[vlc-devel] Qt media browser (playlist selector) reorganisation

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

On Wed, 4 Nov 2009 22:13:33 +0100, Jakob Leben <jakob.leben at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> I am working on reorganisation of Qt playlist selector (I would prefer to
> call it media browser). Here are my ideas about it and the questions that
> are bugging me:
> 
> 1.The media browser should abstract from services discover, meaning
> - we don't need a common SD top node with particular SDs as children
> - SDs should be distributed logically into categories that don't
> necessarily
> map to individual SDs.
> 
> 2.There is specific SDs which have configurable "entry points" (for
> example
> Podcast SD - the entry points are user configurable podcast feeds).
> - In this case there should be a media browser category which has right
> next
> to its name a "+" button which spawns a dialog for user to configure and
> add
> a new "entry point"
> - the configurable entry points spawn as the children of that category.
> They
> have right next to them a "-" button which removes the entry point.
> 
> 
> Problems and questions, remarks:
> 1. In my opinion Media dirs should be configurable as well. If there is
no
> configuration saved, then we can use the current logic and just insert
the
> system dirs for Videos, Pictures and Music. But user should be able to
> remove those or add as many arbitrary folders as he whishes.

Media dirs is quite broken due to SD limitations. We would need to support
arbitrary level of nesting - so we can support subdirectories. And we would
need to support fetching sub-nodes contents only when a node is opened -
then we don't need to recursively scan the media directory to no end which
can be quite a strain on the system.

> We could think of making the media dirs SD monitor the changes
> to those folders in real time (could the udev plugin provide that?).

You mean inotify(), not udev.

> 2. Are UPnP, MTP, Bonjour and similar necessarily separate categories? I
> don't have resources to test what they really do (none of my devices
> spawns
> from those SDs), but I think they denote rather a method of inquiry for
> media item places, not distinct types of media item places which user
> should
> ever need to know about. So I propose to abstract from those modules and
> put
> all the items they spawn together under one category ("Devices" or
> similar).
> Does that make sense?

MTP is a USB gadgets type.
UPnP, Bonjour _and_ SAP are local network services.

> 3. What do we do with shoutcast (an opinion
>
here<http://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/vlc-devel/2009-October/068218.html>)?
> Plus, why are Freebox TV and "French TV" spawned by shoutcast SD plugin
at
> all? Of course they are streaming media, but I believe they have nothing
> in common with shoutcast? Am I wrong?

They use the same code just with a different URL to fetch the data from.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont