Amarok Digest, Vol 2, Issue 15

[Bradley Pesicka]

Nikolaj Hald Nielsen wrote:

>While I agree that a scriptable music store/site interface would be really
>nice, there are a few reasons I will not work directly towards this. At
>least not for the time being.
>
>Firstly, it is my experience that trying to build a generic framework from
>scratch is a very hard thing to do. I belive it works much better to
>implement one scenario, use the best parts of that code for the next one and
>then over a few itterations pick out the code that is actually good enough
>to form the basis of a framework. Besides, much of the back end work needed
>for this feature should readily lend itself to a more generic aproach later
>on.
>  
>
I completely understand.

>Secondly, (and this is most likely just a sign of my ignorance) I don't know
>any oter music stores that offers as comprehensive preview features as
>Magnatune. They have gone out of their way to make their entire catalog
>available through an xml file on their site. This makes it very easy to
>actually get the data needed for a good integrated experience based on
>previewing their music.
>  
>
Three of the ones I use:
http://www.dance-industries.com
http://www.ctgmusic.com/
http://music.download.com/
All the music available at each of these is free downloads (not just 
streaming previews).  I would just like to be able to access it from 
inside amarok.  None of it uses XML or easily exposes the underlying 
data, but that is not really a problem.

>Finally, I need to keep it simple, at least at this stage. I am still trying
>to get fammiliar with the amaroK code, and if I expand the project too much
>too soon, I will drown in work and loose interest  :-) 
>  
>
I'm not too familiar with the code myself.  That's why I would rather 
work with a script than the amarok code.

Nikolaj Hald Nielsen also wrote:

>Please let me know what you think.
>
>- Nikolaj
>
Sure. I think it's awesome.  However, it would be nice if the browser 
did the snapping thing that the playlist/context browser did.  Also, you 
may consider allowing purchase of the songs directly in amarok.

The patch could have worked better, but I think some of the problem I 
had was my fault (I didn't use the --binary switch for patch), so I had 
to modify it by hand, but it was not that big of a problem.

Sure. I think it's awesome.  However, it would be nice if the browser 
did the snapping thing that the playlist/context browser did.

>The code is not very well integrated at the moment but I am talking to the
>masterminds of the "Dynamic Collections" stuff about how this could be made
>a plugin to that. Also I am using a rather slow DOM parser at the moment,
>but I am working on a SAX2 one.
>  
>
Not sure how this would work, mostly because I can't seem to get the 
patch installed for the dynamic collections.  Probably not using the 
correct revision, or something.

Overall though, this is really cool.  I look forward to where this ends 
up going.