have to do this, it would be best to write it as a
gnome-vfs plugin, so we can at least treat it as a filesystem. (see Sri's
post about his gnome-vfs driver for non-Mass Storage Irivers)

> Flash based players are used differently. They are used to take some
> selection of a collection of music portably with you. I don't need 8
> days of music if i'm only listening to it on the train in the morning.
> In that case, i'm probably only going to need a CD or two worth of music
> from my collection, and the selection is probably going to change daily.

I can see how the library / browser interface would be overkill if it only
holds 20 songs.  Perhaps a flat list of filenames would be better when
viewing a source that doesn't have it's own database.  It would definitely
be faster too, as you wouldn't have to extract the metadata.  Would this
fit your definition of "playlist"?  I would still suggest implementing it
as a source to avoid confusion with Rhythmbox's definition of playlists.