[Rhythmbox-devel] Various Suggestions

[Mark Aitchison <M Aitchison cyberXpress co nz>]

I have to confess I'm not using the latest version of rhythmbox (I 
promise I'll upgrade!), so forgive me if some of these are already 
sorted out...

1. I'd love to have included in the list of sources at the left 
soundcard inputs (keeping in mind there may be more than one soundcard 
on the system), and the ability to associate various icons with the 
inputs (e.g. if my record player or stereo system is plugged into a 
particular input on a particular card, I'd like to have a way to enter 
its photo into the system).

2. Related to that, I'd like to be able to tell rhythmbox to execute 
user-supplied scripts (could even be bash or perl?) that look for (say) 
USB memory sticks being exported from given computers that I can mount, 
see if they contain music, then add an icon for it on the left and treat 
it a lot like (say) an ipod inserted locally and appearing as a 
removable filesystem that has music files.

3. When a CD is inserted and rhythmbox starts up, it takes a long time 
to give a clue that it is trying to play the CD... could it display 
something as soon as possible that shows what it is doing, perhaps even 
the type of disc that has been found, and avoid doing less important 
things (like checking the library for updates or whatever) until much later?

4. I see others have commented on the lack of "composer" column/tag... I 
also see Windows Media Player has lots and lots of possible 
fields/columns (e.g. Conductor, Contributing Artist, Keywords, etc)... 
could (is??) the list of keywords/column headings be taken from a 
user-editable file? Could a catch-all "keywords" option be added? When 
there are soloists, and an orchestra name and a conductor, as well as a 
composer (and perhaps arranger), I see a variety of ways people 
currently store such information... there are a few "standards" 
sometimes used, but a little bit of logic should be able to do a 
reasonable job in guessing what is what often enough to make it feasible 
to implement "virtual sub-fields" for the likes of composer or pianist - 
that accept values and store them packed into other tags if absolutely 
necessary - or in tags of their own; and allow searches for them that 
look at several fields where they may be, even if it errs on the side of 
including more than it should.

5. Shared music sources don't have much in the way of diagnostics to say 
what it is trying to do and what the reason might be for not finding any 
music (in my old version 0.12.6 anyway). Is that easy to fix?

Mark Aitchison