Full time on Amarok

[Ian Monroe]

On 8/21/07, Nikolaj Hald Nielsen <nhnfreespirit at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi guys!
>
> I will start working for Magnatune soon (sept. 1st) and my first real
> task, besides integrating the new subscription stuff into, is getting
> Amarok 2.0 out the door, on Linux as well as Windows and Mac.
>
> I know, and this has been discussed quite a bit recently recently,
> that there is still a _lot_ of work to do. That is why I would like
> input from the rest of the crew about which areas I should spend some
> time on, once the service stuff is somewhat stable. I do not want to
> step on anyones toes by hijacking their favorite projects, so the
> suggestions below are just that, suggestions. Please add your comments
> and any items I have not thought about.
>
>
> The following are a list of, what I see as, high priority items ( I am
> most likely missing about a hundred ):
>
>
> 1. The playlist - This one seems to need quite a bit of work yet. I
> have to admit, I did not follow the discussion about not using the
> standard model/view stuff too closely, but switching from that seems
> to have set back the playlist quite a bit. If all we gain by switching
> from this is the ability to do inline editing of items, I would
> strongly suggest that we forgo this for the 2.0 release and pick it up
> later in the 2.x series. Another idea I had was to, in the interest of
> getting stuff out the door, do a simple playlist view more in the
> style of the 1.4.x one, just to have something working.

I plan on working on getting the details of the playlist worked out
over the course. Editing, general layout, they aren't big tasks
really.

One thing that I didn't get to but I wanted to at least start on this
summer was Dynamic Playlists.

> 2. Popupdropper or another solution to dragging across the context view.
>
> 3. General interface cleanup. Maybe just me, but I still don't really
> like the toolbar, and there are some other sticky points still.

Indeed.

> 4. Plasma stuff!! :-) Applets, engines, layout....
>
>
> I also really thing that we should clearly define what features are
> essential for the 2.0 release and focus our efforts on these. I know
> this will most likely mean that not everyone will get their pet
> project in the first release, but I think it is worth it to stick with
> the release often, release early philosophy.

The earliest we can release is in January (October is likely going to
be a "technology platform" release or something according to Troy),
and I think we should make it a beta. We still have time. But in
general our primary goal should be not losing functionality from
Amarok 1.4 not adding new stuff (for instance I think its shame that
CD ripping hasn't happened yet). So I guess I agree with you!

> Let me hear what you think!

Having someone working 8/hours on Amarok could really change things.
:) There's really a lot a lot of work that needs to be done in
relation to porting things to Meta::Track.  Also helping Bart with the
PlaylistBrowser.

This actually relevant to the Windows port as well, Hydrogen was
always complaining about playlist.cpp. I managed to remove the
ContextBrowser and the CollectionBrowser, but there were too many
parts of Amarok depending on playlist.cpp that I didn't want to just
remove it all wholesale without fixing them.

Ian Monroe