[gst-devel] Thanks for the updates - + standards question

[Benjamin Otte]

On Sun, 9 Jan 2005, Michael A. Peters wrote:

> OK - this may be a freedesktop.org question opposed to GStreamer, but
> is there any standard for multimedia libraries that is being worked on?
>
> By libraries I mean catalogues of music and video etc., not
> functions ;)
>
> The advantage of a standard library backend would be the ability to
> switch applications and still have your library, playlists, ratings,
> playcounts, information not stored in metatags, etc.
>
> It also would mean things like integration with iPods and other
> portable media players could be written to the standard media library
> backend, and the wheel would only have to be invented once to just (in
> theory) work with many different kinds of cars.
>
> If there is a project or list where that is being discussed, I would
> like to know about it.
>
I've been preaching this to all the music player devs I know for ages, but
they all seem more confident writing their own then abstracting it into a
general library.
But it provides far more testing for the GStreamer tag reading stuff if
you need to import again for every music player. So I like it. :)

There's a very good reason for such a lib not already being written btw:
It is hard to write such a lib that works for all the different approaches
music players take, such as
- Jukebox style vs non Jukebox style players. Jukebox style players have a
"queue" from which the first song is played and then removed. Should a
general lib support ssuch a queue? How would applications like Rhythmbox
use this?
- Single playlist vs multiplaylist applications: How would such a lib
handle the fact that Rhythmbox has different playlists for iradio and
normal songs while XMMS keeps them in the same playlist?
- different usage patterns: I personally use different players for
different stuff: I use Totem to just listen to files by doubleclicking in
Nautilus or my browser, beep for internet radio and Rhythmbox if I want to
listen to my collection. The huge Rb library would be very annoying if it
would show up in the other two apps. It would also be annoying if Totem
added all the files I doubleclick in my browser to my music collection.
- Rhythmbox is written in glib C, Amarok is KDE C++, Muine is C# and they
all like to be able to debug issues with the lib.

But feel free to write one and provide patches to all the projects to use
it. If it's good, they will. :)

Benjamin