gPodder 2.14 and Panucci 0.99.1 in Extras-Testing

If you are one of those N900 users who use their devices for listening to podcasts and audiobooks, please help getting the latest versions of gPodder and Panucci into Extras and provide feedback/bug reports. For Diablo (N800/N810) users, gPodder 2.14 is already available in Extras.

gPodder 2.14 is a bugfix release in the 2.x release series. It includes fixes for YouTube downloads (this fixes the HTTP 400 errors some users were reporting) and adds per-podcast "Keep episodes" settings (to avoid accidental removal of episodes that you want to archive/keep). This release also includes some fixes for feeds that don't include a valid guid element in their entries. Please test and vote for gPodder 2.14-1 in Extras-Testing.

Panucci 0.99.1 is the second experimental release of xerxes2's development branch of Panucci. As announced on t.m.o, this release includes persistence of settings between invocations and a Qt GUI that can be activated by running Panucci with the --qt command-line switch. Thanks to xerxes2 and Helmuth for collaborating on the improvements made to Panucci recently. Please test and vote for Panucci 0.99.1 in Extras-Testing.

gPodder/QML progress update

While the 2.x branch of gPodder is still updated - a new release should be out soon - the awesome stuff happens in the "tres" branch, where the refactoring takes place and also where the QML UI is built. I've reserved some time this weekend to work a bit on the QML UI so that it is at least day-to-day usable for me, because it turns out if I don't force myself to use the QML UI, I'll just use the Maemo 5 UI and not work on the QML UI ;)

I've uploaded two new videos today: gPodder/QML on the N900 and gPodder/QML on a Desktop. This is exactly the same Python codebase (utilizing PySide), which is great for testing on the "big" computer. It's also truly cross-platform, as you can see it running on OS X in the Desktop video. Unfortunately, Qt Mobility 1.2's QML Video component is broken, so there's no video playback on the N900. Video playback great on the Desktop, though, and audio playback works fine on both the N900 and Desktop.

The UI is still in a rough state, but it's a great place for experimenting around with some ideas to see what works and what does not. I really like the integration of the playback feature into gPodder, as it provides a better integrated experience on handsets. It obviously also loads faster compared to loading a separate media player. The UI is scalable and should work well on tablets (which is especially useful for YouTube channels and video podcasts).

The new codebase still hast the Desktop GTK+ UI and the Maemo 5 GTK+/Hildon UI in there, they share the same backend code as the QML UI. The code is not ready for public consumption, but if you really want to try it out, you'll find the code in the "tres" branch in our Git repository. If that's too little information for you to get started, then you shouldn't yet use it :)