Planet Linux México
Planet XMMS2
Planet Python México

Sin embargo, he considerado que ha sido una buena forma de entretenerme aplicando algunos conocimientos hasta ahora estancados por cosas del trabajo y escuela. Me he divertido de lo lindo; aprendí muchas cosas que solo tenía en concepto, pero, que no había tenido la molestia de sentarme a practicarlas.

Y sacandole un poco de jugo a esta sencilla aplicación decidí darle algunos toques mas:

• Sería una aplicación sencilla con 3 Tabs.
  • About: Sencilla descripción del App.
  • Connection: Conexión a Twitter (usuario y password)
  • Preferences: Anexe un Grid para parámetros que en un futuro podrían añadirse a los actuales que son.
    • Filter: Formato del texto a mandar a Twitter.
    • Active: Si deseamos logearnos en Twitter al iniciar la App
    • Mode: El modo que bien puede ser “Twittea todas las canciones” o “Twittea solo las que te digo”
• TaskBarIcon: Un icono en la barra de tareas el cual me permitirá esconder o visualizar la App, y mostrará un menú con algunas acciones.
• FileConfig: El cual me pertira salvar la ultima configuración hecha por el usuario.

De entre las cosas que estuve aprendiendo (y que aun lo estoy por que es constante) fue el uso de las librerías gráficas wx para las GUI’s sobre python, y ya que heredan mucho de C, la cosa pues puede parecer tan fácil o complicado según se vea.

Como muchos desarrolladores me valí de wxGlade para el diseño de las interfaces que poco después se pueden mejorar en rendimiento codificando a mano (gracias a mi querido gEdit + plugins) y que puede ahorrarnos mucho tiempo.

En cuanto a la programación pues verán, el uso del middleware python-xmmsclient es básicamente sencillo, salvo claro que para capturar los cambios en el reproductor (cambio de canción) fue necesario implementar llamadas asíncronas con el servidor para después darles salida a twitter.

Otro aspecto que me pareció interesante manejar fue el uso de archivos de configuración, y ya que python cuenta con algunas librerías que nos facilitan el trabajo, no dude en usarlas. ConfigPaser es una librería que me permite editar los archivos de configuración de manera natural, sin rodeos pues y de la que recomiendo le den una checada.

Y por último pero sin dejar de lado, el uso de la clase TaskBarIcon de wx para implementar un icono en la barra de tareas el cual al dar doble click me permite visualizar la app, o click derecho para un Menú con algunas acciones como las que podemos ver en las imágenes.

Pongo a disposición de ustedes el código, ya sea para su uso, desarrollo, o simplemente por curiosidad de ver lo que ya detrás del desarrollo con Python, wx, XMMS2 y Twitter.

Código Fuente

svn checkout http://x2t.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ x2t-read-only

Actualización: 9 de Febrero del 2010

Parametros:

• Filter:

• %artist
• %title
• %album
• %url
• %sample_format
• %mime

• 0: Logearte al iniciar al aplicación
• 1: Logearte solo al dar conectar.

• 0: Twittea todas las canciones.
• 1: Twittea solo las que yo indique en “Tweet this song”

Today, i want to thanks the guys of Planet XMMS2 by add my feed. You know that i’m interested in developing for XMMS2 clients, and therefore i’m developing XMMS2 Client called Angel. Althought is developing even.

Thanks guys.

For some mysterious reason, Internet Explorer (tested in IE7 and IE8) strips leading spaces in text nodes preceded by an empty element, such as this:

[code lang="html"]

[/code]

While innoccuous in static pages, it becomes problematic when DOM nodes get updated after a delay by some Javascript, as the separating whitespace has disappeared, hence ruining the layout of your text.

Surprisingly, I haven’t found any reference to this IE bug (not that there is a shortage of complaints about other IE idiosyncrasies), so I thought I’d share the problem and the solution I have found here. It’s all demonstrated in the following example:

[code lang="html"]
!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

world

  world

[/code]

In the first case, the whitespace gets stripped, thus resulting in “Helloworld”. In the second example, the non-breaking space prevents IE from stripping the whitespace, so that when the span is filled by Javascript, the text reads “Hello world” as expected.

If you know other solutions or whether it’s considered a bug that will be fixed, please post in the comments!

On my way to the Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit 2009, I accepted DraX’s invitation to give a 1-hour talk about XMMS2 Collections at his work, i.e. Metaweb, in San Francisco.

The topic was somewhat relevant for them as it’s reminiscent of MQL, the query language they developed for Freebase. It’s worth noting that although both share a pool of buzzwords such as “graph”, “loosely-structured”, “querying”, etc, they are not quite the same:

• Freebase is essentially a giant graph-database, which you query with MQL to retrieve graph fragments.
• The XMMS2 database is a flat denormalized store, which you query with graph-structured Collections to retrieve a list of entries.

