KRadio4 for KDE4.x snapshot-2009-03-05

[Ernst Martin Witte]

Name: KRadio4 for KDE4.x
Version: snapshot-2009-03-05
Type: KDE Sound Application
Depend: KDE 4.x
License: GPL
Homepage:
http://www.nocabal.de/~emw/kradio/index.html
More Info:
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=28097

Description:
 KRadio is a comfortable  KDE4 application for
internet radio (new in snapshot-2009-03-01!) and
AM/FM radio cards supported by V4L/V4L2. It has a
lot of valuable features such as RDS decoding,
pre-recording, timeshift playback, recording (wav,
mp3, ogg), PVR support, versatile alarms, LIRC
support, and much more (see below).

This snapshot is an intermediate release towards
the next beta which introduces internet radio and
DBus support. The previous beta announcement
follows.

Finally, KRadio 4.0beta1 for KDE4 is ready! This
release is basically the long awaited port to
KDE4. Additionally a few features have been added.
KRadio has now support for RDS and shortcuts.
Furthermore, the support for PVR cards is now
better documented and hopefully working. Of
course, this release comes with many additional
bug fixes.

Since the start of the KDE4 port 163 change sets
have been submitted. About 60 entries in the
ChangeLog document the fixes that have been done,
mostly additionally to the pure KDE4 porting
effort.

KRadio4 supports:

    * KDE >= 4.2
    * DBus Support (new in r701!)
    * Internet Radio (new in r694!)
    * RDS (new!)
    * Shortcuts (new!)
    * Pre-Recording - no worries any more about
starting recording too late
    * Timeshift playing
    * V4L/V4L2 radio cards (including Line-In
based cards, PCM capturing based cards and PVR
cards)
    * ALSA
    * MP3 and Ogg/Vorbis recording
    * LIRC
    * Alarms and sleep countdowns
    * Dynamic plugin library architecture

Additionally, now a FAQ is available on
http://kradio.sourceforge.net/faq.html which
hopefully already answers many questions. If you
have new ones, please let me know.

Anyway, there is still a lot work to do on KRadio.
There are still a lot of preset files in my email
in-box which have not yet been processed due to
the development downtime in the past.  Therefore,
your help is highly appreciated! It would be an
honor to welcome you as developer, translator, or
contributor in any other sense! Here are some
ideas:

    * translations
    * testing and bug reporting
    * packaging
    * source code patches
    * build system improvements
    * new plugins
    * graphics enhancements (e.g. SVG icons!)
    * improved GUI design
    * sponsoring of radio cards for feature
testing
    * ... what ever you want to contribute!

In the past weeks some people already tried out
the snapshots and gave valuable feedback and even
new translations. Without that, the improvement of
KRadio would have been much slower. Thanks a lot
everyone out there!

I hope, that this beta release now animates a
broader community for testing. Please test and
give feedback about bugs but also success!

Have fun with the new KRadio!

Best regards,

  Martin



Current Features (Verbose List):
* RDS support
* Shortcuts support
* per-Station stereo/mono forcing switch
* now with PVR (/dev/video24) support by general
purpose streaming plugin
* Pre-Recording - no longer worry about starting
recording too late: The last seconds before the
decision are captured, too
* Improved Timeshift playing - just press pause
when you get interrupted
* Active Playback: For cards that don't use the
line-in loop the sound can be captured from a
special device and played back on the sound card
* ALSA Plugin
* support for V4L and V4L2 based radio card
drivers
* MP3 and Ogg/Vorbis recording (libmp3lame and
libogg/libvorbis required)
* database with station preset files, station
search
* lirc support
* alarms (weekday specific if you wish), stations
and volume may be assigned, types: start/stop
play, start/stop recording
* sleep countdown functions
* docking menu, includes menu entries for
preferred stations
* quickbar, toolbar with buttons for preferred
stations
* icons for stations in quickbar, display, etc.
* error logging window instead of nerving
messageboxes:)
* dynamic plugin library architecture, kradio is
ready for new radio types (e.g. internet radio),
your own radio display, etc.


