Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Ipod Plugin Enhancements

[David Martin - Airgead Studio <david airgeadstudio net>]

OK Folks. I now have the rhythmbox source building on my machine so I 
can start working on some of this stuff. I have had a think about the 
way it should work (based on some feedback on the list) -

Jonathan Matthew wrote:
> I must admit that I don't really like the sound of this - I'd rather
> have rhythmbox deal with externally downloaded podcasts properly, that
> is, have them show up as correctly identified episodes in the podcast
> source, rather than in the library.
>   
I think you are right. Externally managed podcast feeds do need to 
appear in the podcast plugin along with ones that rhythmbox manages. I'm 
not sure the base way to manage that. At the moment my thought is that 
we re-use the watch for new files mechanism that the main library uses 
and apply that to the podcast library as well. Externally managed 
podcasts would get placed in there by whatever app is downloading them 
and rhythmbox would pick them up and add them to its podcast library. 
I'm not sure how to pick up podcasts name/episode title data as the id3 
data in some podcasts is pretty bad. Maybe it could pick the podcast 
name from the filesystem directory or something like that. I'm open to 
suggestions on that one.

This still leaves the problem of getting the podcasts onto the ipod. 
What I propose is to have an additional "Synchronise Podcasts" item in 
the ipod plugin context menu. The sync would synchronise play counts 
between the ipod and the library then delete any podcasts that had been 
listened to from the ipod (playcount >1) then add any podcasts with a 
playcount of 0 from the library to to ipod. Having the external podcasts 
appear in the library works nicely for this as the code to add a podcast 
from the library to the ipod already sets the media type correctly.

I would also propose having another context menu item on the ipod - 
"autofill". This would calculate free space on the device then fill with 
random songs (or random albums - need a config setting there) until the 
ipod is full (or < x% free space based on a config setting).

So there would be three distinct pieces of work -
- external podcasts in the podcast library
- Sync podcasts
- Autofill

If anyone can think of a better way, please let me know (particularly 
the guys who do the podcast stuff). If everyone here agrees this is the 
best approach, I'll raise 3 bugzilla entries to cover the three pieces 
of work and get started.


Cheers
Dave