Note: Collections 2.0 should however allow fancier querying to retrieve tree-shaped structures.

About 10-20 people showed up and listened to me blurbing about the concept of Collections, the rationale behind them, the API, Collections 2.0, possible UI uses, what it represents for the user, pointers to S4, etc.

It’s all in those over-engineered slides that I have no choice but to put online, under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License, for them to live on forever on the internets. And yes, it’s still either in evil Keynote format (source), or in PDF.

Oh and Metaweb, thanks for the food!

IEEE Software recently published an opinion piece from Tom DeMarco titled ‘Software Engineering: An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone?’ in which DeMarco appears to declare the death of ‘Software Engineering’ as a discipline. Unsurprisingly, this is generating some waves in the tech blogging community, with pieces such as ‘Software Engineering: Dead?’ from Jeff Atwood’s Coding Horror, and Myles Eftos’s ‘Yep, Software Engineering is dead’.

From reading DeMarco’s article, it is apparent that what he is addressing is the emphasis placed on ‘control’ on software projects - that ‘software engineering’ is often taken to mean that it’s a means of controlling the outcomes of developing a software project. It should be obvious that DeMarco’s stance is one of reflecting upon his previous work and making some comments about how his work has been perceived in the software industry over the years. Aside from some “Aw shucks, I wish my younger self had been wiser” style reflection, DeMarco laments the fact that his work has been used over the years to justify the creeping bureaucratisation of the software development process. From that point, DeMarco goes on to prescribe that, rather than controlling minutiae, those in charge of software development should be treating their projects (by way of analogy) as unruly teenagers - by attempting to instil a sense of moral values and principles, rather than by being overbearing and all-controlling.

Unfortunately, Jeff & Myles appear to either be sensationalising, or reacting to a rather superficial reading of DeMarco’s opinion. Straight off the bat, Jeff points out DeMarco’s gravitas in his field, to hammer home the point that ‘yes, this is a big deal’. From there, however, Jeff switches to his usual agenda of elevating the romantic notion of ‘software craftsmanship’. Not that I’m averse to this position - au contraire, I’m a big fan of Jeff’s frequent expounding on matters of software development principles. What I disagree with, however, is the utter sensationalism with which this is being made here. At least, I am heartened that Jeff appears to have grasped the main point of DeMarco’s analogy: “If you want to move your project forward, the only reliable way to do that is to cultivate a deep sense of software craftsmanship and professionalism around it.”

I have no idea what has been said about either DeMarco’s piece or Jeff’s blog post on the 220 mailing list, though reading through Myles’ blog post left me slightly incensed at certain points. The analogy between building a bridge and building software is somewhat tired. Compared to building bridges, building ‘software’ encompasses a vastly larger scope. That much we agree on. You might as well be comparing building software with building anything made of materials sourced from the ground. From here, however, it seems that Myles launches into a tirade about his least favourite academic subjects, or at least the ones that he found ‘stupid’. What I fail to grasp at this point is the relevance to DeMarco’s piece… But I’ll play along anyway.

Yes, formal proofs are arduous, and can be rather silly for trivial programming tasks, but it should be obvious that such techniques aren’t applicable to all software development contexts. Would you apply formal proof methods to a small dynamic website you’ve just built? Hell no. Would you apply formal proof methods to mission-critical software that could potentially lead to injuries, fatalities or serious damage to the environment or property, if anything were to go wrong? Hell yes. (Well, some variant of a formal method, anyway) It’s a simple cost-benefit (or risk analysis) scenario: which costs less - the development process, or the consequences of something going seriously wrong? I’d further argue that formal proof exercises done in an undergraduate academic setting would be more geared towards teaching and learning the process of doing the proofs than anything else. This is undergrad CS that we’re talking about, with its endless assortment of silly assignments that require students to produce little of value beyond the end of their courses. I might also add that, even with a ‘simple’ program having 9 lines of code, this degree of simplicity may be afforded by a myriad of much more complex underlying supporting systems - the degree of simplicity of a program may simply be a matter of perspective, or from where you’re standing to look at the code.

