MLQ (Media Library Query) file format and mime type proposal

[Jamie McCracken]

Milosz Derezynski wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm one of the main authors of BMP 2 (still being worked on), and along 
> the way of reworking our library, i came across the idea of encoding 
> library queries as URIs, which may look like this:
> 
> "query:///?artist=Air&album=Moon%20Safari"
> 
> BMP 2 has a plugin archicture which is a small VFS on it's own, and we 
> treat certain things as "containers" (i.e. they "contain" URIs, like PLS 
> playlists, XSPF, M3U, etc).
> Now i thought it might be not a bad idea to create a playlist format 
> with these query URLs, and i've called it "MLQ" for media library query. 
> In theory, it's not even
> application specific. The keys (identifiers), like artist, album, etc, 
> are all based on GStreamer tag identifiers. (They could be maybe adapted 
> to http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards_2faudio_2dmetadata_2dspec , 
> but it seems insufficient and doesn't specify certain items, like 
> musicbrainz metadata, which GST does).

Tracker's metadata spec does 
(http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards/shared-filemetadata-spec)


> 
> So i've called this file format "MLQ", with the extension .mlq, created 
> a mime package file for it:
> 
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
> <mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info ">
>   <mime-type type="application/x-media-library-query">
>          <comment xml:lang="en">Media Library Query List</comment>
>          <magic priority="50">
>             <match value="query:///" type="string" offset="0"/>
>          </magic>
>          <glob pattern="*.mlq"/>
>   </mime-type>
> </mime-info>
> 
> Adding a file of this type to BMPx, or just a plain query:/// URI itself 
> causes a library query and appending of the relevant items to the 
> tracklist (BMP is currently mostly based on the concept of a mutable 
> playlist to which items can be added from various sources, unlike e.g. 
> RB which has mostly immutable "Playlists", but allows for custom queues).
> 
> Another example is:
> 
> query:///?artist=Air&album=Moon%20Safari&title=La%20Femme%20d'Argent
> query:///?artist=Air&album=Moon%20Safari&title=Sexy%20Boy
> query:///?artist=Air&album=Moon%20Safari&title=All%20I%20Need
> query:///?artist=Air&album=Moon%20Safari&title=Kelly,%20Watch%20The%20Stars!
> query:///?artist=Air&album=Moon%20Safari&title=Talisman
> query:///?artist=Air&album=Moon%20Safari&title=Remember
> query:///?artist=Air&album=Moon%20Safari&title=You%20Make%20It%20Easy
> query:///?artist=Air&album=Moon%20Safari&title=Ce%20Matin%20La
> query:///?artist=Air&album=Moon%20Safari&title=New%20Star%20In%20The%20Sky
> query:///?artist=Air&album=Moon%20Safari&title=Le%20Voyage%20De%20Penelope
> 
> Or it might just be:
> 
> query:///?genre=Jazz
> 
> Since this is very common, and having the discussions about a common 
> music database in mind, this seems like a useful proposal, since it is 
> not player specific.
> This ships currently with BMP 2/BMPx SVN, and while i will ship this 
> with the 0.20 release (end-July) anyway, what does everyone think of 
> this in a broader context (common music database, etc)?


Could be interesting as an alternative to rdf query that tracker uses 
but rdf query is a *standard* and is the WC3's recommended means of 
querying metadata.

A more compact version of the xml based rdf query language is  sparql 
(http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/) and is also a candidate for 
standardisation.

I guess its going to be fun deciding which to use (I will go with the flow)

-- 
Mr Jamie McCracken
http://jamiemcc.livejournal.com/