Re: new module proposal: brasero

[Philippe Rouquier <rouquier p wanadoo fr>]

Hi,

> If we change our burning software so radically, I’d like to see
> radically new features as well. Currently I only see a radically worse
> UI.
Please Josselin could you list the current flaws in UI design you see in brasero (apart from being a standalone application of course, I understood quite well you views about that ;)). We're open to discussion and changes.
As a proof of good will and because this discussion has made me aware of how not so well (euphemism here ?) brasero integrates with the rest of the desktop, I started to write a nautilus-extension (based on the one in NCB) to integrate brasero a bit better in the GNOME workflow design described by Bastien Nocera. It's already working in SVN trunk and is side by side installable with NCB. It already does what NCB was doing +:
- offers blanking
- offers data integrity checking

One thing though is that it opens brasero main window you hate so much. The next changes I want to make will bring the user straight to the burn option dialog, one click away from the actual burning (like NCB).

Another step will be to write a plugin for rhythmbox another much needed integration. I agree with you that for day to day use rhythmbox, banshee, exaile, [add a name here] should be the true frontends for audio burning. But there are other cases where brasero interface is useful in audio burning, for more advanced stuffs like you have an old tape to convert to a disc, or a long audio file you want to split in several tracks (brasero allows splitting audio files and can do it automatically detecting silences),  you can also add silences in between tracks. This allow for thorough 
Another thing about audio: I had a (quick) look at current rhythmbox plugin, and I saw that it (the plugin) had to convert all files to wave first before letting NCB library burn it. Well with brasero you don't need that, brasero will take care of converting any audio file to the proper format (wav for audio CD) as long as it's supported by Gstreamer.  Brasero can write an audio CD from any audio format to a CD and on the fly which can be helpful on storages with limited room.

To answer another of your points in a previous mail about backends (I mean cdrkit, cdrtools, libburn, ...). You said NCB could easily switch to libburn (the most promising backend for linux IMO). Right, but as Luis pointed out, why rewrite half of your burning library when you have one that works and has been working with it for some time now. Moreover, what would you do with Open Solaris that doesn't use libburn but cdrtools. As I already stated, that's a strength of brasero to be able to use any (?) available backend of the system. Distros can choose what they want to use.

Cheers,
Philippe