Tomahawk, KDE, and other stuff
jefferai
I work for MIT doing all sorts of stuff and I hack on things in my free time, mostly in C++/Qt. I mainly work on KDE, where I do coding, sysadmin, community, event organization, security and promotion work. I also do a lot of development for Tomahawk Player. I love FOSS, and like most geeks I also love photography.
Home page: http://jefferai.org/
Jabber/GTalk: jeff@jefferai.org
Posts by jefferai
UTF-8 and Your Music
6A heads-up on something new in Amarok SVN (and coming in 2.2 for those of you not living on the bleeding edge):
We’ve had various bug reports over the years relating to character sets and collation, causing issues with matching searches for music or mis-sorted items. Well, hopefully no longer.
When you update to 2.2 (recent SVN users, see the note at the end of this post), your Amarok database and tables will be converted to use the ‘utf8′ character set and ‘utf8_unicode_ci’ collation as default for any table or column created from this point on. Every single text/varchar field will also be converted through a two-step process to use ‘utf8′ as the character set (the data inside was always UTF-8, but there was a possible mismatch between what the data was and what the database thought it was, if your mysql wasn’t built to use ‘utf8′ by default). In addition, the character set used when talking to the embedded server (the protocol in the socket) will be ‘utf8′.
Fixing this mismatch between what the server might have been using for character set/collation and the data we’re putting in there should hopefully ensure that sorting and tags work very well for our users with some files wth non-Latin1 tags (probably just about everybody these days).
* Recent SVN users: if your build date is earlier than this post I’d recommend wiping your mysqle directory (not just a full rescan), as the initial commit of the updating code contained a bug that could possibly cause trouble down the line with user playlists…but you bleeding edge users should be expecting database wipes every now and then 
AFT Embedded Tagging: now on FLAC, Ogg/Vorbis, Ogg/FLAC, and Ogg/Speex!
6I’ve blogged about Amarok File Tracking before and there’s a lot of information about it on the wiki. For those that haven’t heard about the goodness of embedded file tracking, check out those links. There are a couple pieces of good news, and one piece of bad news.
The good news: in current SVN (and thus 2.2) the amarok_afttagger executable will also now handle FLAC and various Ogg-contained formats. Another piece of good news – the amarok_afttagger executable is now contained in the amarok-utilities package, and thus can be run on headless machines without X! And lastly — AFT now works with user playlists, so you can move your files around (keep in mind the caveats if you’re not using embedded AFT tags) and your playlists will always stay current, in addition to statistics and The Playlist.
The bad news? Something is currently a bit broken somewhere deep inside with Observers which means that The Playlist will only update with the correct new URL once (the metadata observers seem to die after that). This doesn’t seem to be AFT specific but rather seems like a bug that AFT is exposing. Closing Amarok and reopening it will cause the proper new URLs to be in the playlist. I’m working on trying to fix that.
(Important note: it writes into the FLAC Xiph comment. This is the only metadata type actually required by the FLAC spec, and thus is the proper place to put it, but a lot of FLAC files incorrectly only have ID3v2 tags, so depending on the tagger you’re using you may only see one or the other.)
Amarok Power User Feature: Batch-mode collection scanning (Redux)
0A long time ago I promised to post an update when I got incremental batch scanning working. Well, as it turns out, that happened a long time ago too, but I never got around to writing the Wiki page for it. I’ve corrected that flaw.
Anyone interested in scanning their collection locally instead of across a network connection, or keeping their collection up-to-date when Amarok is closed, should definitely give it a read!
Free Developer Sprint for North American GSoC students!
0For anyone that hasn’t seen the Dot story, check it out.
GSoC 2009: Last chance for student applications
0A friendly reminder: you have just under 24 hours to get your applications updated (if you are a student…you’ve already submitted it, right?) or to get students to update their applications (if you are a mentor). Applications that arrive before the deadline will not be penalized (and applications that arrive afterwards won’t be accepted at all) so it’s not too late to get your SoC on…
Important: Submit your GSoC application *NOW*
0Google has just asked all students to ensure that their application is submitted *now*, even if they are not done. You will still have until 19:00 UTC April 3rd to modify them, but Google is having trouble gauging participation because so many students (in all organizations) are discussing applications with mentors and refining them outside of the official site. So if you are a student, or mentoring students, please ensure that your applications are submitted ASAP.
GSoC 2009: Student Application Deadline Reminder
0Remember: the student application deadline is April 3rd at 19:00 UTC. If you are a student, you should be checking for comments and revising your application while you still have the chance. If you are a mentor, you should be checking the applications and commenting on them as appropriate.
Reminder: Student Application period for GSoC2009 open…
2…NOW! Students have until April 3rd to get their applications finalized and turned in. Good luck!
GSoC 2009: We’re in!
0We’ve been accepted to participate in GSoC 2009. Hooray!
This means we have a lot of great work ahead of us. The first order of business is that everyone that wants to be a mentor needs to sign up at http://socghop.appspot.com. You’ll need a Google account (which does not have to be a Gmail account). Click the link that says "Apply to become a Mentor" and proceed as instructed. You should also ensure that you’re on the kde-soc-mentor mailing list.
Students: now that we’re accepted, get to it with contacting mentors! The application period opens March 23rd and closes April 3rd, so it’s not a huge amount of time to get all the details of your proposals worked out. Be sure to check the ideas page at http://techbase.kde.org/index.php?title=Projects/Summer_of_Code/2009/Ideas, or contact the appropriate mentor if you have a different idea for a project that you’d like to work on.
I’ll be sure to keep everyone informed of events as they occur and deadlines as they arrive. Here’s to a successful summer!
GSoC 2009: Application Submitted
0Today the application for KDE to participate in GSoC 2009 was submitted. They check out our ideas page when they’re evaluating applications, so be sure to get your ideas up there! We’ll hear back by March 18th. Some other upcoming dates:
- March 18-23: Students discuss applications with mentoring organizations (you can and should do this earlier, of course)
- March 23: Student application period opens
- April 3: Student application period closes
Of course, this hinges on us being accepted…but past years have shown that we have a good shot.
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