Full time on Amarok

[Maximilian Kossick]

On Tuesday 21 August 2007, Nikolaj Hald Nielsen 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> Let me hear what you think!

Here is a short list of features which are essential for Amarok 2.0 in my 
opinion:
-Smart/Dynamic playlists (please note: QueryMaker is *not* feature complete 
yet, so we'll have to add code there when porting our old smart playlist 
code)
-media devices, at least ipod + mtp (actually, the ipod media device is the 
only essential one imo, because of the huge market share, but we already have 
code for MTP devices thanks to Jeff)
-podcasts
-last.fm (works, but there is no applet yet)
-streams (works i think)
-editing track metadata. i've written some code for it, but it uses a 
KFileMetaInfo at the moment. I have a plug-in for KFileMetaInfo which allows 
writing of ID3 tags, but i'm not sure yet if we want to depend on KDE in this 
case, because then we'd have less control over taglib. It would certainly be 
convenient :) .
-fixing the engines/engine controls: I noticed some strange behaviour at the 
end of a song. There seems to be a lot of silence. And we should make sure 
that crossfading/gapless playback works. Additionally, I added a few new 
methods to the engine interface, but only the phonon engine uses them at the 
moment.

Some feature which won't be implemented for Amarok 2.0 (at least not by me, 
because I consider them only "nice to have"):
-labels
-dynamic collection (i'll leave the code in, but won't make any effort porting 
the device plug-ins)

Max
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