[mpris] Plans for media library interfacing?

[Alexander von Bremen-Kühne]

Hey guys,

this is my first posting here, so "Hello to everybody" :)

On 07.02.2012 18:54, � Denis-Courmont wrote:
> Le samedi 4 f�vrier 2012 20:39:07 Eren Inan Canpolat, vous avez �crit :
>> I wonder if the MPRIS project has any plans for defining a standard
>> interface for controlling media libraries. This could include re-scanning
>> media files that may have changed, editing metadata for the media files,
>> file-name operations, etc.
>
> MPRIS is a protocol for controlling an (existing) media player.
>
> A media library sounds more like a service. It should be a separate
protocol.
> However, I am not sure it makes sense to standardize it. Different media
> libraries probably have slightly different models, and might not accept an
> external application adding random entries in random places?
>

I can understand your point of view, but I think library support wouldnt
be such a bad idea. Many of the implementing applications, like banshee,
clementine, tomahawk or spotify, have a media library in background. And
in some of them the items don't need to be linked directly to the local
filesystem -- e.g. tomahawk and spotify.

I'm using MPRIS to control those applications and I would love to also
search their libraries and add tracks via the TrackList interface. So
some kind of read-only library access would be wonderful.

As you and Alex pointed out this isnt the idea of MPRIS -- at least at
the moment. But I think that creating or using another protocol for
media library access has two major disadvantages:

1.) Incompability between MPRIS and the other protocol. As I already
stated, some elements in media libraries are not linked to local
filesystems. Especially in respect to the growing could technology and
the evolving market around it, this issue will grow. Thus it's not
possible to query their filepath with the other protocol and then add it
via the MPRIS TrackList. So then there would be the need of defining
some kind of URL, which is supported by both interfaces.

2.) Lack of Acceptance. The MPRIS protocol is accepted quite well among
most developers. Still there are a lot of applications, which are not
supporting MPRIS v2.1 or just supporting only the required parts of the
protocol, rather than the whole protocol. Creating and introducing a new
protocol would take more time and would be more complicated than
introducing two new intefaces - one for audio libraries where you can
query artists, albums and tracks and one for video libraries where you
can maybe query for categories or something like this.

But thats just my humble opinion :)