music player database

[David Zeuthen]

On Fri, 2009-07-03 at 20:08 +0200, Christophe Fergeau wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> 2009/7/3 David Zeuthen <david at fubar.dk>:
> >
> >   - the name to use in the UI
> >     - should I be using "$Vendor $Model" - seems I should only
> >       be using "$Model" cf
> >
> >        Product=Amazon Kindle
> >        Vendor=Amazon
> 
> Depends :-/ See sony-k750i_mobile_phone.mpi :
> Product=K750i mobile phone
> Vendor=Sony Ericsson
> 
> and sony-ericsson_k810i.mpi:
> Product=Sony Ericsson K810i
> Vendor=Sony Ericsson
> 
> These names are not really helpful for multi-productid files, see for
> example sony-e075_e076_e089.mpi which corresponds to 3 product IDs and
> has :
> Product=Sony Ericsson K850i, W910i, W580i
> Vendor=Sony Ericsson

Hmm, maybe we should split multi-product files into a separate files.
Would that be a lot of work?

> >  - data from .mpi files takes a lower precedence than these sources
> >   - DKD_PRESENTATION_* udev attributes
> >   - .xdg-volume-info files (cf. bgo #551403)
> 
> I'm a bit worried that having 3 places where to specify icons/names
> for media players will confuse users and even some developers so maybe
> we shouldn't have names/icons in the mpi files?

I think it makes sense; the usages are typically very different, e.g.

 - DKD_PRESENTATION is typically used only by OS vendors - typically
   to hide volumes on live cd setups. It requires root-access to
   use it since you need to fiddle around with udev rules.

 - .xdg-volume-info can be used on any kind of media to control the
   name / icon - notably it supports IconFile to use an icon put on
   the device file system itself.

   - this can be used by anyone to control name/icon - I don't expect
     music-player device vendors to use it.. I mean, if they want to,
     they can, I just don't think they care too much.

   - can also be used by enthusiasts to make the desktop look just like
     they want

Well, so, by default, we don't really get any data from DKD_PRESENTATION
or .xdg-volume-info - and if we get information from the latter it's
typically because either the device vendor or the user itself wants to
override whatever defaults we use.

So without having the name/icon in the .mpi files, things are not going
to look very nice by default. The name will be whatever we get from
usb_id or the device itself (and that's typically not very accurate and
often too long etc.) - and for the icon we can only choose the generic
'multimedia-player' icon.

That's why I think it would make sense for the .mpi files to specify
both the Name and the Icon name.

(I actually that it would make sense to also allow people to put an .mpi
file in the root of the device itself at a well-known location, e.g.
$DEVICE_ROOT/.mpi-device-info.mpi - that way a device vendor can just
put that small file on the device at the factory and things would work
out of the box even without udev rules. Then we'd also check that
location in the GVfs volume monitors and in RB + friends.)

    David