QZeitgeist and Phonon

[Trever Fischer]

> On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 6:58 PM, Trever Fischer
> <tdfischer at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>> If you haven't been keeping up with Phonon development recently, no
>> biggie.
>> Very recently, we introduced an optional build time dependency on
>> QZeitgeist.
>> Today, someone said I should mention this to k-c-d. So here goes:
>>
>> * What is QZeitgeist?
>> A library that neatly wraps the Zeitgeist dbus API with some QObjects.
>>
>> * Okay, but what is Zeitgeist?
>> A desktop history tracker. You do things. Things such as: view a
>> website, play
>> music, chat with friends, read mail, write a document, post to
>> identi.ca, or
>> work with stuff in inkscape. Zeitgeist then compiles for you a database
>> of
>> everything you've done and intelligently links things together.
>>
>> Example: I read a mail from my dad. Inside the mail was a hi-lar-ious
>> video I
>> want to share to a friend. Problem is, it is now 3 days later and I
>> can't
>> remember anything about the mail it was contained in. Oddly enough, I
>> remember
>> the music Amarok was playing at the time. Party Hard by Andrew WK. Good
>> stuff.
>> Oh yeah, and there was that funny youtube video sometime around then I
>> found
>> in irc. My aunt would love that...
>>
>> *ahem*
>>
>> I open up gnome-activity-journal (currently the only interface to view
>> the
>> history; others are planned), search for something related like the
>> music, the
>> youtube video, the irc chat, etc, and *bam* there is that media file. It
>> is
>> listed next to all the other stuff I was doing at the same time.
>>
>> * How does this fit into Phonon?
>>
>> Anything played by Phonon now shows up in zeitgeist. Provided that they
>> follow
>> our documentation and set the correct QObject property. If that wasn't
>> needed,
>> then Zeitgeist would get spammed with everything from KNotify.
>>
>> * Why should k-c-d care?
>>
>> For two reasons, really:
>>
>> 1) It is a new *optional* build-time dependency. If Phonon is compiled
>> with
>> QZeitgeist, but zeitgeist isn't installed, stuff still works. Once
>> zeitgeist is
>> installed, the dbus interfaces work their magic.
>>
>> 2) The zeitgeist developers (and even the Phonon devs) would absolutely
>> *love*
>> to see more KDE apps use Zeitgeist. Its pretty cool.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Trever Fischer (tdfischer)
>> Fedora Ambassador, KDE Hacker
>> http://wm161.net
>> GPG: C40F2998 hkp://wwwkeys.pgp.net
>>
>
> What is the advantage of zeitgeist over nepomuk?
>
> -Todd
>

Nepomuk stores metadata. Zeitgeist stores your universal history. They're
pretty different. It is possible for Zeitgeist to use Nepomuk as a storage
backend, but Nepomuk can't immediately perform the same function as
Zeitgeist.

-- 
Trever Fischer (tdfischer)
Fedora Ambassador, KDE Hacker
http://wm161.net
GPG: C40F2998 hkp://wwwkeys.pgp.net