Tag: Google Summer of Code

Summer of Code ’16 with Picard

Hi! I’m Rahul Raturi, GSoC participant for Picard. This was my first GSoC, and it’s been a pretty awesome experience. Following is the overview of my project.

About the project

The outline of the project is to allow searching for albums, artists and tracks from within Picard. This avoids switching back and forth between web browser and Picard for searching, say release. If Picard fails to auto tag a file usual flow to tag the file with correct metadata is to first select the file, then click on “Lookup in Browser”, then search correct release, and load it into Picard by clicking the green “Tagger” button. In some systems, the “Tagger” button wouldn’t show, which was also a nuisance. With this patch, the entities can be searched and optionally loaded into Picard using built-in search dialogs, so no application switching.

Search dialogs

Picard already provides search options (through a web browser) for three entities; namely track, artist, and album. So I’ve built search dialogs for these three.

  1. Track Search Dialog — Searches for tracks and allows optionally loading corresponding album back into Picard. track_dialog
  2. Album Search Dialog — Searches albums and optionally allows loading the selected one into Picard. Screenshot from 2016-08-15 17-08-09
  3. Artist Search Dialog —  Displays basic information about the artists. To get more information about the selected artist, there’s an option to lookup him/her in browser. Screenshot from 2016-08-20 15-55-42

Searching similar tracks/releases

This is another important part of the project. Sometimes Picard fails to auto tag a file (or a cluster), or incorrectly tag it. These dialogs may prove useful here. To get expected data, right click on the file (should be in “Unmatched Files” cluster), and select “Search for similar tracks…”. The track search dialog would pop up, and expected release can be looked up there. Same procedure is for searching clusters.

Links to my work

Each PR is based on the previous one. A new dialog in each, plus some improvements to existing dialog. For trying the dialog, clone the artist search branch, until it gets merged into master. It has the most recent changes.

Note: To use these dialog for searching, an option in User Interface setting about built-in search needs to be enabled.

Conclusion

It was quite fun doing this project. Thanks to Michael Wiencek (mentor) for the guidance and leniency :). Also the Picard team for the reviews. I look forward to contribute more to Picard, now that I’ve a better understanding of the code. Also for another Summer of Code.

BookBrainz GSoC Gamification/Achievement System

Hi guys, I’m Max (AKA QuoraUK), a university student working with BookBrainz as part of Google Summer of Code. My project this summer has been to build a new gamification system, that introduces rewards for BookBrainz users and recognises their achievements. Here I will explain the system and the features I’ve implemented.

Overview

My original specification for the gamification system is here. To summarise, the idea behind gamification is to add game-like elements to the site in order to make it more engaging for users. The plan for the gamification of BookBrainz was:

  • Add badges and titles for users to earn on the BookBrainz site
  • Allow users to display badges and titles on their profile page
  • Encourage regular and high quality content

To implement this plan we have added 12 achievement tracks – once an achievement track is completed a title is unlocked. The artwork for the badges is currently “programmer art” and we are very open to other people designing replacements for them. This could be a part of this year’s Google Code-In. The achievements that will be available on launch are:

revisioncreator
Revisionist: Perform (1, 50, 250) Revision(s); Creator Creator: Create (1, 10, 100) Creator(s)
limitedpublisher
Limited Edition: Create (1, 10, 100) Edition(s); Publisher: Create (1, 10, 100) Publication(s)
pubcreatworker
Publisher Creator: Create (1, 10, 100) Publisher(s); Worker Bee: Create (1, 10, 100) Work(s)
runnerexplorer
Sprinter: Create 10 revisions in an hour; Fun Runner: Create a revision a day for a week; Marathoner: Create a revision a day for 30 days; Explorer: View (10, 100, 1000) Entities
timetrack
Time Traveller: Create an edition before it is released; Hot Off the Press: Create an edition within a week of release

All of these are unit tested and have unique badges for each tier on the track. If you would have already unlocked these achievements before the system was launched, you will earn them with your next revision/creation. Badge templates are available for developers to introduce new badges and adding achievements can be as simple as making a badge and adding a few lines of code.

Profile Page

profilednd
Profile Page, Drag and drop badge selector

The gamification system also brings some changes to the profile page. There is now a badge box which can contain your three favorite badges. Additionally, your selected title is shown next to your username. You can select your favorite badges in the new achievements menu on the profile, then drag and drop your favorites into the boxes. Titles can be selected by going to Edit Profile, and selecting them from the drop down menu.

Other Areas

2016-08-20_16-12-21
Achievement Alert

On creation of an entity or revision you will now see an alert if an achievement is unlocked. This will prompt you to go to your profile page and set the ones you want to display. Usernames in other areas of the site can be hovered over in order to see the title they have set.

Demonstration

Here is a demonstration video I’ve made for the system:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEZROTq1lY0]
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