What I find most troubling about Myles’ post, however, is the complete denigration of UML. Yes, I’ll admit that I’m a big proponent of UML. There may be a point about UML working really well with the waterfall model of software development, but to then imply that UML is almost completely useless - by association with the inadequacy of the waterfall model to address ‘real’ problems - seems a lot like missing the point of what UML is actually about. Yes, UML may superficially look like ‘architectural drawings or flow diagrams or something’. More importantly, UML is a standard notation to communicate about elements of software design. Beyond the ability of expensive software to create specky, neat and professional looking UML diagrams, UML itself is a tool for software developers to use when thinking about, crafting and communicating about the systems they’re building. By analogy, I would say that an ability to work with UML is like an ability to work with words and sentences and paragraphs. That is probably the reason why IT recruitment agents started using ‘Object Oriented Analysis & Design Skills’ and ‘Sound understanding of UML’ in their job ads - those *are* fundamentally useful skills to have.

As a programmer, I can have a conception of something that is a ‘class’ or an ‘object’ and be able to express the idea in a diagram, say on a whiteboard, while talking with fellow programmers, and still be able to more or less directly translate this concept into code using Java or Python. Using UML, I can model relationships between such classes and talk about such relationships - beyond mere representation, UML can be a valuable tool for solving software design problems, especially in team environments. [And the good news is that there are tools nowadays to automate parts of the translation between UML and code, so you don’t have to ‘go and update hundreds of UML documents every time a minor change was required’] None of this is really dependent upon the specific project management methodology being used. The real problem, as far as IT recruitment is concerned - at least in this region anyway - is that there is often a disconnect between what software development shops need and what their recruitment agents end up publishing. Given that IT recruitment agents are often more experienced in HR and marketing, they end up developing formulas for easily pushing job ads out there seemingly without much consideration for what is really required. That is how you end up with a litany of job ads that look like the same stuff rehashed over and over again. Thanks to all this, graduates who do have such skills end up in jobs which are advertised as requiring their skillset, yet never use them in any useful capacity.

Getting back to the main article, however - the point that DeMarco is trying to make here is rather subtle, one which can best be understood in the very context of his analogy. Developing software, in general, applies to a vast field of human knowledge and applications. As such, decisions about how software should be developed necessarily need to vary based upon the context and constraints within which such development is occurring. By way of analogy, humans, as they grow into adults, cannot be robotically programmed to gracefully handle every possible situation they might encounter. (Or, at least, one could imagine that this approach could fail rather disastrously if tried) Given these limitations, it is far better to learn about core principles and knowing how and when to apply them to produce generally favourable results. DeMarco’s point is that, as this applies to humans, that may be the real way forward for software development.

p.s. Some interesting and relevant articles relating to this topic:
- “Is Software Engineering Engineering?” - Peter J. Denning, Richard D. Riehle
- “Software Engineering ≠ Computer Science” - Chuck Connell

You say “I’m a strong believer in the rights of creative artists to control the distribution of their copyrighted content.” Sure, why not? And while we’re at it, we can be strong believers in breathing under water, or living to 130. Those ideas are similar to the idea of controlling distribution, in that there are a whole bunch of people who think they would be really really great. They’re all similar in another way too. Can you guess what it is?

I have lately been embroiled in a debate about the importance of commenting in code. While I don’t yet believe that comments are completely unnecessary, I tend to think that they are largely unnecessary. Almost two years ago, I wrote ‘Software development without maps’ in which I extolled the virtues of ‘documentation’. While it can be easy to confuse ‘documentation’ with ‘commenting’ and jump to the conclusion that I’m now contradicting myself, I’d like to draw the distinction between the two. Commenting is only a specific type of documentation - a kind of documentation that is so narrow in scope that it only applies to code. [Sidenote: In general, commenting will end up covering the ‘mechanisms’ expressed by code, and very little of the ‘policies’ and justifications - which would be best covered by higher level documentation anyway.]

In essence, I see programming as an activity where one devises and manipulates abstract models. Writing code is merely a process of expression of such models. What I was trying to get at, in my previous blog post, was that the same models can be viewed at different levels of abstraction. The ‘documents’ encompass knowledge about the models at a higher abstraction level than the code. Documents, being UML diagrams, specifications, or other suitable representations. Comments, on the other hand, are at the same level as code. While it may be useful to sketch out a program using comments before the real code is written, I believe that such ‘scaffolding’ should eventually fade away. Like faint construction lines in a technical drawing, such comments are there to provide an initial framework for laying out the real lines and curves. Like faint and rough sketches on canvas, or a block of stone or wood, the comments become unnecessary as the system is painted, or moulded into shape.

