Ampache service, was: Re: extragear/multimedia/amarok/src

[Bart Cerneels]

On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 10:09 AM, Nikolaj Hald Nielsen
<nhnfreespirit at gmail.com> wrote:
> What I was responding to was mainly this:
>
>
>  >  I think it's helpful to think of Services and Collections as to
>  >  separate things with different goals. A service is internet content
>  >  that is accessible but not fully integrated in Amarok. The full
>  >  integrated experience is reserved for Collections, with statistics,
>  >  querying and such, which are supposed to implement all that "added
>  >  value". As anyone who tried implementing a collection would agree, it
>  >  is hard work to create a "complete" Collection.
>
>  which in my mind ( I might be reading it wrong ) sounded like an
>  argument for creating a technical distinction between services and
>  collections. I think this would be a very bad idea as most full
>  collections will likely start life as "simple" services and then
>  expand in features until they reach "full collection" status. I am
>  very against adding technical roadblocks to this process. This will
>  allow stuff to evolve over time which I think is very important. Take
>  Mp3Tunes for instance. Right now, the underlying collection is very
>  basic, but if we launch Amarok 2.0 with their service integrated as
>  well as we can ( shameless plug for the up and downloading project )
>  they might be willing to work with us on their API allowing us to
>  mature it enough that the content from here could be added to dynamic
>  playlists later on.
>
>  So to sum up, Services and collections are the same things. From a
>  collection point of view, some just support more features than others.
>
I'll repeat myself w.r.t. my reply to markey so I don't break up the thread:

It isn't necessary to derive Service from something else then
Collection, a.k.a. a technical change. Code reuse needs to be
encouraged. And the "migration to full Collection" is very valid.
But we do need to separate the two in our heads, and then decide if we want that
particular case presented to the user as either collection or service
(notice the lack of capitals to describe the concept).
So I guess I'm asking that we change our perspective to a user point
of view (see Celeste Paul's blog, usablility, user profile) when
deciding weather something is a service or a collection. As we know,
there are little or no technical differences.

There is also the option to let the user decide. Some possible UI sollutions:
* In the Internet Services pane of amarok's configuration dialog the
user can select in what browser the Ampache service is shown.
* Above the CollectionBrowser, next to the group by button, we'll put
small buttons with icons representing the different available
(running) Collections. The ServiceCollections that are active will be
disabled by default. The state of these buttons, should be saved
between sessions, offering a way to tell Amarok which Services have to
be loaded on startup: button enabled means load that Collection or
service by default.

Bart