On Tue, 2007-05-08 at 18:21 +0200, Rohan Oberoi wrote:
> On 5/8/07, Iain * <iaingnome gmail com> wrote:
> > So really, you're just pissed of because there isn't a button to
> > submit to freedb
>
> Yes I am, and you haven't given a good reason not to have one other
> than "I hate freedb". Fine. But don't impose your opinion on every
> user of the stock Ubuntu install, in direct opposition to the practice
> of most CD ripper software. Make yourself an executable that doesn't
> have the button, and use it on your system.
I did. I named it Sound Juicer, and people appeared to like it.
It appears that Goobox doesn't link to libmusicbrainz, so must use
FreeDB. If using FreeDB instead of Musicbrainz is a dealmaker for you,
I suggest you look at Goobox. It also considers itself a proper CD
player, which some users like too.
> Musicbrainz has nothing to do with this discussion, except for why on
> earth the SJ developers chose to associate a web link to it with the
> Submit menu item in SJ.
The reason why pressing Submit opens a web browser is because there were
two options:
1) open a URL the Musicbrainz library will give you, and let the user
fill the data in on their web site. This isn't exactly a great
user-experience, but it works. This also lets the user import from
FreeDB, saving a lot of time. Coding time: 10 minutes.
2) Ask the user for all of the required data in Sound Juicer, construct
a RDF statement, and submit it to Musicbrainz. This requires poking
around the Musicbrainz server source because a submit method isn't in
the client library. Coding time: a few days of straight coding I
expect, maybe more.
Considering I don't get paid to work on SJ and have little spare time to
work on SJ, I did (1). I'll happily accept a a patch to do (2) from
anyone, and would heartily thank them for the contribution.
> I don't understand this ideological opposition to freedb. The query
> function in SJ apparently uses freedb anyway, when it can't find the
> CD in MB. So what the #$%$ is wrong with *saving* to freedb when
> you're already happy to *query* it???? After all, it's not like SJ
> is freedb-judenfrei and you're battling to keep it that way, is it?
> The devil is already in the #$%$ machine, how about just trying to
> make the thing usable and checking your ideological purity at the
> door?
Incorrect. MusicBrainz will proxy to FreeDB for certain queries if
there are no matches in MusicBrainz for some queries. SJ does nothing,
and it was only when I started seeing NULL Musicbrainz IDs that I
noticed it did this at all. There is an open bug to alert people that
this has happened and direct them to the musicbrainz website to perform
an import so that the data is in Musicbrainz and verified to be correct.
There are plenty of bugs in SJ which are caused *entirely* by the FreeDB
proxy (insert a CD with Japanese titles and you'll see garbage[1], or an
album with track names with a slash[2]). They are worked around as much
as possible, but FreeDB is a pain.
In all honest, I have no idea why this is on usability-list, it should
be a bug against SJ.
Ross
[1] FreeDB doesn't have a defined encoding. When Musicbrainz proxies
it assumes ISO-8859-1 on the grounds that the majority of the music is
almost that, but if it is actually some CJK encoding, then you lose. SJ
in svn will attempt to fix this and convert back to the user's locale,
but that means I'll never be able to rip a CD from FreeDB.
[2] FreeDB handles various artist albums by naming each track "artist /
title". Imagine the fun that happens when you have a track or artist
called "foo/bar" on a various artist album.
--
Ross Burton mail: ross burtonini com
jabber: ross burtonini com
www: http://www.burtonini.com./
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