As a software system takes shape and matures, the most reliable indicator of what it is doing is the code itself, not any superfluous comments. Indeed, there are various dangers associated with using and maintaining comments beyond the initial stages of coding:

• comment maintenance overhead
  As code is modified for various reasons - bug fixes, feature additions, refactoring for reuse - extra time is required to verify not only the proper operation of the code (which can be automated), but also to review existing comments and rewriting the ‘comment narrative’ in a way that fits the reshaped code. I consider this to be a special case of duplication of logic - in the presence of comments that attempt to explain the program logic, one needs to maintain not only the actual program logic expressed in the code, but also those comments that ‘pretend’ to be saying what’s happening. Such a task becomes especially daunting in a team of non-trivial size, as various people end up writing and rewriting chunks of this narrative - which all ends up devolving into an incoherent and unreliable mess. There are ways of managing, verifying and testing program code - and enforcing program coding style conventions - written in a diverse environment, but there is no reliable way of getting people to write a natural language in a consistent, non-monotonous way. The best we can do is introduce the editor model - should we then have a ‘comment editor’ on every programming team, to ensure that all the comments flow clearly and adopt the right style and tone?
• matching comments with code
  On the other hand, if programmers do not take the required amount of time to fully review and rewrite comments as they implement changes, we end up in a situation where the comments do not accurately reflect the sequence of events expressed in the code. As this compounds, over time, programmers who are introduced to the system later on bear the considerable risk of being lead astray while attempting to trace defects. The end result is code of poor quality, at the significant expense of time - time wasted following misleading comments.

Looking at the issue from another perspective, what about the usefulness of comments? The machine does not care about comments in the code. Comments do not affect the compiler. Comments do not affect whatever is going to be interpreting the code, or some processed version of the code. That is, indeed, the point of comments. Comments won’t make programs run faster, or in a more stable manner. Comments won’t eliminate bugs. If guns don’t kill people and people kill people, then comments don’t eliminate bugs - people eliminate bugs.

As far as I can tell, the importance of commenting code is 1) seemingly over-emphasised by Computer Science departments, and 2) an unfounded myth perpetuated in programming shops. OK, after a quick trip through IEEEXplore, I found several papers seemingly extolling the virtues of code commenting. However, they all seem to cite the same paper when doing so. A paper written in 1988. A paper about a study based on PL/I and Pascal. Enough said. Clearly, there has been some research done on the topic, but a lot of it seems outdated, especially in the face of more modern concepts such as Object Oriented languages, etc. I shall delve more into this and possibly post a follow-up to this.

In any case, even I was to assume that comments are useful and will bring about world peace, I cannot find any qualitative documentation on the subject. It’s all well and good to say things like “Your code should be 20% commented” or “You need to have comments describing each function” or “Comment about why, not necessarily what, the code is doing”, but no one ever seems to have good examples of such. Such vagueness simply serves to exacerbate the problem - anyone can write practically anything they like in comment blocks and get away with it. “Whaddya mean, I wrote comments! See!” A more practical way of posing this question would be: Given that I have a programming task, how do I write good quality comments that will remain useful to future programmers, given what I know about the problem domain, and how I anticipate it to change? Is there an example of this story and how it pans out?

Taking a step back, let’s look at the real problem that commenting pretends to solve.

As I mentioned earlier, programming involves the manipulation of abstract models and expressing them in code. It therefore follows that one gains more by learning how to more effectively express programming code than by decorating code with comments. Programming code is the ultimate middle ground - it is something understandable both by the programmer and by the machine (at some level). The programmer who can write prose in comments does not hold a candle to the programmer who can get the machine to execute exactly what he wants to get done. There are two main reasons for the existence of comments in code: 1) making up for the lack of higher level documentation, and 2) attempting to mask complexity by ‘explaining it in english’.

The first case is symptomatic of a poor development process, where intentions articulated at the business level aren’t properly captured and architected into solutions at various levels of abstraction. In the absence of UML and other such higher level program models, developers are supposed to resort to code comments to explain ‘why’ certain things are being done, even though higher level descriptions would be more accessible to various stakeholders. (This is a variant of the “explain why you’re doing this” style of commenting) Comments used in such a manner simply mask a lack of traceability between what a particular client wants, what possible solutions are presented and approved, and what ends up getting implemented. The valuable historical record of the back-and-forth discussions detailing what happened and when particular decisions were made, is simply lost. Coupled with an environment where developers are added to and removed from a project in a piecemeal fashion, this is simply a recipe for a fragmented disaster, as few of those involved have a complete memory of the sequence of events.

On the other hand, masking complexity by ‘explaining in english’ is plainly disproven by decades of development on programming languages. Concepts such as functions, classes, methods, packages and libraries were developed for the specific purpose of managing complexity by breaking down code into smaller, safer, more tractable and more manageable chunks. Those allow for the implementation of layerable and composable solution patterns, as well as enabling reuse - all techniques well known to help improve the long term reliability and maintainability of software systems. If it weren’t for those, we’d still be writing long epics in FORTRAN.. if we could even get that far.. The fact that classes and methods can be given meaningful names dispels a lot of the reason for using inline comments. Got a function doing lots of things? Break it up into smaller functions that have descriptive names. The code is then easier to follow at a higher abstraction level. Want to zoom in on a specific step? Just go into that function. Easy. Up and down the abstraction ladder.

