[GNU/LinuxInIndia] Kolkata geek finds global slot to organise music on PC
- From: "Frederick Noronha" <fred@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: linuxinindia@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 15:39:59 +0530
http://www.zdnetindia.com/zdnetnew2007/index.php?action=article&prodid=4429t
Kolkata geek finds global slot to organise music on PC
By Frederick Noronha, IANS
At 23, most youngsters are uncertain of themselves. But Debarshi Rishi
Ray has used his IT skills to propel a global project forward to
organize the music on computers in a useful way.
Ray is currently the maintainer of the global Free Software and Open
Source project called Songanizer, which comprises a script that gives
different views of the same collection of song files in computer-based
formats like Ogg Vorbis or MP3 - based on diverse classifications or
tags, like album, artist or title.
After reviving the project, he is now playing a crucial role in
keeping it going.
"I can't think of any special reason for me to be interested in music.
Maybe it is because I played tabla as a teenager, who knows?" Ray told
IANS in an interview.
Kolkata born and based, Ray started work on the Songanizer project
from late 2005. Since then it has gone on to become an official GNU
package on the prominent-among-techies global free software network,
with Ray as its maintainer.
"It was almost dead and as I needed something of this sort I gave it a
fresh life," he says.
"Right now (thanks to colleagues like Alfred M. Szmidt and Arjun
Shankar) I have some special plans for Songanizer, which shall be
revealed shortly. Other than this I also contribute to GNU Parted and
GNOWSYS," the 23-year-old introduces himself.
GNU Parted is a program for creating, destroying, resizing, checking,
and copying partitions, and the file systems on them. GNOWSYS or
Gnowledge Networking and Organizing System, is a web application for
developing and maintaining semantic web content developed in Python.
Ray is still only an eighth semester studying Computer Science and
Engineering in NIT Hamirpur.
"When I first got a computer at home in early 1999, I was fascinated
by the amount of creativity that it offered. That is how I got
interested in software," he says.
He "always had" a tough time deciding the perfect structure of his
music folder. "There were albums in media players, but I needed a way
I can quickly browse the collection on the file system and play any
random song using some light-weight player like XMMS or MPlayer," he
explains.
Secondly, he was looking for some interesting program that he could
hack on with his limited knowledge of programming on GNU/Linux
systems.
"Songanizer was the perfect answer. Basically we both scratched each
others' itch," as he puts it.
While a simple hack can achieve amazing results in the world of
software, what is also impressive is the way youngsters from India are
getting roped into the world of global Free Software projects in an
increasing manner.
Patrick Ohnewein was the original author of Songanizer, Juergen Kofler
wrote a Python implementation of the Bash script and Ray is the
maintainer.
"It is a simple Bash script, which gives different views of the same
collection of song files (Ogg Vorbis & MP3) based on the different
tags. For example album, artist, title, initials, etc."
This software is aimed at anybody who has a tough time arranging his
song directory and does not use media players having a good album
feature.
"Even with an album in a media player, being able to view the songs in
a file manager (say Nautilus or ls) is always helpful. Songanizer
provides multiple hierarchical views of the same collection of songs,
making it easier for the user to sift through his collection," he
explains.
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