[mythtv-users] MythMusic Bounty Ideas

[Stephen Boddy]

On Thursday 07 September 2006 12:53, Steven Adeff wrote:
> <snip>

Steve,

To do this I think you're going to need to come up with firm goals first so 
any potential developer knows a) what the goals are, and more importantly 
that b) the goal posts won't move mid-development. Ideally some kind of 
interface design/mockup/storyboard to start with.

Ideally this would be done face-to-face with a reasonable group of music 
lovers, but that's obviously tricky due to dispersed nature of the users. So 
you might have to settle for a cobbled together conference (skype?), and I 
think inkscape has some kind of Jabber collaboration, so you could use that 
as a whiteboard.

Then come up with a firm outline of what comes out of that. While things like 
last.fm integration would be cool, it should only be a possiblity via an 
extension/plugin, otherwise the amount of work will become too great, and 
noone will go near it, and the bounty will languish. The more focused the 
target, the more chance it'll have of getting done, and done successfully.

Finally, be flexible within reason. Put the plans up for criticsm, and when 
valid, change the plan, provided it doesn't extend the scope.

Then I think you'd be in a position to post a bounty on that site you mention.

For my part, my single most important objective would be for the interface to 
get me as close to the ease of use of Amarok for creating, selecting, playing 
and managing playlists. (Of course the trivial way to do this is to have 
MythMusic access the db of your desktop Amarok...) My secondary objective 
would be a framework for extensions (but not the actual extensions) for 
additional features (i.e. iPod, lasf.fm, shoutcast, radio streams etc.)

I'll admit that I'm still on 0.18, so I haven't seen what, if any, 
improvements are in the soon-to-be-release 0.20 version. What I do know is 
that 0.18 has a horrible UI to the point that I can't really bring myself to 
use it. I just turn my desktops Amarok-driven diddy speakers up really 
loud ;-) . If 0.20 isn't dramatically improved then I'm happy to throw in 
some money, depending on the design/plan and acheivability.
-- 
Steve Boddy