Despite the various reasons for writing comments, it all boils down to managing complexity: the complexity of stakeholders’ requirements, the complexity of the solution at hand. What I’ve been trying to say is that all of this relates to the management of the development process. By building maps and models of stakeholders’ requirements, a better understanding of the problem domain can be achieved. The process of building such maps and models also helps in the discovery and resolution of conflicting requirements and essential priorities. From there, developers can devise subsystems that - when coupled together - should aim to meet the set of requirements. Such subsystems can then be defined in terms of their interfaces and interactions with each other - all at a higher abstraction level. From there, the team can then zoom in further into each subsystem and attempt to refine the implementation further. This same process can be repeated down to applications, services, packages, classes and methods. The whole ‘stack’ describes the abstraction ladder in a consistent manner, and moving up and down this stack constitutes the ‘zooming’ action. Explaining the process in such a way presents a simple concept that can be applied by various people involved in the process. Stakeholders talk to architects and account managers to produce documents and customer-facing models, while architects present the same documents and models to developers for further refinement and evaluation. The end product of this process is a whole collection of inter-related artifacts that document the history of the project and its various aspects from different perspectives - all of which is much more useful and accessible then comments buried deep in the code.

Another way of looking at the commenting problem is one of situational awareness. Piles of comments (or code, for that matter) are essentially worthless to a programmer until he reads them. (And when he does read them, the code will provide a more accurate picture of what’s happening, rather than the comments) A programmer (A) who writes some code has implicit knowledge of what the code does and why it’s doing what it does. A programmer (B) who simply reads comments written by someone else has explicit knowledge of what the code is doing, but not necessarily any implicit knowledge. A programmer (C) who reads some code written by someone else internalises a more accurate mental model of what the code is doing. Simply put, programmer A devises a mental model and expresses it in code, while programmer C is doing the reverse process by reading the code and building a mental model. While programmer B has some chance of success at building a model, he might end up doing so ‘faster’ than programmer C, but at the expense of an inaccurate - possibly even out of date - model. This whole construction and deconstruction of mental models is exactly why the ‘abstraction ladder’ development process is powerful - it provides models of varying detail at various levels to enable almost anyone to more easily conceptualise any part of the solution and work with it.

I think it’s a great thing for people to finally be stepping up to think of a way forward for XMMS2, especially after a period of relative stagnation. However, I have a few bones to pick with the current shape of things.

Given the direction that the ‘XMMS2 Vision’ is taking, I I’ll say this: I think software freedom is overrated. We’re in 2009, an era where Open Source is practically mainstream - computer manufacturers such as Dell and ASUS are selling desktop and laptop computers with Linux (typically Ubuntu, or some other Debian derivative) pre-installed. ASUS’s Linux-powered eee PC helped launch the netbook revolution, with many observing that the netbook was an ideal application of the low cost benefits of a Linux-based OS. After a decade of people wishing to see Linux as a relatively mainstream desktop OS, it is practically there - any moderately computer literate average Joe can easily grab an Ubuntu Live CD and be on his way.

That’s not to say that freedom is not important, but simply chanting ‘freedom, freedom, freedom’ does not build a thriving community of passionate users. Well, actually, it does, but that’s a kind of community that borders on blind faith, religious dogma and rabid zealotry when it comes to ‘freedom’ - e.g. the cult of GNU. Passionate, indeed, but is this what you see for the future of the XMMS2 project?

When I think about the XMMS2 project, I tend to take the ‘freedom’ aspect for granted, given that XMMS2 has been an open source project for most of its time in existence. It’s a given that XMMS2 is released under an open source licence, and that the small community of loyal developers, users and other fans has been built upon this foundation - I don’t think that is likely to change. When looking for a future vision for the XMMS2 project, I’d say that it would be more useful to search for more practical goals than to get lost in navel gazing about freedom. In the end, what people care about is code that works.

I recognise that putting together this vision is a good opportunity to examine the values that are important to the XMMS2 project. More importantly, however, I think what’s needed is a sharper focus on achieving certain goals. Without a drive towards such goals, we’re pretty much left where we currently are, simply nibbling at ideas that we think are good at the time, without making much progress towards something more coherent.

I’d like to present my own vision for XMMS2 - by no means a definitive attempt, but merely my opinion - and comment on what has been said/written so far.

