Flac - Jul 2006 - Ogg Frog 1.0 feature set, release date set

I expect to release Ogg Frog 1.0 for public alpha test on Saturday, 
August 12.  The date might slip a little depending on how my current job 
hunt goes; if I get a job sooner than I expect, I'll have to cut back on 
my development which has been full-time for a while now.

The planned features are detailed at the page where the downloads will 
eventually be found:

http://oggfrog.com/free-music-software/

Despite Ogg Frog's GNU GPL license, I have not released any files yet. 
I'm pursuing the Cathedral model of development because I feel the 
Bazaar methodology's "Release Early, Release Often" mantra does
not
serve the needs of non-technical end users.  It might work for 
development tools aimed at programmers, but not the teenage music fans 
that are Ogg Frog's target audience.

Thus I won't release Ogg Frog even for Alpha testing until I'm convinced
that all of its supported platforms are completely ready for production 
use.  My emphasis on quality, rigorous automated testing using tools 
like CPPUnit and Valgrind, and early squashing of bugs with complete 
implementation of features before any public release will ensure that 
incomplete or buggy development builds don't end up on the filesharing 
networks or shareware download sites where they would frustrate and 
confuse many people.

I intend for Ogg Frog to enable Free Software and Free Music formats 
like Ogg Vorbis and FLAC to put a serious dent in propriety software 
like iTunes, WinAmp and Windows Media player, and the patent-encrusted 
formats like AAC, WMA and MP3.

My plan to achieve this is, in the long run, to provide a full-featured 
music application that will play, encode, tag, rip, burn and back up 
music, as well as integrate with portable players like the iPod.  But it 
will take a long time to implement so many features, so I will implement 
them in stages, with a new release each time a feature set milestone is 
achieved.

The above features will comprise Ogg Frog 2.0; Ogg Frog 1.0 will just be 
a file and Internet radio player, stream ripper, decoder, cuesheet 
player and cuesheet splitter.  Version 1.1 will add encoding and tagging.

1.0 will have binaries for Mac OS X, Windows, BeOS, Haiku 
(http://haiku-os.org/) and several Linux and BSD distributions, for both 
PowerPC and i386 as supported by each platform.  Each new release will 
add new instruction set architectures and platforms; 1.1 will support 
the Classic Mac OS, 680x0 and Solaris, for example.

By cuesheet player, I mean that if you open a FLAC with embedded 
cuesheet, or BIN/CUE, WAV/CUE file or the like, it will be as if the 
user had selected a folder full of audio tracks, with the track titles 
being fetched via CDDB and stored on Ogg Frog's database.  Any Ogg Frog 
playlist can combine individual tracks from any cuesheet as well as 
single-track files.

Thus it would be practical, with the low cost of huge hard drives these 
days, to back up your entire compact disc collection to a drive 
containing one FLAC+cue per album, and play any of the songs as if you 
had saved them all as individual files.

(I decided to support the cuesheet player after it was identified on 
this list as a strategic feature to enable FLAC's success as a format.)

While Ogg Frog will eventually burn CDs, version 1.0 won't.  To enable 
burning all the supported formats in burners like iTunes that don't 
support Ogg Vorbis or cuesheets, Ogg Frog 1.0 will include a decoder and 
cuesheet splitter.

The decoder will convert all the supported formats to WAV files, which 
can be burned by any burner.  The cuesheet splitter will save a 
cuesheet's audio data to a folder with one WAV file per track.  While a 
CD burned from these won't work have the same CDDB hash code as the 
original CD, at least users will be able to make CDs that otherwise work 
the way they expect.

(When Ogg Frog 1.1 supports encoding, it will also enable splitting 
cuesheets into any of the supported formats, for example by saving a 
FLAC+cue to a folder of Ogg Vorbis tracks.)

I discuss this at more length in my Kuro5hin diary, where I also issue a 
challenge to Free and Open Source software developers to better serve 
the needs of their users by achieving unquestionable quality:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/7/21/021/69071

Free and Open Source software has gotten a bad reputation among 
non-technical users because it's often buggy or unusable.  For example, 
Mrs. Frog refused to use Mozilla or the Gimp for her web design 
business, Mozilla because it was too buggy, despite being well-past 
version 1.0, and the Gimp because it's Gnome user interface was only 
crudely and directly ported to Windows, so it looked and worked just 
like a Linux application.  It's failure to comply to Windows user 
interface conventions was jarring to her, a long-time Windows user.

(While Ogg Frog is cross-platform, it's built on the ZooLib C++ 
cross-platform application framework (http://www.zoolib.org/).  ZooLib 
provides a native look and feel, for example by using the Appearance 
Manger to render controls on the Macintosh.)

I have been hesitant before now to say much about what would be in Ogg 
Frog 1.0 or when I would release it, as I know well that disaster 
usually ensues when a developer prematurely preannounces his product.  I 
will have to work very hard to meet my target date, but I'm far enough 
along that I am confident I can.

I welcome any comments you may have.

Rippit the Ogg Frog
rippit@oggfrog.com
http://www.oggfrog.com/