Re: gCDindex 0.4.0 release

Bert Vermeulen (bert nospam at biot.com)
Sun, 25 Apr 1999 01:29:13 +0200 (CEST)

On Sat, 24 Apr 1999, Nick Lamb wrote:

> Still no submission, we really need a nicer submission interface for
> non-web clients... initially it could be fairly crude, just enough to
> get more data into the index.

I agree... OTOH, the dialogue you go through to enter an artist is actually
very user friendly -- there's a good chance of catching duplicates etc -- so
this would need to be duplicated.

I guess the easiest way would be to have the server return easily parsed
pages: list of artists, list of albums etc. You don't really need a protocol
like in CDDB, just a clear definition of the different stages a submitting
client should go through. Something like:

- stage 1: submit hash + TOC

- server returns "not found" + list of possible albums based on fuzzy match

- stage 2: hash + TOC + albumid if the album matches (new link), or:

- stage 3: hash + TOC + artist

- server returns list of possible artists based on submitted artist

- stage 3: hash + TOC + artist (definite choice this time)

- server returns list of albums if TOC data resembles an album in the db

- client either goes back to stage 2, or:

- stage 4: hash + TOC + artist + list of song titles

Also, I was thinking it might be worthwhile for clients to submit client
name & version to the server, and have it stored along with submissions
somehow. I've seen CDDB reject submissions based on "known bad" client
versions, and cdindex may have the same need one day.

Bert Vermeulen
bert nospam at biot.com