SoC Media Devices Collection Draft 2

[Alejandro Wainzinger]

Ok, here goes draft 2 after talking to lfranchi, jefferai, sebr, hydrogen et
al.  I haven't included a roadmap yet since I want to make sure that the
goals are complete and in good detail for the proposal, but I'll appreciate
help on scoping out about how long each step might take.

Draft 2:

Project Topic: Media Devices as a Collection Provider

Summary:

Good media device support is paramount to the success of Amarok 2, since
these devices are everywhere and sometimes used as the sole location for a
music collection.  Amarok developers have echoed a strong agreement to this
desperate need.  Currently the three most popular devices are the iPod, MTP
devices, and generic devices, and it is these for which I plan to add
support.

Project:

The solid backend has already been built, but currently Amarok is not using
it.  My job will involve porting the three device types to the new solid
backend, and building the frontend for basic operations such as connecting,
transferring and deleting songs, and playing directly off of the media
device.  This also means bringing the code up to speed with qt4 wherever
possible.

I will be focusing on adding excellent iPod support, but will get basic
functionality out of the three mentioned device types.  iPod loading in
particular was unnecessarily slow in Amarok 1.4, so I will work on
optimizing the code for the reading of the database.  The issues that users
currently experience with the iTunes lockfile and sysinfo-extended on newer
iPods will be addressed so that the user does not have to deal with them.  I
will also be adding features that iTunes has for the iPods which add to
their value.  This includes synchronisation of the iPod with Amarok's
existing collection, and offloading playcount of songs for sending updates
to last.fm.  Album cover synchronisation will also be implemented.

I will also implement a device collection to make the frontend work with the
already-existing backend for displaying collections, and extending it to
work with podcasts.

Background:

I'm a Computer Science undergraduate student at the University of California
Santa Cruz in the western United States, though I am Argentine-born.  Amarok
would be my first big project, but I am familiar with C++.  I'm learning Qt,
and am willing to learn about kdelibs.

I'm an avid user of KDE and Amarok and have been wanting to contribute for a
while.  I feel the most passionate about the iPod since it's a big part of
my daily life, and I know that many others would benefit from good media
device support.
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