Notices

On the whole I've found Canola2 to be very good after I ran the album art and video_thumm python scripts (with a symbolic link from ~/.canola/covers (from memory) to by internal media card music directory).

Issues I have and would like to be improved:

1. MPlayer sound out of sync with picture. Other than that I find the Video UI to be good.

2. Caching of photo thumbnails doen't seem to be working as if I scroll the tumbnails too quickly they are shown as blank until it stops and then redraws... Once the photo has been thumbnailed it should remain available.

3. Clicking on the main video button takes you to a menu with only one item. This menu should be removed unless there are more than one items. In which case the 'My videos' page should be shrunk horizontally and the to smaller (Photo and Audio) buttons added.

4. Album covers should be grouped by artist then album rather than album name. Indeed, I think the 'Album covers' option should be removed and the covers shown (as an option) in each of the other groups (Artists/Albums/etc).

5. On the 'Album Art' screen the Group should be above the album art and the album bame below. This would free up the right hand side for a much larger list (10 would be preference).

Other than the above improvements I feel that Canola2 has met or exceeded my expectations.

Keep up the good work.

Removing MPLAYER makes Canola use the default MEDIA PLAYER so that part is now fixed (thanks to Reggie for the tip). Funny, Canola sees my album art as pictures on the device but it does not associate them with the music files. UKMP made the assocaitions automatically. Wonder why.

Your limbs is not longer just because you have had them for a longer time. Similarly my number of posts only reflect the amount of time i have had my N800.

Any attempt to relate number of posts to intelligence or quality of posts, defeats the purpose

Just because the source is available for a program doesn't mean that the distributed versions are using that exact source. It'd be really easy to sneak something malicious into precompiled packages. Or do you go over the source of everything on your PC with a fine-toothed comb before compiling and installing it yourself? And your tablet as well? (Hey, if so, any chance you could compile python2.5-edbus without the N800/N810 optimizations and package it up for me? :P)

These guys have done all kinds of good open source work related to the program that everyone can benefit from and contribute to, and I don't think there's any real reason to be lambasting them over the fact that the source for just the absolute core isn't available. The only thing we can't do with the app is change the core UI. But once the plugin documentation is there we'll even be able to extend the app ourselves. So it all works out, IMO.

PJE -- I am only 2 weeks with the N810 (and with Linux). If I could ask a favor of you -- could you explain this process you describe above in a manner that a Newbie like me could implement it? I would love to see this succeed but I do not understand the steps needed to accomplish this.

Many thanks if you would.

Read Open Source philosophy before making silly comments as such.

But snides remarks like this are taking away from the core issues
1. Canola is unusable
2. Canola raises privacy concerns

Hei guys,

first of all please don't take this to not polite situations. Sruyavanshi has his point, has the right to think that the software is crap, and say that is not usable etc. As gustavo pointed, we are quite aware of our problems (I know people are not supposed to do it, but we have been writing a lot about them in my blog, here etc).

So let's clarify some of the points

WTF: yes, Video player (Mplayer is having problems, not canola, unfortunately) and what is missing is the option to set what player to use. The whole maemo platform suffers a little bit with video, actually now days I think video on linux is always a little bit more complicated than it should be for the end users (but we all know why)

Album arts, etc: unfortunately we removed the support. We already explained. There are legal issues for that. But you are right that we didn't recognize yours. Well the point is that( we are actually listening from the users also) theres a lot of users profile :

1. heavy users (linux savvy, that actually can make scripts to export from his box to canola all his album art)

2. Linux user (he will be able to run a couple of commands, keeps his music organized)

3. the windows power user (while not used to linux CL, will propably have a organized music collections )

4. windows regular users, that can or cannot have organized music (just a folder with a lot of files)

While we can :

1) support embedded + cover.jpg/png inside de artist folder this would still leave out the people that doesn't use folders. and for us they are really important.

The thing is.. we don't want to be itunes( reorganize his music collections) but we do want to provide them covers, (downloading) and as this was the first one that we did but got removed.

So the plan in my head (Gustavo can say if someting can block us) is to have:

1) Embbedded album art support (for the real power users)
2) cover.png / jpg in a folder (but this can generate erros for a lot of people)
AND if possible downloads (legal block)

this would be the ideal. Maybe some third party developer makes the plugin for the download.

Issues I have and would like to be improved:

1. MPlayer sound out of sync with picture. Other than that I find the Video UI to be good.
>> we saw that : / it sucks, we will see if we can help the mplayer team. and also provide a options to choose the video player engine.

2. Caching of photo thumbnails doen't seem to be working as if I scroll the tumbnails too quickly they are shown as blank until it stops and then redraws... Once the photo has been thumbnailed it should remain available.

