KAudioCreator

[Sebastian Trueg]

On Monday 06 May 2002 17:27, Benjamin Meyer wrote:
>   I am the author of KAudioCreator.  I recently moved to a new state,
> started a new job (Ever heard of the Zaurus :-) and am getting married this
> weekend so you can probably guess that I haven't had time to read the list
> and I simply posted a move request to the list here a little while ago not
> expecting any objection:
>
> http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=101923691909626&w=2
>
>   Little did I know about the debate that was raging.  As for my opinion I
> agree very much that the the CD burning software tools should be
> consolidated into one simple clean application to burn cd's.
>   It only took me 2 weeks to write KAudioCreator.  This was with testing by
> myself on several hundred Cd's, user interface testing (How many apps can
> you say have actually had user interface testing?) by a number of people,
> debugging etc.  KAudioCreator is not much more then a frontend to a number
> of other tools include the audiocd:// ioslave (I am reusing code and not
> duplicating I should point out), encoders and rippers.  In face I was
> working together with Rik (audiocd io slave developer) to develop a cddb
> library to even further share code between my app, audiocd:// the CD player
> and all of the CD applications.  (This was slowed to my real life getting
> in the way as stated above)
>
>   What is the point of a CD burner application?  It is to burn audio and
> data Cd's.  Some can do more, some can do less.
>   What is the point of a CD ripper application?  It is to rip audio from a
> CD and encode it into an audio format. (be it wav, mp3 or something else).
> What do these two have in common?  Other then accessing a CD drive and
> using cddb not much.  And in both of those cases (CD accessing and cddb) a
> library was/is being developed to reduce overhead.
>

I also wrote a cddb class for K3b since your library seemed not ready yet (I 
took a look at that one in kdenonbeta). I support http, proxy, cddbp and 
local directories. Perhaps we could join the classes...

> For those who have used KAudioCreator know what it does and appreciate what
> it does (I get many thank you letters).  For those that do not know or have
> never actually used it you can go to the webpage here:
> http://www.csh.rit.edu/~benjamin/desktop/programs/kaudiocreator/
> or see pretty screenshots here:
> http://www.csh.rit.edu/~benjamin/desktop/programs/kaudiocreator/screenshots
>.html
>
> KAudioCreator fills a need that audio rippers users want from a kde
> application.  audiocd:// will encode on the fly, but doesn't give you any
> flexability or control over it.  KAudioCreator extends the ioslave to give
> you job control (i.e. rip 30 Cd's before going to bed with your 150X CD
> drive and then let the job control encode them all night).  It allows you
> to set the encoder up exactly as you would like (want to test out that new
> lame option? sure!), and edit the audio tags for all of the songs. 
> KAudioCreator does all of this and more in a very clean and simply user
> interface.  Moving a tool like this into a CD burner would make users
> wonder why in the would it is there.
>

why that? A cd burner also copies cds. Why not copy audio cds to disk?

> As far as the cdburner applications are concerned yes they need to
> consolidate into 1 working app (None of them work on my SCSI 2x 7 year old
> nothing special about it CD burner for the record, but the Gnome one does
> annoyingly enough), but as far as CD ripper application as concerned we did
> consolidate.  audiocd:// is the lower level for KAudioCreator and work is
> being done to further reduce the one overlap between these two (cddb).
>

In my oppinion there should be created some ripping lib that is used by the 
audiocd slave and the ripping apps since the slave is not flexible enuough. 
One has no control over the cddb entry that will be selected. Inexact entries 
are dropped and you cannot control the mp3- or ogg-tags.

> Someone mentioned that the burners can rip or something like that.  If that
> is true then I would really have to request that the name of the app is
> either changed to "CdTool" or much more appropriate the ripping aspect of
> the application is removed.  I would much rather prefer having a rock solid
> 1.0 simple CD burning application then a every feature under the sun kinda
> works application.  Burning a bad CD costs me $$$ (although not as much as
> back in the day when they were $10 per disk, but still it is a bad taste in
> my mouth).  A Cd burning application should burn the CD in a clean, simple
> way. Why do you think windows people still pirate EasyCDCreator 3.00b,
> because it just works and doesn't try to be the end all of cd utilities.
>
> Although Cd burning and Cd ripping are similar (At a _very_ base level) I
> do not feel that incorporating KAudioCreator into a Cd Burning application
> is justified at all.  Just think of the confusion when the cd burning
> application is required to make mp3's.
>
> KAudioCreator concentrates one one aspect of Cd's, ripping  Cd burning
> applications should concentrate on the burning aspect.  They are very
> different aspects and should be kept separated.  KAudioCreator gives the
> user flexability without overwhelming the user and is ready for release
> today and so I ask again that KAudioCreator and the audiocd:// ioslave be
> moved into kdemultimedia so that we can continue development on the common
> cddb library (the CD player is already in there so it doesn't need to be
> moved).
>

I see no reason for not having an all-in-one-app. So the user needs to get 
used to only one ui.


Cheers,
Sebastian Trueg

> -Benjamin Meyer
>
> P.S. I expect to get back to development in June after the honeymoon.
>
> P.P.S I am not signed to the kde-core-devel list right now so please reply
> to all so I can get the responses.