Hi there! tl;dr: New blog, QML UI, Android, Web UI, updates on "tres" branch
We're still alive and kicking, and so here are some general updates on what has happened in gPodder development recently: *) gpodder.net is slow - We know about it, and plan to utilize a second virtual server for some load balancing. Stefan is doing some great work there, and we are happy to see the web service being utilized :) *) mail problems - I've not been getting mails for some days in February; this has since been fixed. I'll try to have faster turnaround times for gPodder-related mails again :) *) blog.gpodder.org - In order to make it easier to communicate development news (libmygpo-qt 1.0 has been released, and the news item is still missing - will be fixed after this mail), there is now a Blogger-powered blog; expect more timely (and hopefully fine-grained) news updates in addition to the release announcements. *) QML UI - A touch-optimized, experimental UI written in Qt and QML, utilizing PySide (Video: http://youtu.be/0b592zhepwQ); this might be used as default UI on the Maemo 5 version of gPodder, and could also come in handy for future touch-based devices. One important feature of the QML UI is that playback is handled inside gPodder now, which makes resuming and playback position tracking much easier. *) Android port - A few months ago, I tried out SL4A (basically Python for Android) and got the CLI running; this weekend, I played around with a HTML UI; so far, this seems to work nicely, and if anybody of you is interested in this and can help with the HTML UI, this could be a fully-fledged gPodder running on Android; using Python :) Using Python helps keeping the development effort small and will lead to a fully-fledged gPodder application on Android much faster than other "native" Java efforts that haven't worked out so well in the past. (Photo: http://flic.kr/thp4/5439462216/) *) Web UI - As the Android port's UI is basically a glorified Web UI, this means that a Web UI will probably find its way into a future version of gPodder. Using the Web UI, you can for example run gPodder headless on a media server and manage your podcasts and downloads via a web browser. *) "tres" - This is the experimental branch of gPodder that I've been working on since mid-December 2010. This probably deserves a blog post of its own, and I've hinted at some cool features in earlier mails. Basically, the database and config get to live in the download folder (which makes backups a lot easier and gives us "portable mode" where all gPodder data is put directly on your MP3 player for free). This branch also removes lots of configuration options, it removes support for Maemo 4 (N8x0) and support for device synchronization. Now, before you start throwing full wine bottles at your computer screen: gPodder 2.x (the current "master" branch) will still see some releases, as the "tres" branch isn't stable yet. When bugs are reported, they will be fixed, and a release will be made periodically. The "cool" new stuff happens in "tres". For some users, having the downloads and the DB in a single folder will make syncing with devices unnecessary. For others, it is expected that someone steps up and writes a little syncing GUI on top of gPodder. This could either be in the form of hooks or via a standalone application, utilizing gPodder's Python library. gPodder "tres" is much more modular than the current codebase, and it exposes the database to the user as a file. I plan to document the database schema so other applications can read and modify the gPodder database if they want. Having the gPodder database+config+downloads in a single folder also allows us to work with a download folder ("podcast repository" if you will) from multiple applications - e.g. the GTK+ app on your Desktop, the CLI on your netbook and the QML UI on your media PC or N900. Applications only need to implement reading the database (a simple SQLite3 file), and they can access and display the podcast subscriptions, and update the playback status inside the database. Comments and feedback (as well as wishes), as always, very welcome :) Thanks, Thomas _______________________________________________ gpodder-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/gpodder-devel