First of all: XMMS2, what is it? We use the term ‘XMMS2’ in many contexts, with multiple meanings. I feel that, without a clear idea of how to define the term, we’re likely to be left floundering, especially since this is at the very core of what we’re trying to do. XMMS2 is many things:

• A music player. (Or ‘audio’ player? We’ll get back to this..)
• A framework for building custom ‘jukeboxes’?
• A community of people who study, use, develop or otherwise contribute to a common codebase.
• A project - to produce a music player - encompassing the community effort.

Personally, over the years I’ve been involved with XMMS2, it has been all this and more:

• An opportunity to participate in an Open Source project and understand what it’s about - especially the ability to do so from firsthand experience rather than being an outsider looking in.
• An opportunity to put my software development skills into practice - and learn more about development in multiple languages, algorithms, software development processes.
• An opportunity to discover more interesting kinds of music than I knew of - music that’s almost non-existent on local radio stations and music shops.
• An opportunity to virtually meet and interact with strange people from all over the globe.

When I was first introduced to the XMMS2 project, I was merely a university student tinkering with something I found interesting at the time. What I learned from the subsequent experience, however, tremendously increased my development skills and practical knowledge of how software can be developed. I can say with some amount of gratefulness that being involved with the XMMS2 project is one of the major things that has shaped my career as a software developer so far - what I learned from Anders’ engineering skills is still something that has an influence on how I build software today.

Perhaps, then, one might consider ‘education’ as one of the values of the XMMS2 project. Indeed, XMMS2 has been a mentoring organisation in Google’s Summer of Code program for a number of years now - something which I believe has been quite instructive for both the students and the mentors involved. I’d like to think that there are others who might be interested in learning a thing or two about ‘real’ software development to join the community. Granted that code produced by the XMMS2 project is far from perfect, and far from being an academic example of great software engineering, I believe that there is much one can learn by being involved in the community and studying the code. (And no, the XMMS2 project isn’t unique in this respect - many other open source projects also fit the bill)

Beyond what XMMS2 means to each community member, we need to look at where the project is headed. The way I see it, there are two main points to make about this: 1) building the code (or system, or framework - technical excellence), and 2) building the community (community excellence). In this process, we must bear in mind that we’re trying to appeal to certain relatively distinct groups of people:

• Users
• Developers

Both groups view technical and community excellence differently.

In general, as far as users are concerned, if the product works, they’re (mostly) happy. (If they’re really happy, they might even tell their friends) As far as community is concerned, users are happy to occasionally rely on the community for support when things go wrong (Why can’t I play my music, etc). A user’s experience in both respects will dictate how long the user will remain loyal. For example, if XMMS2 can’t easily play a particular file, the user will seek an alternative solution and likely switch to a different player. If the user cannot get the community to resolve a particular problem, or finds the community relatively unfriendly, he will likely gravitate towards a more friendly community.

As far as developers are concerned, technical excellence is about producing interesting code in particular ways - a more efficient algorithm, a more flexible plugin system, a library with a clean API, a seriously cool feature that’s not available anywhere else. The cornerstone, however, is the existing developer community around the project - these existing developers are the gatekeepers to the existing codebase, the ones with inside-out knowledge of how the existing system works, the ones who share the history of the project and dictate where it is going. The interface between contributing developers and core developers is exactly where the value of ‘open source’ comes into play. On one hand, contributing developers are attracted by how easy it is for them to modify existing code to introduce new features or fix defects, and on the other hand, core developers must have processes in place to ensure that code of relatively high quality is accepted - while encouraging the better contributors to remain interested.

Somewhere in the middle, there’s an intersection between the set of users and the set of developers. This typically takes the form of passionate users with certain skills moving towards becoming developers by contributing code to the project. In general, I think that this should be encouraged, as it grows the base of community members available to support users and induct new developers.

OK, so I’ve talked a bit about what I think is important for XMMS2 as a community. I’ll post some more later about users, developers and XMMS2 as the product.

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').

• Pressing the icon in the dock doesn't bring up the minimized Things window.
• Synchronization with iPhone only works over wifi and you have to be on the same network. Also if your firewall/router/switch for some reason filters bonjour (mDNS) it will not work (I had to fight the system administrator at work for this).

Antes de comenzar a programar un cliente para el xmms2 tendremos que investigar como funciona, como es que logra comunicarse con un o muchos clientes al mismo tiempo.

Para interactuar con el servicio xmms2d es necesario hacerlo por medio de un intermediario (middleware) que llevara la comunicación entre el servidor y el cliente.

Es decir, el demonio xmms2d se ejecuta a la espera de peticiones, mismas que le serán pedidas por el intermediario; en la imagen superior vemos a dos objetos de tipo libxmmsipc quienes son los que están enlazados y pueden comunicarse en el mismo lenguaje, empero, el de la izquierda se entiende con el demonio, y el de la derecha con el cliente. A estos dos en conjunto les llamamos Middleware.

