Hi Ben.
Actually... the new versions of AlienBBC are fairly modular already - what we effectively have is some 'player' modules (which take care of dealing with RTSP streams), and effectively an overall plugin, which invokes modular parsers to read in data, and populate the menu structures.
There's no fundamental difficulty with back-porting the parser fixes to version 0.12, apart from a general feeling on my part that the new version has a technically vastly improved audio handling side (practically all Triode's work), and is, for example, the only way that AlienBBC will EVER work for Windows users.
To be honest... I think we're pretty much ready to take the 'beta' epithet off the current builds, and start thinking about it as the main version.
As far as an XML description of the feeds is concerned... (and I'm answering all of the threads on this note - sorry I'm too lazy to do it any other way)... we did put some preliminary thought into what a feed of BBC data might look like... but in general, I'm not sure what status this project would really have in BBC land. Whilst it looks superficially like it should fit with the BBC's public access remit... The BBC don't seem to endorse any capability to listen to their streams, other than via their own 'player' (well... their own web pages, at least).
Not to be a real bring down about it... but with my 'I have to deal with commercial concerns' hat on... I can think of a good half dozen reasons why as a corporation, they might not be super keen.
But... in answer to your actual question: No... I've not tried talking to the BBC about this, and as far as I know, neither has anybody else.
-- Jules
BenRubinstein wrote:
Jules Taplin wrote:
Actually... the pages that 'Listen Live' uses don't exist any more... so
that menu option will probably just disappear altogether. Although we
might have to rename 'Listen Again' to make it all make sense ;)
(speaking as someone who hasn't yet managed to get AlienBBC up - halfway through - and hasn't attempted to look at the code, so I don't know what I'm talking about) - is there anything to be said for splitting this up into two parts, so there's one part which deals with parsing the pages and acts as a feed for the second part of a clean XML or similar index? That would:
* avoid the current situation - where an innocent such as myself is warned off the bleeding edge current version (0.94), but finds that the current 'stable' version (0.12) is actually out of service (because, if I understand correctly, the BBC changed the layout of the web pages, and only the bleeding edge version has been updated to deal with the new layout). In principle with a division such as this, the parsing code could be updated independantly of the playback code;
* allow a more 'slim sensible' heirarchy to be imposed on top of the BBC heirarchy - eg there certainly is still a 'listen again' link for the major stations, and since I'm hoping (in time) that an SB with AlienBBC can be used to entirely replace a radio in at least one room of a Radio4 addicted household, I'd like there to be easy top level access to it
* one day in some far off utopia, when the BBC start publishing a sensible feed of this stuff, it will be easy to convert to it!
Jules - have you ever tried talking to someone at the BBC about this? I
can't see any reason why what AlienBBC does should be frowned upon by the
BBC, it seems entirely in tune with their mission, and just another way of
making this particular outlet for their broadcasting usable. Or am I
missing something?
Ben Rubinstein | Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cognitive Applications Ltd | Phone: +44 (0)1273-821600 http://www.cogapp.com | Fax : +44 (0)1273-728866
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