This ioslave enables KIO aware linux apps like konqueror or amarok to access the
Music stored on an Apple iPod. It further allows you to organize playlists and uploading tracks.
To have access to your iPod mount it (some distros do this automatically when
the iPod gets plugged in) and open the URL "ipod:/". You'll get a list of 3 directories: Artists, Playlists and Utilities.
You can copy songs from an Album to a playlist, move tracks between
playlists or albums. You can also add new mp3 files to the collection.
Be aware though that the changes you make aren't saved automatically to your iPod's
database - use the "Synchronize" utility under ipod:/Utilities for this.
Make sure though you have a backup copy of your original iTunesDB file.
This file can be found under iPod_Control/iTunes/iTunesDB in the directory
struture of your iPod. If you open the Synchronize utility it'll provide a link
to this file that you just can drag and drop to a save place.
What works?
browsing and opening the mp3s with KIO aware apps (like amarok)
browsing and copying songs and playlists with konqueror
copying tracks and albums from the iPod
Copying mp3 files to the iPod
renaming/moving albums
accessing playlists
Whats planned (and still missing)
accessing meta information about single tracks through konqueror
creating an m3u file on the fly for programs like xmms
m3u importer for saving playlists from amarok directly to the iPod
more ideas are on their way from new team member Andrew de Quincey - stay tuned
Quirks/known bugs
when deleting a Track from the playlist the numbering of the tracks won't
get reorganized (e.g. when deleting track 2 the list will be
1 - blah.mp3
3 - moreblah.mp3
4 - etc ... )
until synchronized with the iPod's database. This is because the numbering
must be consistent between 2 or more deletes (e.g. when deleting a list of
songs)
mp3 files need to have sufficient id3 information (Album, Artist, Title and Tracknum).
Be aware when copying tracks to the ipod that the sort order heavily depends on the id3 tracknumber field. Make sure the id3 information is sufficient.
Sometimes you need to hit the "reload" button to make changes visible
in order to install it correctly it needs to be configured with
configure --prefix [path to your KDE installation]
On a SuSE AMD64 add the --enable-libsuffix=64 configure switch
id3lib is needed now
Misc
In order to be able to parse and write the iTunesDB file I've written a small library (libitunesdb) which is part of the project. This could be used to make other Apps "iPod aware"
Thanks
Thanks go to the developers, contributors and all the people involved in KDE
for their awesome Desktop environment. As the developer of this IOslave special
thanks go to the inventors of the KIO framework which made this possible.
