GSoC proposal: Multilevel playlist sorting with configuration interface

[Nikolaj Hald Nielsen]

I guess I had better comment on this as it is based on my project idea. :-)

Overall I think it is a good proposal. I agree with eean that the
timeline needs some more details and everyone likes pretty pictures!
:-)

About the implementation ideas... First of all, I think that at an
implementation level, sorting, grouping and layouts should be kept
completely separate. They are really orthogonal as far as the code is
concerned, and it makes sense to keep it that way. I also think it
makes sense to be able to configure each one individually, even if we
end up with aggregate configuration options on top of this that
affects more than one of them.  This also means that your timline
should include your estimates for how long each of the overall tasks,
"multilevel sorting ( the basics )", "multilevel sorting config gui",
"configurable grouping", "tying it all together", etc will take.

The multilevel sorting + gui uis what is going to take the msot time.
Configurable grouping should be extremely simple to do as there is a
single function determining if 2 tracks are in the same group or not.

As far as the "tying it all together" part, I would propose that you
base this in the amarok urls, in much the same way that a "navigation"
url can select any or all of browser/sub browser, sorting mode and
filter, a playlist view url could select any or all of sorting mode,
grouping mode, layout and possible filter ( dunno if that last one
makes much sense... ). I don't think these urls need to show up in the
bookmark manager, but they could be used in a custom widget to select
pre defined playlist "views"

As for sorting gui,  I like the idea of a small ribbon at the top as
that is closesr to what people are used to, even though it is not the
same. It should also be possible to reverse the sorting order of a
level ( put something about that in your proposal ). With the ribbon,
this could, for instance, be done just by clicking or double clicking
or something on a level.

Of course I am biased as hell, but I think this project is quite
important as it would give the Amarok 2 playlist all the
configurability that some people still miss from 1.4.x while at the
same time taking it miles beyond anything else out there.

- Nikolaj

On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 6:51 PM, Teo Mrnjavac <teo.mrnjavac at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The timeline isn't very detailed, try to break up the tasks into its
>> components some and create a timeline from that. While this task is a
>> decent sized one, I'm not sure its a fulltime-whole-summer sized task.
>> A good timeline may show otherwise.
>>
>> Some drawings of the proposals might be helpful.
>>
>> Also I'm always suspicious of European students and their lack of a
>> real summer break. :) So what is your summer schedule like.
>>
> Actually I'm graduating this year so I either have a real summer break
> for the first time in years (until october when the postgraduate
> course classes start) or if the graduation slips to september I have a
> summer break during which I only finish the thesis which is already
> half done, so no worries there. Exams are during June but by that time
> I should have at most 2 exams left to do. That's also the reason why I
> would start as soon as I know I'm accepted, to allow me to take it
> easy during exams.
> I'll update the document with a more detailed timeline.
> Cheers
> Teo
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