> In no particular order.
>
> 1) Using XML.
> If this new system requires XML we are going to need a free XML parser for
> the (free) client. I don't know of any - anyone else? For people developing
> clients application it is going to add to the download size of their
> applications. Is it worth the effort?
Well, since XML is so well designed, it is simple to implement. I'm not current
on the C/C++ front, but I have seen one Java XML parser that the .class file is
all of 26k. Uncompressed.
IBM has a very nice Java one that has a free license, even for commercial use.
All you have to do is submit a form, and off you go! Also, Sun just did some
nice 'standard extension' announcement.
Currently it is the top item at http://java.sun.com/ It is also at
http://java.sun.com/features/1999/03/xml.html
In general, take a peek at
http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/publicSW.html#xmlTools
(Hmmm, Java, C, Tcl, Python...)
> 4) Categories
> We should come up with a better categorization of the music than CDDB. The
> simplistic breakdown ("Classic", "80's", "Alternative"...) is really
> worthless. We need somebody to do some research to compile a better but
> understandable categorization.
On this, I'm not sure. It's really a very subjective thing, and new genres are
created every day. I was thinking that this might even belong in a completly
separate project. The Music Genre Index could be made to augment the free cd
index data. Or built on top of it. Something like that.
Then again, good hard objective data might be appropriate. Where to draw the
line...?