[Icecast] Some ideas

[Pierre-Emmanuel Muller]

Hi Geoff,

Geoff Shang wrote:

> I'll start out by saying that I'm just a humble user

me too :)

> To start with, Icecast is just one of the projects of the Xiph.org 
> Foundation (http://www.xiph.org).  So while some of the things you 
> mention are not in place for Icecast specifically, they are in place 
> or at least on the drawing boardfor Xiph generally.

I know and agree. I would like to make myself clear. Icecast is open and 
is a great piece of software and many tools are already avalaible. I do 
not wanted to say that Icecast is a "closed" project. I said that, in my 
humble point of view, some "entry doors" are missing.

> Some might disagree with me, but I find that Xiph is pretty open about 
> what it's up to and what still needs to be done.  Apart from the 
> various mailing lists, there is the xiph.org wiki 
> (http://wiki.xiph.org), which includes details of and transcripts of 
> their monthly meetings which are a good way to keep across the various 
> projects.

You're right. But I must confess that I'm still a bit confused when I 
navigate between the icecast website, the xiph website, the vorbis 
website and so on. Although all the required informations are present, 
I, as an end-user, feel that all is a bit confusing. I'm not confused 
about what is icecast for xiph, but a bit confused on the user 
experience side.

> For Icecast specifically, the icecast-dev list is a good place to 
> look. There's also the ToDo file in the Icecast source tree, and the 
> xiph bugtracker at trac.xiph.org (nice looking tracker BTW, much less 
> intimidating than the one you guys had before).

Alles klar. The bugtracker is the perfect tool but for coders and tech 
aware guys. I was just wondering about the "décideur pressé", the guy 
who needs a fast a clear view of where is icecast going.
Why is the icecast roadmap directly awalaible from the icecast website?
Why is not the icecast bugtracker on the icecast website with a clear 
"suggest a feature" link?

> The bounty thing has already been thought of, and an attempt to start 
> one up has already begun.  See http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/Bounties 
> .  I note that there's no Icecast specific bounties in there yet, but 
> some existing bounties would benefit Icecast (particularly bitrate 
> peeling in Ogg Vorbis).

Yes. But :)
First of all: a wiki. Okay wikipedia is an enormous website but I'm not 
sure that a wiki is the most user friendly system for feature requests.
That's not on the icecast website. Why are this bounties not stated 
(linked) from the icecast website?
Bitrate peeling is for sure an important side of icecast but something 
like "automatic generation of relay config avalaible through HTTP" or 
"automatic config file generation from icecast.xml for darkice, ices, 
M3W, etc." are also some important points.

In fact, I think that the point is that you can help, for sure. But you 
have to make your own way into icecast/xiph. It is not clear that help 
is wanted.

> I agree that documentation for Icecast in multiple languages would be 
> nice. But I was looking at the docs today and I personally think they 
> need a bit of work in English first before we go translating them into 
> other languages.  I didn't see anything regarding recent features of 
> Icecast in the docs I read, and there's been a typo in the ReadMe for 
> as long as I can remember.

So :)
Why not make an icecast bounty, on the icecast website, about "review 
the doc, add the new feature, correct the typo, translate the FAQ in 
French, etc."
The icecast doc needs help but that's not said on the website.
Why having a section on the website called "Help wanted" and state here 
clearly all the requested help : code, docs, etc. When you visit the 
site you know that icecast is growing but you do not understand that any 
new help is welcome.

> Not sure if any of this info is helpful, hopefully it is.

It helped :)

PeM