It's been a long time since I've released anything. After the release of 0.1.0 I took a couple of weeks "off" from the project, but I've already started working on the 0.2 branch. It will take some time, though, until I will have something usable again.
The reason why it'll take some time is that I'm completely restructuring the code. As a programmer I've never before written anything as big and comprehensive as boxen, and it was a great learning experience. There are a couple of things in the code that I'm very happy with. But I'm very unsatisfied with the overall architecture of boxen. It works well for the current release, but as a basis for future growth it's just not good enough. And that's hardly a surprise, since this is the first time I've written something this big. I'm still learning and hindsight is 20/20.
So for 0.2 I started a new framework to build upon. I'm taking the good bits from the 0.1 branch, so it won't take anywhere near the 2 years it took to reach 0.1, but it will still take time. I hope to have something with feature parity to 0.1 around January/February 2012.
Once this is done I'm planning to add new features. Here's what I have in mind for 0.2:
- Linux support
- Usable video playback
- Libraries
- VST/LADSPA support
- Completely new Android app
There are two main ideas in 0.2: the first is to make boxen a more capable media player by polishing the existing functionality and extending it with media library support. The second is to open up a new use case by adding in audio plugins. You will hopefully be able to start boxen, load a piano VSTi and start playing Moonlight Sonata on your MIDI keyboard right away.
And in the meantime I hope I'll find time to continue the "I and D" series.