Official XMMS2 client should be written in Qt!

I read the that theefer did the other day and I just wanted to voice out my opinion about the Official client. I don't doubt that all people in the XMMS2 community probably already know my position about this, but I wanted to make it perfectly clear!

I think the official XMMS2 client should be written in the Qt toolkit and these are my reasons for it:

1. Qt works natively on all the platforms that XMMS2 runs on. More important, it actually looks good on all the platforms that XMMS2 runs on. It even looks good under GNOME these days.
2. The Qt API is very clean and easy to use.
3. You can write Qt applications in C++, Python or Ruby (see my language discussion further down).
4. Qt bundles with QtScript, which is a ECMA compliant language, which means that we can extend the official client in QtScript. This means a very low entry-level for people that want to add functionality to our client. QtScript is (IMHO) not fast enough to be the sole language we should use, but that might change soon.
5. Upcoming features like QtKientic will bring awesomeness to our client.

I also think that the base client should be written in C++, but supported by QtScript. First we had the idea that we should write the whole client in QtScript, just have a small C++ loader. I have researched this possibility but I don't think QtScript is ready for that. QtScript is slow, and you need the qtscriptbindings to bind the full Qt API to QtScript, that takes 2 hours to compile on my master macbook pro.

Writing the application in Python or Ruby would probably be more rapid than writing it in C++, but it will be a bigger pain to deploy. Qt/C++ is easiest to deploy because all the tools are already there and users don't have to install yet-another-lib. My second choice would be Python, mostly because I know Python, I don't know Ruby :)

How about xmmsclient bindings?

The last thing I would like to touch is about xmmsclient bindings. Right now I have Qt4 bindings that are native, that means that it doesn't use libxmmsclient beneath, they are not merged into the mainline, but could be found here. I think these bindings could be a good candidate to use in the client, but we would need to make it complete and merge it into XMMS2 first.

See this post as a material for discussion, I would love to hear your opinion. Let the flames rain!

Health related

So this post is totally non-technical.

The last month I have been on a new diet. The reason for this is that I realized that I was simply getting way over-weight and unhealthy, so I decided to try something that worked good for my mother. I haven't blogged about this before because it's not something fun to talk about. But now, after four weeks on the diet and increased physical activities I have lost 14 kilos (about 30 pounds) and I am starting to feel light, full of energy and a lot more healthy.

I have also decided to participate in midnattsloppet this year. It's a 10 km run throughout Göteborg in the end of August. Want to join? :)

GSoC 2009 and other tidbits.

I am on vacation this week, we where supposed to be in Sälen the whole week for some skiing, but due to some mandatory classes that Lisa had to attend, that didn't happen. We will leave for Sälen today instead and get 3 days in the slopes, that will be perfectly fine as well, I am actually looking forward to it a lot.

Also two days of vacation at home haven't been unwelcome at all. I have had time to reinstall my Eee 901, this time with easy peasy. I like it a lot, it really makes the most of the small screen and I didn't have to worry about drivers and X11 configuration etc, etc.

I have also submitted XMMS2 GSoC 2009 application. With some great help of theefer and wanders we finialized all the texts and got it sent away. I have a good feeling about this year, I am more motivated to be the admin and we have learned a lot. I just hope that Google gives us the chance this year as well.

On a XMMS2 releated note DrM has finaly entered testing period. This is waay overdue and we hope that we can wrap it up before the start of the GSoC, so that students can work against that version and not some unreleased one.

Dollhouse - redux

Episode 2 was a lot better! Actually, I suspect that this was the episode that they where aiming for showing as the Pilot from the beginning. It explains a lot of the backstory and is less "ordinary" than the first episode. I just miss the trademarked whedon humor, please give!

XMMS2 vision

Following up on my post from FOSDEM I have now started the process together with the XMMS2 community to define our Vision. We are working on getting a version of this vision that everyone feels ok with. You can see our work (and chip in if you want) at the following wiki page.

Dollhouse

First episode of the much talked about Dollhouse was aired the other day. I got my hand on a digital copy and I watched it with a lot of anticipation. Aaaand it didn't let me down completely, but it didn't wow me either.. I like the concept, it's pure close-future sci/fi with the whole download/upload of memory concept well in place, Elizas performance was solid, but still something was missing. I am not giving up on this yet, I have faith in you Joss Weadon! But I hope we will see more weadon-esque humor and cleaver twists in the coming episodes.

First vision, then hack.

I am currently sitting in one of the Hacker Rooms at FOSDEM in Brussels. I have spent my last two days together with a great group of XMMS2 developers, just as last year. I really enjoy these events where you have the possibility to actually meet the people you spend a lot of your spare time with.

The discussions this year was very different than last years topics. This year people was more concerned about how to organize the distributed team and work on the "right stuff". I find it pretty funny since this is just the things I have started to do at Purple Scout recently.

I have decided to give it a go for the XMMS2 community as well. I am sure that I can leverage on some of the things I have learned recently, but I also know that it will be very different since the developers of the XMMS2 community are not working on XMMS2, just doing it for the kicks (and possibly the chicks, but I think that is just a big misunderstanding).

One of the talks that inspired the discussion was Bdale Garbee's keynote about the Debian community. He said that you shouldn't underestimate the values of values. Basically you'll need to share common values and goals within a community in order to get everyone aligned. Debian has a Social Contract that outlines the vision for the Debian project.

My plan is to establish a similar document for the XMMS2 project. It will be a document that is created by the community for the community and will hopefully allow us to align better towards the ultimate world domination goal.

After this document is done I will move on and establishing our "Code of Conduct" or "Development Guidelines", this document will outline how we work together as a group and what processes we follow.

So the current plan for world domination is:

1. Establish the XMMS2 vision document
2. Establish the XMMS2 code of conduct document
3. Get everyone super-hyped about XMMS2 development
4. Hack!
5. ????
6. World Domination! (Or at least 'Ready to amaRock').