GSOC proposal critical feedback

Mon Apr 29 14:36:57 UTC 2013

 Sure,

*           **Proposal for Google Summer of Code - 2013 to KDE community
(Amarok)*

*Student: *Hardik Dhimmar

*Email Address: *dhimmarhardik at gmail.com

*Freenode IRC Nick: *ZOoZOo

*IM Message and Username*: GTalk - dhimmarhardik**

*Institute:* Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication
Technology (DA-IICT)

*Time zone:* Indian Standard Time (IST) [UTC + 05:30]

*Location (City, State, Country)**:* Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India.

*Proposal Title:*

            *Unified CUE File and Audiobook support in Amarok.***

*Brief Description:*

                        Amarok is a music player which has a very
user-friendly interface and uses cue sheets which specifies track length
and name. The aim of this proposal is to how I would go about in
implementing Unified cue file and an audiobook chapter support feature in
amarok.

*Motivation for project:*

                        Nowadays users are fond of hearing the book in an
audio file and play music from local collection. In daily life, users are
distracted with many other activities and tend to close the program or
hibernate it, So we should provide a facility to user which can help
him/her navigate in audiobook(via chapters) and resume it from where he/she
had stopped before. Amarok does not provides the support for cue files for
local collection and also does not allow viewing information of chapter
metadata for audiobooks. This is one of the important feature that should
be provided to make amarok one of the best music player.

*Implementation Detail: *

            I intend to implement two main features for Amarok:

Ø  Cue-sheet support for local collection and also in Ums collection.

Ø  Provide a TagLib extension which helps in extracting information of
chapter metadata for audiobooks.

            I have gone through amarok and found that embedded cue works
for the music files but not for the files present in the local collection.
I have studied the bug:

*Bug 187587:  Cue sheet not working for files in collection (Very much
similar to my project).*

            It provides us the information about implementing the embedded
cue sheet support for local collection (also in Ums collection).

There would be a metadata file which stores the chapter information of an
audio book. This would help me to implement a class in taglib which
extracts the chapter metadata and design a user interface which provides
the facility to navigate through different chapters.

            Due to my recent final semester exams and submission of ongoing
projects, I could not contribute much to amarok. I would like to work and
resolve following list of bugs:

Bugs that I observed:

*Bug Id:* *318790* - Local collection not updating if set directly to C:\
[Windows] <https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=318790>

*Bug Id:* *319015* – Regarding displaying overall time of a song in a
playlist.

Bugs related to my project:

            *Bug Id:* *187587* - cue sheet not working for files in
collection.

            *Bug Id:* *240409* - Support for chapter navigation in M4B
files.

            *Bug Id:* *286089* - failure to read the cue when spaces and
other special characters

                                           in the name of the file.

*Bug Id:* *233283* - Bumpy song transitions when listening to cuesheeted
music.

*Tentative Timeline:*

            Before 25th May:  Implement the support for Bollywood(Hindi
Film Industry) song’s lyrics and try to solve the bugs that I reported and
are related to my project, which in turn helps me to understand the source
code and get me familiarize with amarok.

            May28-June16: (Research phase) Understand the implementation of
cue-sheeted music and how would I go about implementing the chapters
feature in audiobook in amarok.

June17-July20: (Persistence phase) Implement the cue-sheeted music and
chapter-enabled audiobooks for local collection before commencement of my
next semester.

July20-August2 :( Mid-Term Evaluations) Evaluation of my work till now.
Getting mentor advice and get the direction on how to go about further.

August2-August18: (Solving Bugs) Solve the bugs and implement other
features if needed as suggested by the mentor.

August18-September1 :( Integration Phase) Testing the implemented feature
and test other modules which are related to it.

September2- September8 :( Review process) Reviewing the whole code and make
the product deployable.

September8- September15 :( Documentation Phase) Making necessary documents
as required for understanding my work.

After September15: Discussing with mentor about the final submission and
evaluation of code and talk about what other features we can add to make
even better amarok.

*Q: Do you have other obligations in the GSoC period (school, work,
vacation, etc.)? Please note that we expect the Summer of Code to be a
full-time, 40-hr a week occupation. It is important to be clear and upfront
about other commitments that you may have during that time**.*

            I am doing research internship from 13th may to 29th June which
would take 1 hour a day dedication i.e. 7 hours a week. I can dedicate the
following time for GSOC:

28th may-30th June: 6 hours a day i.e. 6*7=42 hours/week

5th July- 28th July: 7 hours a day i.e. 7*7=49 hours/week

As next semester commences. I intend to devote more time on weekends to
keep up with the project.

>From 28th July:

Weekdays: 4-5 hours a day i.e. 5*5=   25 hours

Weekend: 8 hours a day i.e. 8*2=        *16 hours *

                                                                        41
hours/week

*About me (Let us know who you are!):*

            I am Hardik Dhimmar pursuing bachelor’s degree (presently
in 3rdyear) from Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and
Communication
Technology (DA-IICT). I am very eager to contribute to open source
community.

            I have decent understanding of amarok and its source code. I
have already built its source code and played with it (make changes in the
function) to know the impact of it on amarok music player. Following are
the skills which will help me to pursue the project:

Languages Known

C,C++,Java, Python(basic), PyOpenGL

Operating Systems

Arch Linux, Ubuntu(11.04 and later),Linux Mint Windows: XP,7 and 8

Web Knowledge

HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Ajax

*Why should you select me?*

            I don’t have too much contribution towards open source till now
but have the required skills to complete the project. I have developed a
full working website for a school located in Ahmedabad (in Gujarat, India)
according to Software Engineering principals(*making proposal, SRS
{Software Requirement Specification}, SDS {Software Design Specification},
Test cases and necessary documents).* This provided me with the experience
of how to go along with the project and what difficulties are faced during
the path of final delivering of the project.

            I have learnt and applied necessary programming techniques
needed for the project:

Ø  Multithreading (Used in Kthread and Pthread) and Memory Management, C++,
QtCreator, MySQL (Used in School Database).

I have been lately working on my ongoing college projects so couldn’t
contribute much to open source development:

Ø  Website: Online debate website.

Ø  Computer Graphics: A hierarchical model animation in PyOpenGL.

Ø  Software Engineering: A website for Divine Child International School.

Ø  Operating System: *Disk Cache Scheduling**-* Implemented a Kernel level
thread and also made a basic system call.

             Now I am ready to implement my thoughts and in the upcoming
days, I will submit my implemented feature in amarok by 25th may.

*I have submitted the following bugs in amarok:*

Description

Link

Regarding Local collection update

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=318790

For Video player(not been able to close) used by amarok

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=318813

Audio file with different extension is not displaying overall time of a
song.

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=319015

On 29 April 2013 13:51, Myriam Schweingruber <myriam at kde.org> wrote:

> Hi Harsh
>
> On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 10:09 AM, HARDIK DHIMMAR
> <dhimmarhardik at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >     Due to my ongoing project submissions and final end semester exams, I
> > couldn't present my Gsoc proposal before. Please Look at the attached
> > proposal. Any Critical feedback would be helpful.
> >
> > Unified CUE File and Audiobook Chapter Support in Amarok
>
> Thank you for the submission, but could you please paste it as text in
> the mail directly? That would allow us to comment on it
>
>
> Regards, Myriam
>
> --
> Proud member of the Amarok and KDE Community
> Protect your freedom and join the Fellowship of FSFE:
> http://www.fsfe.org
> Please don't send me proprietary file formats,
> use ISO standard ODF instead (ISO/IEC 26300)
> _______________________________________________
> Amarok-devel mailing list
> Amarok-devel at kde.org
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/amarok-devel
>
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