[bongo-devel] Re: Bongo in Emacs 23

[Daniel Jensen]

Daniel Brockman <address@hidden> writes:

> Romain Francoise <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> What's the status of this?  Do we have all needed
>> copyright assignments?
>
> Yes, although --- like Daniel Jensen --- I have not yet
> received any confirmation from the FSF.

Well, Richard wrote to me that he's not working on Emacs 23. He did
not say anything about the assignments, nor did he comment on Last.fm,
but we should mention this on emacs-devel in a couple of months.

> Just so you don't think I'm holding out on you, here is the
> stuff I wrote before.  Please consider it very much a draft,
> please don't hesitate to criticise or change any aspect of it.

I have a few ideas and some criticism. It's a good start, though maybe
a little wordy.

Please have this in mind, from the GNU coding standards:

    Programmers tend to carry over the structure of the program as the
    structure for its documentation. But this structure is not
    necessarily good for explaining how to use the program; it may be
    irrelevant and confusing for a user.

    Instead, the right way to structure documentation is according to
    the concepts and questions that a user will have in mind when
    reading it.

It would be good to begin the manual with sections on starting Bongo,
inserting tracks and playing tracks. That is the basic usage of a
media player. It could even be a straight tutorial at the start. Then
we can go on explaining the details.

I think you should create an outline of the topics that a user would
want to read about.

>> Will the Last.fm support go in, too?  (It's a non-free service.)
>
> I don't know what the general opinion about Last.fm is among
> free software advocates.

My opinion is that a web service does not have to use free software
for me to use it. It is impossible to verify and it has no practical
implications to me anyway. I don't have an opinion about Last.fm in
particular. Of course, it is a slightly different question for Bongo
whether to recommend Last.fm. It needs consideration, for sure.

> Are there any similar services which exhibit a friendlier
> attitude towards software freedom?

MusicBrainz is a free music database, although I don't know if it has
a scrobble feature. However, it might be something that can be
combined with Bongo anyway. I've been thinking about a feature that
would fetch information and an album cover from some web site while
you're playing music.