Afortunadamente existe una libreria en python que ayudara a actuar como intermediario entre el demonio y nuestro cliente. Esta libreria es llamada python-xmmsclient.

Los desarrolladores de xmms2 nos proponen algunas reglas de deberemos seguir para tener un buen funcionamiento entre nuestro cliente y el servidor, y no afectemos configuraciones que todos los clientes utilizan.

Entre ellas, respetar la variable de entorno  XMMS_PATH, o si nuestro cliente guarda configuraciones podremos hacerlo dentro del directorio apuntado por $XDG_CONFIG_HOME. Así como algunas otras mas (para mas información aquí).

Los desarrolladores nos han facilitado tanto el trabajo que disponemos de Medialib, que es una función que parsea la información Tag de un archivo de audio, poniéndola en una tabla que fácilmente podremos manipular.

Existen dos modos de comunicaciones básicamente, un modo síncrono y uno asíncrono, cada uno con su respectiva función para determinados casos. Vamos, que si desarrollamos un cliente en modo texto plano para consola, podremos usar un modo síncrono sin ningún problema, pero si nuestra aplicación será algo mas sofisticado y gráfico, lo mas recomendable es usar una comunicación asíncrona.

¿Por que asíncrona? Bien, para que me puedas entender mejor voy a tratar de explicar algunas funciones que se llevan a cabo en la comunicación cliente-servidor.

Pongámoslo fácil, cuando nosotros ponemos play, estamos ejecutando un comando, y este comando envía una señal al demonio que interpreta y regresa un resultado, mismo que el cliente puede interpretar a como le de la gana. Pero, supongamos que abrimos 2 clientes, ambos saben que existe una lista de reproducción cargada, en el primer cliente se nos ocurre borrar esta lista, entonces el segundo seguirá teniendo la lista completa sin sufrir ningún efecto y esto podría causarle problemas, por lo tanto, este debía ser avisado (por medio de una emisión del demonio) del cambio y tener la misma información que el primero, por ello que la comunicación debería ser asíncrona.

Por ahora todo ha ido perfecto, en los próximos post’s tratare de mostrarles como hacer una conexión con un sencillo script en python.

Enlaces:

Writing Xmms2 Clients

En el post anterior hable de este misterioso reproductor de audio para sistemas operativos de tipo unix, y debido a la falta de interfaces gráficas (Clientes) que satisfagan mis necesidades como usuario he decidido programarme uno.

El lenguaje que elegí eventualmente es python usando la librería wx; ya que quiero probar mi suerte en diseños de GUI y ver que tan adaptables pueden ser.

Bien, algunas características que quiero implementar.

• Panel de Control
  • Controles de Next, Back, Play, Stop, Pause, etc.
• Panel de reproducción.
  • Donde mostrará información del track en reproducción (tiempo, artista, titulo, etc).
• Playlist
  • Lista de reproducción.
    • Mostrando Artista y Titulo de la pista.
  • Opciones para añadir o quitar archivos de audio, así como salvar o abrir listas de reproducción al estilo del xmms en su primera versión.
  • Opción de Búsqueda. xmms disponía de la opción de búsqueda rápida (esto se hacia  presionando la tecla J) que es lo que quiero lograr.

Por el momento he diseñado una interfaz que me agrada (un poco parecida a esperanza), aunque probablemente pueda cambiar en algún momento y quiero usar mi blog para dar a conocer el seguimiento que le estoy dando.

Afortunadamente existe una librería para python (python-xmmsclient) que me facilitará el trabajo, pero de ello hablare un poco después. Aquí muestro el interfaz que he diseñado.

El proyecto llevará por nombre Angel, aunque no es el definitivo, y el motivo, bueno, este si es personal. Y si alguién se anima a contribuir al proyecto hagamelo saber, toda ayuda es bienvenida.

• Does the SCM record clients in its configuration when they are run? Probably not. How would it record the executable path, for example? We should find a way to make this more automatic.




• Provide methods to read/write SCM configuration.


• service_client --register #registers its configuration using above methods


• The above command can be called by waf during build to eliminate user intervention. The clients are already registered and ready for use upon installation!




• Can we rename the SCM's shutdown function to "kill" (and perhaps redefine its functionality) or something that can't be confused with xmmsc_service_shutdown?


• Can we change the default value of the "monitor" option (to check the configuration directory for updates) to true? This seems to cooperate much better with user expectations.


