Closer integration with rhythmbox

[fossfreedom]

One of the discussion points I recently read on OMGUbuntu was that, whilst good, the plugin is "not as seamlessly integrated" with the rest of rhythmbox.

That discussion point didnt elaborate what did or didnt "feel integrated" - but I've raised this discussion issue for anyone to pitch in on what could be done to better "integrate" the plugin.

[jrbastien]

Perhaps, a first step would be to have it included by default in linux distributions and activated. A lot of people won't install plugins in RB. They don't even know they exist!

How do we do this?

[fossfreedom]

I would imagine the first step for distros such as Ubuntu & Mint would be to file a launchpad.net wishlist bug report requesting this.

It shouldnt be too hard for the ubuntu maintainers to do this because the debian package already exists (its in my PPA). So the only aspect for the maintainer would be to add the new package to the dependencies list of rhythmbox. Not hard - 30 second job.

However, the ubuntu maintainers may be reluctant to do this because a) its not an upstream package i.e. it doesnt exist in Debian and b) it wasnt officially created by Canonical such as the rhythmbox ubuntu-one plugin. Thus they may see it as a "support" issue that they wouldnt want to support.

Getting stuff into Debian is a real hassle. A developer needs a sponsor to promote this and to guide the debian package into debian unstable. This can take weeks/months/years!

I dont know about Arch or Fedora/Magia/OpenSuse. I'm not familiar with how packages get into those distros.

Another route would be to actually get the plugin into the official rhythmbox source. I suppose either/both a bug/wishlist on bugzilla filed against rhythmbox together with a email to the rhythmbox developers mailing list is the usual route. However saying all of this - I've never ever seen the gnome-devs accepting anybody's work other than those who are on the "inside". I suppose its worth a try - I'll drop an email to the mailing list.

[Milozzy]

"I dont know about Arch or Fedora/Magia/OpenSuse."

Hi, as far as Fedora is concerned, you can find documentation here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join_the_package_collection_maintainers?rd=PackageMaintainers/Join

I would be really nice if this plugin would get more visibility. Thanks for your work!

Kind Regards

[fossfreedom]

Cheers @Milozzy !

I'm not an Fedora user myself and have zero knowledge on producing RPMs :/ - thus I would be happy to work with any Fedora user who could pursue this, but perhaps cannot take a lead.

BTW - I've dropped the following email onto the rhythmbox mailing list. Lets see if the maintainers respond

• https://mail.gnome.org/archives/rhythmbox-devel/2013-November/thread.html

[Milozzy]

Hi! I'm a "full time" Fedora user since 6-8 months only and I still have zero knowledge on RPMs too, but I can ask to some friends of mine.

Let's see what they answer from RB first, the upstream integration would be the best solution, once and for all... If they reject, I could see if I find someone willing to package it.

Kind regards!

[jrbastien]

To continue on the seamless integration discussion, I believe what people refer to is that the coverart browser is not part of the music view. Rather than having an icon on the sidebar, could the view options integrated to the music view? This way, people could switch views from a single location like it used to be in the old iTunes versions.

[fossfreedom]

That's a very interesting idea - nice icons BTW.

When you say "music view" - is this the default music library view?

Is the idea being that you see the icons above in both the library view source and coverart view source and by clicking on the library (Liste) you switch to the library view source, but clicking on Album/Tile (Grille) or Cover Flow you switch to the appropriate new views in the plugin?

Or is the idea that the music view is reimplemented within the coverart view source itself?

[jrbastien]

The icons are not from me but from an old version of iTunes. But we could create a similar design. I had this in mind when I removed the tile icon from the playlist sprite.

Yes, I'm talking about the default music library view. The idea is to implement the switching icons in this view. They would be located exactly in the purple box you have drawn.

[fossfreedom]

ok

in summary - issue #230 now closed with the chosen view button implementation.

I've also taken the opportunity to deepen the "integration" look and feel and use the same popup menu style as RB 3 i.e. colour of the toolbar and the popup appears under the button - not at the cursor position as before.

As for the thoughts of getting the plugin upstream - basically the Rhythmbox maintainer said no - his words:

"Most of the plugins you listed replace or overlap with existing plugins. I'm not going to accept this sort of thing into the source tree.

What would make this community plugins section different to the existing plugins? Would someone be expected to pull in updates to these from external repositories, redirect bug reports and feature requests, feed back any updates that happen in the rhythmbox tree? Would there be some expectation that these plugins are kept up to date when interfaces change, or adapted to make use of new features?

I'm not spending all that much time on rhythmbox these days, so anything that involves adding to my maintenance workload is probably not going to work very well."

oh well :((