Well.. it does. The problem is : remember that you are in a limited platform, with limited RAM and we don't want to eat all your resources. While your albums can have 100 photos, to load 1000 thumbnails on the memory would be a killler.
So the white thing is actually intentional to give you the scroll feedback instead of "chopping" even more the animations because we're don't have more memory and you know that happens then. So it's actually a a trick to consume less memory and give you more freedom (believe me you will need it) to use other softwares while canola still running. so that delay is actually ours,



3. Clicking on the main video button takes you to a menu with only one item. This menu should be removed unless there are more than one items. In which case the 'My videos' page should be shrunk horizontally and the to smaller (Photo and Audio) buttons added.

>> I wrote about that in my blog. I also wrote here =) The menu is empty because some of the features are not that. I asked " please forgive this for this beta" The second part of your suggestions kills the whole design for the main menu =) imagine scrolling with a button there? no =)... but don't worry with the new apps for videos this will be improved.



4. Album covers should be grouped by artist then album rather than album name. Indeed, I think the 'Album covers' option should be removed and the covers shown (as an option) in each of the other groups (Artists/Albums/etc).
>> this is a new view in our opinion, but I think your suggestion is valid, I will add to my "pool" where I control what was more asked and etc( actually this was the guide for canola2)


5. On the 'Album Art' screen the Group should be above the album art and the album bame below. This would free up the right hand side for a much larger list (10 would be preference).

>> well this is your preference. We have a grid for the layout and we are maintaing it. So we only break it if really needed and all others screens keep the alignment. But thanks for the suggestion and I will try it out in the image edition, to see if fits to the grid and really gives this " addition" I really don't see more albums fitting because of this,
(actually do you mean on the 3 album view.. or on the thumbnail view? after reading again I was confused - sorry I'm in the balcony, in a freezing night here)

Other than the above improvements I feel that Canola2 has met or exceeded my expectations.

>> Thanks, I think now.. it's time to really put everything on the software that was meant.. there's a lot of things to be improved (like ANY software around)

But now my comment for Suryavanshi :

Hei, I was think today that you placed your critics etc. (not a problem with them) and now later you said (there's a lot of complaining from the users etc) but in your first post you didn't say the only problem that is appearing (I have the emails also not only here) that is the scrolling x clicking and our " invisible scrollbar" that makes people fell that they are not scrolling.

So, actually thinking that you would probably talk about that made me think even more about the users concerns and how we will be able to change some things as they want to increase the usability. While we are not opensource, we do listen, (actually we are not opensource also is explained in several posts around here) and this release will improve so fast next year that I think we will be able to at least reach our target users expectations.

But again : I really don't have a problem, but please lets keep this as polite as possible. We (INDT) have most of our work opensourced (Python, EFL, Carman, Mamona, LLVM, Games, BlueZ, MaemoMyth) and only a thin layer of Canola is closed not because of canola but actually because of the company business case. We do have others projects (commercial ones) based on canola that pays the bills. As gustavo pointed we t
urned from a full closed release to a fully community oriented release (EFL + python bindings + media scaner ) where everything was done in community CVS, and we are not taking.. we are actually giving everything back. So please do critic us, but see the background first. I met Urho Konttori and told him in person that we were so proud of UKMP because we are python lovers, and he was the first one to push the limits and show how great is to work with python. Now people have a nice opensource alternative. Canola has a difference vision, and we do take usability for serious (in our concept) and maybe this doesn't fit your vision of usability but come on, we do tests, we do listen to people we do late changes to improve and our focus is on usability. Transitions and eye candy are part of a pleasurable user experience, and in the end I will repeat myself:

We want to promote the platform. Not compete, not be closed because of this or that. We believe on the openness of maemo and we want to show how far can you go with it. Canola doesn't use any "secret" from the platform, is a pure python + EFL application, and in the end we want to see maemo growing. And having nice applications for several types of users is crucial for it's success.

If you want, please send me a private message, and I will also discuss any design decision with you, listen to any comments and like we do in the office " discuss" pros and cons of each alternative and see what fits best. IF you want to do so. I know you problably don't because it's closed but you have a personal invitation to do so.

About the forum : Reggie offered us, and for me (and gustavo) makes life easier in this stage where (like you said) there's a lot of issues to be solved. I gladly accepted so we can keep answering as much as possible without losing ourselves in that huge thread.

BR

Marcelo

Hey Suryavanshi : please place one thing after your comments to be more accurate :

1. " In my and some others opinion " ... canola us ususable

Why I say that? Because while I do respect you and your opinion, please read the blogs, read the threads, I think the amount of people who's using it and like it is bigger than the ones that don't. Come on! you can throw how many stones you want but don't be blind of no seeing that people do have requests, and wanted things better (and it will be soon) but most of the comments are positive?

But now if you problem is personal, (which I would for sure wonder why) then you can talk by the others. for now I think you should make the critics like the others, for yourself, about your opinion not the others.

2. We are a closed source software, and the part that deals with your data is fully open source. The visualization layer is closed and will remain as such, but apart of that I don't see where those concerns can exist. (ok you can doubt etc etc etc - but we are not working in several fully open source projects with privacy damaging strategies in mind.

BR

Marcelo

...and especially:

3. You are a d---b loudm--th.

Hei fpp, please : / don't do that.