• Can we get rid of the "timeout" option (to wait before killing a service client after a shutdown request is received)? If we rename the method to "kill" its intentions will be a lot more obvious--take down the client now.

service_t:
 char *name;
 char *desc;
 uint32_t major;
 uint32_t minor;
 x_list_t *methods;

 uint32_t ref;

service_method_t
 char *name;
 char *desc;
 void *udata;
 xmmsc_service_notifier_t func;
 xmmsc_user_data_free_func_t ufree;
 xmms_value_type_t rettype;
 xmms_value_t *args;

void llamagui_llama_count_get (connection_t *xc)
{
  value_t *farms = list_new("llama_farm_a", "llama_farm_b");
  value_t *args = dict_new("farmlist", farms);

  res = service_query(xc, "LlamaCount", "count_get", args);
  service_notifier_set(xc, res, llamagui_llama_count_callback);
}

value_t *llamacount_get (connection_t *xc, service_method_t *method, value_t *args, void *udata)
{
  int count = 0;
  value_t *farmlist;

  farmlist = value_dict_get (args, "farmlist");
  for(; value_list_valid(farmlist); value_list_next(farmlist)) {
    count += llama_farm_count (value_int_get (farmlist));
  }

  return value_new_int(count);
}

void llamagui_llama_count_callback (value_t *ret)
{
  if (value_type(ret) == VALUE_TYPE_ERROR) {
    llamagui_error_set("Oh no! A llamacaust occurred. Error %s", value_error_get(ret));
    return;
  }

  llamagui_llama_count_set(value_int_get(ret));
}

It's that time again. People are walking around in flip-flops, getting tan(ner), and licking ice cream from cones. It's summer (or it's close enough, anyway), and this summer I'll be getting my tan from the computer monitor and my ice cream from the freezer. It'll be a basement-dweller's summer for me as I'm coding on XMMS2 in this year's Google Summer of Code.

I'll be working on service clients, a continuation of last year's unmerged work. The concept is to provide so-called "service" clients which perform a service (surprise!) that can be re-used by other clients so client authors aren't reinventing wheels all the time. It's just another way XMMS2 eases music player development to the point where making your own interface is a weekend project instead of a thesis project.

The client-server nature of XMMS2 is a constant issue when trying to add new features or fix bugs. What was trivial to accomplish in a monolithic music player is not so trivial in XMMS2, and vice-versa. Service clients are a way to provide the same whipped-cream-and-cherry features you'd find in a monolithic client, but in a reusable, modular, and extensible form. It's cleaner than adding new stuff straight to the daemon, but still fairly simple and straightforward to use.

Service clients work by registering themselves and their callable methods with the XMMS2 daemon. Regular clients (or even service clients, as they're regular clients, too) request a service client from the daemon and call its methods appropriately and get back data. It's that simple. Album art lookup, tag lookup, last.fm submissions, and FreeDB lookup are all easily written as service clients and their functionality is very easily included in any client by use of a few methods. Services are even browseable so, with a little user intervention, a new service client could be used from a client that has no idea how to use the service, at least in theory.

Service clients were part of last year's Summer of Code program, completed by student Ning "zeegeek" Shi under the direction of mentor Sébastien "theefer" Cevey. The API works and there are a couple service clients floating around, but zeegeek's codebase was never merged with the main XMMS2 tree. The code needs a full review and some questions about remaining oddities answered. A little bitrot has accumulated since last summer, too. My job will be to clean up the code and get it merged, first.

Later I'll also be writing the first language bindings in Ruby. This, too will be followed by a merge. Too often, Summer of Code projects are completed but remain unmerged for months, creating lots of work later. This summer, I'm including merges as part of the project goals. Once the service client API and Ruby bindings are completed and merged, it's time to take service clients' virginity. It won't be just a framework anymore, but I'll implement some useful clients, starting with a port of xmms2-scrobbler. And of course, this'll be followed by a merge as well.

Then more cool clients will follow. The next generation of collections, (Collections 2.0) also being implemented this summer, will probably implement the collections parser and a more flexible party shuffle as service clients. This is an exciting collaboration opportunity. Other possibilities include a medialib-updater styled service, taglib client, FreeDB/musicbrainz lookup, and album art lookup. I'm outlining way more service clients than I can handle this summer in the hopes that I can pick out an important and doable few and get those few done and merged by the end of SoC. They'll also be indispensable means of clearing up remaining kinks and bugs in the code while establishing some good example code and helping me write documentation.

Working on service clients this summer is exciting and I'm overjoyed that this is my first SoC. This is an excellent project with an excellent team during an excellent summer, so I've little doubt that all this year's projects will be successful. I'm hyped, and you should be, too! Stay tuned for when I finally settle down with a six-pack and start exercising my fingers.