Hi all,<br><div class="gmail_quote"><br>Sorry I didn't get a chance to respond again to the last version of the thread. Thanks for posting a second draft of the specs. They're shaping up nicely and this version is a good improvement. <br>
<br>Deciding on floats for rating seems like mostly a good decision. If a number is > 0 and < 1 it's a pretty safe conclusion that it's a float rating. On the other hand, it means any track rated maximally will be a "1", which is widely used as a very low value. Perhaps the solution there is to say that the float value must include a decimal point and a zero to eliminate ambiguity of interpretation.<br>
<br>I'd like to voice some concern about writing two forms of rating to the file. Also, though Amarok tracks two forms of rating, I don't think the current automatic vs user distinction makes sense. For example, if I introduce automatic rating to Songbird through an extension, I don't think it would be good for me to overwrite the existing Amarok inserted value created by a different algorithm. If you feel strongly about including it, perhaps instead of using two specific forms of rating (auto and user), we could consider arbitrary types of rating.<br>
<br>For example, the syntax could be something along the lines of:<br><br>FMPS_Rating<br>or for more specific kinds of rating<br>FMPS_Rating_Automatic<br>or<br>FMPS_Rating_Critic<br>or<br>FMPS_Rating_User:pvh<br><br>Perhaps;<br>
<br>FMPS_Rating<br>Amarok_AutomaticRating<br>Songbird_AutomaticRating<br>Songbird_Rating_User:pvh<br>Songbird_Rating_Metacritic<br><br>and so on. I think having a single canonical rating would be a big advantage, even if there are other values present.<br>
<br>-pvh<br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div></div><div class="h5">On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 1:07 PM, Jeff Mitchell <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mitchell@kde.org" target="_blank">mitchell@kde.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Hello,<br>
<br>
The second draft of the Free Music Player Specifications is ready. A few<br>
words before the link.<br>
<br>
First, for those new to the discussion, an archive of previous emails in<br>
the discussion can be found at<br>
<br>
<a href="http://groups.google.com/group/fmps/topics" target="_blank">http://groups.google.com/group/fmps/topics</a><br>
<br>
The group is read-only, and per agreement with those involved (that<br>
replied) further discussion will take place on <a href="mailto:xdg@lists.freedesktop.org" target="_blank">xdg@lists.freedesktop.org</a><br>
<br>
I want to thank Milosz Derezynski and Peter van Hardenberg, who replied<br>
to the first draft with suggestions.<br>
<br>
Now, some comments about this second draft.<br>
<br>
It was suggested that instead of both integer and float values, one or<br>
the other should be picked. It made sense to have floats in all but one<br>
instance (user playcounts), so floats is what I went with. Overall this<br>
decreases the spec's complexity a good amount.<br>
<br>
I attempted to clarify things where confusion seemed to exist in<br>
replies; for instance, Milosz's suggestion that it be encouraged that<br>
applications should treat values as they are whenever possible, even if<br>
in some cases they need to round them to display them to the user (for<br>
instance, in a graphical fashion).<br>
<br>
I cleaned up the filesystem directive section at Peter's request; it's<br>
indeed simpler (and probably quicker) to just check each directory for a<br>
fmps_ignore file than to check it for text values inside that file and<br>
react appropriately.<br>
<br>
I looked at Performer Roles on the MusicBrainz site at Milosz's request,<br>
and decided to keep them in the spec for now. The main reason is that<br>
while MusicBrainz supports MP3 and VorbisComments formats, it has no<br>
capability to support performer roles for WMA or MP4 formats, whereas<br>
there is no reason why support for these formats could not be included<br>
in this specification. Another reason is that the FMPS spec defines<br>
using comments (TXXX for MP3) which eases processing as TXXX is easily<br>
supported by almost any tagging library. By contrast, for MP3 at least,<br>
parsing the TMCL list can be difficult.<br>
</blockquote></div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div><div></div><div class="h5">
<br>
That all said, here's the second draft of the spec:<br>
<br>
<a href="http://gitorious.org/%7Ejefferai/xdg-specs/jefferais-xdg-specs/blobs/mediaspecs/specifications/FMPSpecs/specification.txt" target="_blank">http://gitorious.org/~jefferai/xdg-specs/jefferais-xdg-specs/blobs/mediaspecs/specifications/FMPSpecs/specification.txt</a><br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
--Jeff<br>
<br>
</font><br></div></div>_______________________________________________<br>
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<br></blockquote></div><font color="#888888"><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Peter van Hardenberg<br>Victoria, BC, Canada<br>"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt." -- Kurt Vonnegut<br>
</font></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Peter van Hardenberg<br>Victoria, BC, Canada<br>"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt." -- Kurt Vonnegut<br>