On 21/06/2010 6:42, Dirk Meyer wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> yes, I'm not dead. It was a very busy year and I had no time to hack on
> Freevo. But I plan to add a Freevo-day each week in my calendar to start
> coding again.
>
> On 17.06.2010 17:58, Adam Charrett wrote:
>    
>> Freevo 1.x is still going (reasonably) strong although slightly long
>> in the tooth and Freevo 2, while further forward than a couple of
>> years ago, isn't yet ready for release.
>>      
> Sadly, no.
>
>    
>> So in the interim I'm thinking about the following changes to the
>> Freevo 1.x code base with the idea of calling it Freevo 1-NG (not
>> quite 2 but no longer 1.x).
>>
>> 1. Getting rid of pygame and replacing it with WebKit and pygtk.
>> This means all the skins would be written in HTML and Javascript
>> (lots more people able to do that than there are for our current skin
>> format)) and we could then have video in the same window!
>>      
> Well, this is one reason I started 2.0. But stripping the GUI code out
> of Freevo wasn't that easy. That part is mostly done in Freevo 2.0. I'm
> not sure I like the idea of 1.0 NG. It seems to me that it is waste of
> good man power. 2.0 is closer to being finished than you think, maybe
> your skills are better used on the 2.0.
>
> Let me go into details of the SVN head. There are two Freevo versions.
> One is based on mevas (imlib2 based rendering) and the version I use
> right due to the fact that the clutter-based Version has no video
> playback, yet. But it is deprecated.
>
> Now let's take a look at the clutter-based version. The internal changes
> I wanted to make for 2.0 are done. The core is ready for a release. The
> whole gui code has moved out of the core. Besides the idlebar plugins
> nothing depends on the GUI. If you want to build a gui based on webkit,
> it shouldn't be that hard. If you want to use GTK, you are already done
> -- sort of. The code is based on clutter which is wrapped in kaa.candy.
> Clutter is the 3D-toolkit Gnome 3.0 will use for mutter and other
> eye-candy stuff.
>
> If you want to port a plugin from 1.x to the 2.0 version, you have a
> green-light from me. Again: the core is ready and the basic plugins such
> as video, audio and image are working. The video plugin lacks actual
> playback support. I was waiting for Jason to develop a new kaa.popcorn,
> our player module to render the video on a clutter texture. Since Jason
> has the same time problems as I have, I'm not sure I should wait for it
> any longer and my next hacking days will be spent on video support:
>
> 1. Use gstreamer to render the video inside clutter. There already is
> support for it in a clutter-gst package. Not what I wanted to have, but
> I'm not sure I have time for the proper way.
>
> 2. Use mplayer as fallback.
>
> 3. Drop Xine support. I'm not sure kaa.xine actually works with the
> latest version of Xine and it has a lot of code we do not need anymore.
>
> After I'm done with that, the 2.0 mevas directory will be deleted and I
> will install the kaa.candy-based version on my media PC.
>
> What Freevo 2.0 really needs is TV support. That is kind of broken right
> now. But to fix it, you do not even need to understand Freevo. There is
> a directory tvserver that hold everything you need. As kaa libs you need
> kaa.base and kaa.egp. That's it!
>
> So let me turn post this into a call for help for 2.0. If someone wants
> to code one of the following parts, let me know:
>
> 1. Port cool 1.x plugins to 2.0
> 2. Fix the tvserver code
> 3. Create a webserver (not done yet)
> 4. Help on working on the video playback, vpdau etc.
> 5. Test various components by using them in extra helpers, e.g. use
>     kaa.beacon, our media db outside Freevo.
>
> Regards,
>
> Dischi
>
>    
I've posted a reply to Adam's initial email and I do believe that it is 
worth continuing work on the 1.x or new 1-NG branch, at least for one 
more release. It's been several years since freevo 2.0 first came about 
but despite a few developers using it there really is no one else. It's 
fair to say it's still a bit off and in the mean time Duncan's lead on 
freevo-1.x with the contributions from the community has helped keep the 
freevo project in general going.

There was a long period for a while there before his involvement where 
it wasn't looking good. The work on the 1.x branch has helped retain 
users and developers and I think it still has a part to play. In the end 
it's up to Adam whether to work on 1-NG or 2.0 but I might suggest that 
it would be good for Adam to spend at least a bit of time committing 
outstanding patches to the 1.x branch that Duncan hasn't had a chance to 
get to so that a new release can be done for users of 1.x which will 
help keep users and contributors on board.

While that's going on, if you do have time to start hacking on 
freevo-2.0 then IMHO it would be worth updating the 2.0 wiki. The info 
above is great and I know doing documentation is the last thing you want 
to do but it would really help others seeing up to date information in 
the wiki if you do really want to encourage people to start shifting 
their focus onto the 2.0 branch. I can then put an announcement up on 
freevo.org (alongside a 1.9.5 release from Adam perhaps) pointing to the 
updated docs and asking for contributors to work on the areas you 
mention above. With Duncan no longer having time to spend on 1.x this 
seems like it might be a good progression path to bridge the changeover 
to 2.0 and get the larger community interested in it and freevo in 
general again.

John

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