Changelog:
 2009-03-04 snapshot-2009-03-05-r701
- fix: Bug 2638525 (colors of standard display
config did not work)
- feature: dbus plugin
- automatically check for new plugins on startup,
incl. "do not show again" options

2009-03-01 snapshot r694
- initial support for internet radio stations
- fix: pause does not work with internet radio
stations
- fix: recording does not work 100% with internet
radio stations
- fix: enable initial lirc_client state/mode
selection
- fix: pause also does not work for active
playback
- fix: activatstation in power-onstate fails if
old station is v4l, new station is net
- netradio: support for decoding types
(mp3/ogg/auto)
- fix: Icon for InternetRadio


2009-02-22 KRadio 4.0.0beta1-r664

- Added support for station-wise stereo/mono
settings. Unfortunately, my radio card driver
seems to ignore this feature without telling it to
kradio :-(
- polish: tray icon has now indicators for all
three states: play, pause, recording
- fix: without kradio event map entry in .lircrc
file: hang/loop/freeze
- fix: exit button in stdview without icon
- FAQ: write something where RDS support can be
seen.
- FAQ: how to setup lirc, use event map!! (?)
- FAQ: item: how to compile
- fix: fixed missing reread of capabilities during
switch of V4L1/V4L2 mode
- fix: get the window hide/restore/show stuff
consistent again. It is working now with the
(stable) KDE3.5.9 Window Manager, the KDE4.3(svn)
Window Manager seems to be a bit broken currently.
- translation: added Ukrainian translation. Thanks
to Yuri Chornoivan!
- preset file for Kyiv/Ukraine

2009-02-20
- fix: canceling kradios config dialog
unnecessarily opens sound device, even if nothing
changed
- feature: improve device information on radio
device in v4l config dialog (hints for
permissions, etc)
- some tuning in alsa config mixer settings
- fixed packing of tar.bz2/gz files
- some icon changes to comply more with standard
icon sets
- fix: mute playback channel on power off worked,
but unmute at power on afterwards failed:)
- fix: removed cause of "QPainter::begin: A paint
device can only be painted by one painter at a
time"-msg appearing on some Qt versions
- fix: added some checks in shortcuts and lirc
code
- fix: c&p error in default shortcuts resulted in
shortcut ambiguity
- as long as we are not using the old style
per-plugin-about-stuff, we have the standard KDE
about dialog in place now.
- improved pause handling a lot, it is now
explicit if the system is paused or not


2009-02-19
- polish: give description for "active capture" in
config dialog... perhaps use tooltips?
- polish: provide some PVR-help as tooltips and
normal labels in v4l config and streaming config
- fix: default tab for alsa config is mixer level
settings, should be device selection
- fix: default tab for v4l is options, not devices
- fix: kglobalaccel crashes again on kradio start
 - fix: PVR mode: when recording is switched on
without switching on power before, kradio consumes
100% cpu time (50% system)
- write README.PVR for PVR users
- test streaming plugin (with /dev/urandom as
quasi emulation)
- fix: consistent use of KUrl in Streaming Plugin
- fix: many crashes in stream config possible
- fix: icon for widgets in taskbar broken
- fix: short cuts are not yet well in place
- beautify cmake output of supported features
- fix: quickbar / float does not restore size
properly (size policy has been missing in
quickbar)
- fix: icons for v4l, quickbar
- fix: rename kradio icon to kradio4 like the
application name or let kradio still be named
kradio not kradio4
- fix: docking menu titles
- fix: quickbar behaves strange after config
update, works again after moving mouse over
quickbar window
- fix: pause button crashes if temp file is not
writable
- fix: recording monitor: add makers for dB
numbers
- fix: (re-;-) enable seconds in alarm config page
- fix: set alsa buffer size to 64 kb by default
- fix: time annotation for recorded data does not
work properly (was: buffer management of meta data
in encoder.cpp was broken)
- fix: button "recording" in monitor fails if
power is off
- fix: recording monitor does not notice file name
when recording, does not notice power state
changes, etc...
- fix: applying config changes stops recording
monitor updates (was: bug in prerecording buffer
handling caused stop of capture)
- fix: recording causes buffer overflows (was
caused by broken recording directory extration in
config dialog)
- fix: some states are not stored in kradiorc,
e.g. current station
- fix: standard view does not correlate frequency
with stations correctly (fixed in v4lradio
systematically)
- fix: Config Dialog seems to be parent for many
other widgets / main window (something to do with
"group leader window" ? see KWindowInfo)
- fix: detect strange frequency range settings and
reset to default. might be caused by misbehaving
radio card
- fix: storing of window positions seems not to
work (hide/show stuff)
- fix: why is v4l2 not detected if available?
- fix: v4l2 support always enabled, selectable
explicitly by GUI radio buttons
- add reset button for config dialog
- option for display window type (entry in taskbar
or toolbar window)
- 32kHz support

2009-02-15
- Initial version of RDS support, tested with
dummy data since my card does not have RDS
support. Currently, station scan and the standard
gui and systray icon support RDS Station Names and
RDS Radio Text.
- Initial shortcuts support

2009-02-08                         
   After a long time of silence, this is an
initial port
   to KDE4. It is not intended for productive use,
   however for developers who want to contribute
   fixes/patches and brave users who want to 
   report excessive errors ;-). Please test and 
   report problems and patches!