GSOC Project Proposal Draft :: Improvement and Enhancements for Plasma Media Center

Sun Apr 14 18:03:25 UTC 2013

On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 6:40 PM, Akshay Ratan <akshayratan at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>     In the previous mail, I put forward a few ideas for implementation for
> PMC as my proposal for GSOC Project 2013.  I would like to seek
> clarification regarding some of the feedbacks in the proposal.
>
>
>    - Regarding the proposed additional plugins for Dropbox and a
>    suggestion that we should use the account-sso to gather pictures from users
>    web account, shall I concentrate only on the improvement of the existing
>    plugins of picasa and flickr ? One thing we can really think implementing
>    is this importing of pictures from user's picasa account . What do you
>    suggest ?
>
> You are  free to work on implementing Dropbox plugin, but this is my
suggestion that instead of working on  a new plugin  better to improve the
existing one.
There are lot more scope of improvement in each plugin both in feature and
UI wise.

As Aaron suggested, implementing accounts-sso to manage different online
plugins  credentials will be +1.

>
>    - By mistake, I copied the moc file link, thanks for pointing it out !
>    I intended to copy the picasamodel.cpp file only :)
>    - Regarding Keyboard-only navigation, I proposed for backspace key
>    implementation in the PMC as a means to go one level up. What other changes
>    do you suggest. Certainly, It would be great to implement the keyboard only
>    navigation. Plus, one suggestion from my side would be::  What is already
>    implemented is that when we are inside the menu to view
>    pictures/videos/music, pressing escape key takes to main menu but when we
>    are actually seeing the pictures by opeing the gallery, then escape key
>    should be there to go to main menu. This is one of the few extensibility
>    which I propose. The KeyHandler.qml class will be used extensively for this
>    purpose.
>
>
Nice catch, this need to be implemented. There are many other places where
keyboard navigation doesn't work e.g playlist, All Music etc

>
>
> Some implementation insights on this :: Qt::Key_Escape can be used. A
> very very short approach::
> https://github.com/akshayratan/Code/blob/master/esacpe_key_demo.qml
>
>
handlekey() function looks good to me

> What other keyboard features you plan to bring in PMC ?
>

You may want to look into playlist.  It needs various improvement, e.g
avoiding duplicate media files

You can check  bugs reported to PMC
https://bugs.kde.org/component-report.cgi?product=plasma-mediacenter . Its
good way to start with, some of reported bugs are feature request too.

>
>    - I will surely look in the dolphin source code to have an insight on
>    Folder Preview and prepare a short schematic as to how it can be brought in
>    PMC.
>
>
> Other than that, please advice me as to how should I exactly frame every
> detail in my proposal for best results ? Any other suggestion would be more
> than welcome :)
>
>
You may want to look at
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1Iqk8MTix2CN1pAgqhZqhefKTwiA7P73zQH9N46lvyB0
. It will give fair idea about how  proposal look like :)

