Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Storage based mp3 players

["Nicholas Gill (mythagel)" <mythagel tpg com au>]

> Would you be able to make the difference with someone doing
> mount /dev/hdc1 /my/windows/partition/with/mp3s ? (ie how would you
> detect that a flash player has been plugged, can hal tell you that, will
> it work without hal, ...) ?

The way that i had written my original (standalone) program is that it
queries HAL (and acts on it via gnome-volume-manager) for when a device
is plugged in. HAL then identifies the device from an XML file that
looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <!-- -*- SGML -*- -->
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
    <match key="info.bus" string="usb">
      <match key="usb.vendor_id" int="0x1332">
        <match key="usb.product_id" int="0x1325">
          <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.access_method"
type="string">storage</merge>
          <merge key="portable_audio_player.output_formats"
type="string">audio/mpeg audio/ogg</merge>
        </match>
      </match>
    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>

For my IPOS F4. This assigns device categories after identifying the
device with the usb vendor and product id's.

So i can query hal for all devices having category portable_audio_player
and determine the mount point from that.

A generic directory of mp3's i suppose could be handled in g-v-m akin to
how a camera is distinct from a directory containing photos, yet they
are both loaded with gPhoto. A problem being that there is no standard
directory for mp3 music like there is for digital camera media. And i
think scanning for all gstreamer compatible media on a device would be
too slow.

> You should be able to create several item types (item types are
> registered at runtime iirc).

Ok, cool, I'll have to look into this. But why do i have to create a new
item type? E.g. i have two identical players, if i plug them both in,
why would i need to register a new type? I can feel somewhere in my mind
that I'm missing something fundamental here - I may have to review this.

-nick