2010-09-27, 14:53
@jmarshall
Thanks for clarification. I wasn't sure as I'm managing my media with EmberMM since quite some time now and didn't remember XBMCs behavior from the time before EmberMM.
@Harry Muscle
As for the file suffix, I'd still go the way to use the suffix ".offline" for it I think and add the parser for the strings "dvd/bluray/brd/hddvd" to the "default" file parser of XBMC (if something like this exists). Maybe you have to implement it at the same place anyway.
And I don't think you should use stuff like "movie-title.disc-123.dvd" for the label support, due to the fact that XBMC might think that those files could be a stack as it's already looking for "disc[0-9]*" IIRC. So better find a approach/spelling that's not yet in use and allows any disc label - not just numbers - like my proposal with the "#" prefix: "movie-title.#any-label.dvd.offline"
Slightly OT:
It'll be cool if one could hook into the file parser of XBMC and add custom parsing rules and perform actions based on them, so that the offline support could become a addon with a more frequent release cycle. Not sure if you guys are familiar with hooks, so I'll try to explain: Hooks are pretty much like events - so a addon would have to register itself to a hook/event of a certain process. Those processes explicitly need to support hooks/events of course, so they need to check if there are registered listeners/hook-methods and call one after another by passing n parameters to the registered addon methods. I know this hook concept from PHP frameworks and it's a nice way to extend tools. Maybe that's already possible somehow - I'm unfortunately not (yet) familiar with C++ and was totally lost when I had a look at the source code of XBMC (it's not the syntax, but more a question of getting used to the partly cryptic variable names, find out where to start looking and find out how stuff is interacting with eachother).
Thanks for clarification. I wasn't sure as I'm managing my media with EmberMM since quite some time now and didn't remember XBMCs behavior from the time before EmberMM.
@Harry Muscle
As for the file suffix, I'd still go the way to use the suffix ".offline" for it I think and add the parser for the strings "dvd/bluray/brd/hddvd" to the "default" file parser of XBMC (if something like this exists). Maybe you have to implement it at the same place anyway.
And I don't think you should use stuff like "movie-title.disc-123.dvd" for the label support, due to the fact that XBMC might think that those files could be a stack as it's already looking for "disc[0-9]*" IIRC. So better find a approach/spelling that's not yet in use and allows any disc label - not just numbers - like my proposal with the "#" prefix: "movie-title.#any-label.dvd.offline"
Slightly OT:
It'll be cool if one could hook into the file parser of XBMC and add custom parsing rules and perform actions based on them, so that the offline support could become a addon with a more frequent release cycle. Not sure if you guys are familiar with hooks, so I'll try to explain: Hooks are pretty much like events - so a addon would have to register itself to a hook/event of a certain process. Those processes explicitly need to support hooks/events of course, so they need to check if there are registered listeners/hook-methods and call one after another by passing n parameters to the registered addon methods. I know this hook concept from PHP frameworks and it's a nice way to extend tools. Maybe that's already possible somehow - I'm unfortunately not (yet) familiar with C++ and was totally lost when I had a look at the source code of XBMC (it's not the syntax, but more a question of getting used to the partly cryptic variable names, find out where to start looking and find out how stuff is interacting with eachother).