Best Regards,
> Akshay Ratan
> (IRC :: akshay_r)
>
> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 11:28 PM, Sinny Kumari <ksinny at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Doing CC to plasma-develhttps://
>> github.com/akshayratan/Code/blob/master/esacpe_key_demo.qml
>>
>> You need to send email to plasma-devel at kde.org instead of
>> plasma-devel-request at kde.org :)
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 10:49 PM, Akshay Ratan <akshayratan at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Hello everyone,
>>
>>
>> Hi!
>>
>>
>>>                       I am working on the Project :: *Improvement and
>>> Enhancements for Plasma Media Center*. Before finalizing my GSOC
>>> Proposal, I wish to share a few ideas which I have regarding the project
>>> besides those which are mentioned in the KDE Community wiki. As we all know
>>> this year, KDE theme for GSOC is "Polishing Existing Things", I look
>>> forward to help make PMC even better.
>>>
>>
>> Good to know that !
>>
>> Few of these ideas are described below, some of which I would like to
>>> work on:::
>>>
>>> 1. There is no option for subtitles in the video player. Its need is
>>> immense in any video player. Implementing the subtitle feature in the
>>> Plasma Media Center's Video player as a part of my GSOC would be great !
>>> Though there is subtitleprovider.cpp file relevant but still on testing,
>>> there comes no option for subtitles.
>>>
>>
>> +1
>>
>> Yes, It would be good if  we have option to add subtitles too.
>>
>>
>>> 2. Currently available backends for fetching media are from Picasa and
>>> Flickr. Extending the "onlineservices" library, so that after the
>>> implementation, backend support is available for Facebook and Dropbox.
>>> digiKam for that matter has plugins to import and export to various online
>>> services. This would not only make PMC Application better but also put it
>>> forward in the line of top image viewer applications.
>>>
>>
>> Its good to have more and more plugins in PMC but I would suggest not to
>> concentrate on additional plugins. Instead of that try to focus on core
>> functionalities in PMC and improvement wherever possible.
>>
>>>
>>> Line of action would be on the basis of existing backend support like :
>>> https://github.com/akshayratan/Plasma-Media-Center/blob/master/browsingbackends/onlineservices/picasa/moc_picasamodel.cpp
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Don't look at moc files. These are  auto-generated file  when cmake run.
>> Look at
>> https://projects.kde.org/projects/kdereview/plasma-mediacenter/repository/revisions/master/entry/browsingbackends/onlineservices/picasa/picasamodel.cpp.
>>
>>
>>> 3. In the working of the Plasma Media Center Application, I propose to
>>> implement the "Keyboard's BACKSPACE KEY" to function as one-level before.
>>> Just as arrow keys are used to view pictures left to right and vice versa,
>>> backspace tool would be great as users can entirely control it using
>>> keyboard. Further, a relevant bug(though not exactly same) is already there
>>> on bugs.kde.org . The link is :
>>> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=317233 .
>>>
>>>
>> +1
>>
>> Other than that we also have  to do some redesign of the flow so that
>> keyboard-only navigation is possible.
>>
>>
>>> 4. Improved indexing of metadata of videos using Webminer and Nepomuk
>>> Indexer.
>>>
>>> Though I am very comfortable in Qt C++ framework, I am not that much
>>> familiar with qml(Qt Meta Language)  which I hope to learn soon. Anyways,
>>> following is a qml function which needs to be polished to implement the
>>> backspace feature ::
>>> https://github.com/akshayratan/Code/blob/master/handling_keys.  This
>>> particular function is for ImageViewer in PMC. This feature I would like to
>>> take upon in my GSOC project.
>>>
>>> Besides this, following were the community ideas for implementation----
>>>
>>>    - Categorizing media better like pictures on the basis of tags,
>>>    videos according to different filters - length, quality etc
>>>    - Improving playlist search - should be able to search through
>>>    artist, album etc
>>>    - Folder preview in Local Media Browsing
>>>
>>>
>>> I would soon post a draft of my implementation scheme and further ideas
>>> framed in a proper proposal format. Please help me correct myself if I am
>>> wrong somewhere. I am looking forward for a positive response.
>>> I would further like to know in detail a little bit about the third
>>> community suggestion of "Folder preview in Local Media Browsing". Where
>>> exactly I should begin hacking for this feature.
>>>
>>
>> You need to look into  Dolphin source code since Dolphin has this
>> functionality.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> To tell the Plasma Community something about myself- I am an ICT
>>> undergraduate student at DA-IICT, Gandhinagar, India. I love hacking on
>>> open-source. Did a Summer of KDE project on KMouseTool application last
>>> year and I am very comfortable in tools and technologies of open-source
>>> like GIT,CMake, Matlab,Qt etc besides being proficient in C,C++,Java and
>>> having a familiarity in Python,HTML,CSS,JavaScript.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Other than that looks fine to me . Try PMC again and again, you will  get
>> even more ideas :D
>>
>>
>>> Thanks !
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> *Akshay Ratan*
>>> *
>>> *
>>> (IRC NICK:: akshay_r  #plasma, #kde-devel)
>>>
>>> Blogs:: www.akshaycode.blogspot.com
>>>             www.akshayratan.blogspot.com
>>>
>>
>>
>> Cheers!
>> --
>> http://www.sinny.in
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Akshay
>

-- 
http://www.sinny.in
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