[vorbis-dev] Finally. A deadline, and a call to arms...

[Monty]

Hi folks,

I've been dickering around again, wasting the time away.... and today Brian
Zisk (chief Vorbis Evangelist among other things) said, "Hey!  We need to demo
to the world on the 4th of April!"

Hooo boy.  Time to suck it up and bang it out.

The Vorbis libs are not a problem.  I'm in process of checking in my new
psychoacoustics (they're real pretty!) based on Ehmer's and Fielder's masking
papers and making last minute updates to the libs and lib APIs.  This will be
done in time, no sweat.  Libvorbis/vorbisfile are the least of my worries.

Most of the work remaining to be done is in the details.  I need help, and I
need alot of it in the next week. Here's a partial list:

1) The website hasn't been updated since August; casual observers may think
nothing has been happening.... This requires mostly my own input but I wouldn't
mind a few folks banging out HTML in the Xiph style.  I have a partial update
completed (oh, we also need to get www.xiph.org into CVS).  Another nice touch
that www.xiph.org needs (and must have eventually): Conversion of the whole
site from GIF to PNG.  If we're going to be a movement, we gotta do it right
(read www.burnallgifs.org for details)

2) The XMMS plugin works, but does not yet do seeking, streaming or EQ.  The EQ
is waiting on an API addition, but the other two are not.  

3) Rob: How's the FreeAMP plugin going?

4) The command line player is only about 1/10th complete.  It's relatively easy
code that just needs to plug into the libraries and provide playback for *NIX
and Windows if we get to it.  I'd be having a blast on this one if I had time.

5) Documentation.  Aside from a single paper on the Ogg stream encapsulation,
there is none (on the format, programming APIs, or general trivia).  I realize,
of course, that writing docs requires understanding Vorbis.  Anyone with time
to Hoover all the details out of me feel up for this? I'll give the outlines
and start the documents, but I need someone to actually write the stuff... 

To be fair, there's nothing in the code so incomplete it can't be demoed or
shown, although I'd like a few more of the 'final' bitstream modifications in
place before the world slashdots www.xiph.org.  My major concern is actually
the website and docs; most folks will not be perusing the code to decide if
we're for real.  They wanna play files (and at least know they can encode on
the command line) and read pages.

Monty

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