SoC Media Devices Collection Draft 2

[Ian Monroe]

On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 10:49 PM, Alejandro Wainzinger
<aikawarazuni at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

There's already a podcast collection thing. Making it work nicely with
media devices is something that needs to be done though.

> 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.
>

Good stuff. :)

Ian