BuzzLog

One of my absolute favorite BeOS programs, the Army Knife tag and attribute editor for audio files, is under the knife itself!  Buzzer Jonas Sundstöm of Uppsala, Sweden is adding new, modern features to this BeOS classic.  He consented to a quick interview to bring readers up-to-date.



BuzzLog: Jonas, how about a very quick backgound on your programming experience under BeOS.  What have been your other projects?



Jonas: Apart from programming in BASIC when I was a kid, most of my coding experience is with BeOS. I love almost every aspect of coding for BeOS. It's

easy to make interesting applications.  I've primarily made what I call glue applications.



BuzzLog: Examples?



Jonas: They're usually small in size, and tie other applications together in some way. Springboard, for example, lets you use your Internet Explorer favorites in BeOS. Without first converting them. It can do that too, but you don't have to.



BuzzLog: What prompted you to "adopt" Army Knife as a project?



Jonas: One of my early projects was MP3 Tags&Attributes, and some other MP3 tools, so I have been working with music file metadata for a long time.  Some years ago I approached Jason Burgess of FlipSide software and asked him if he'd be willing to place his applications in the care of BeUnited, and he agreed to it.  There was need for a code maintainer, someone to handle patches, and make new releases, so I took the job.



BuzzLog: How are things going?



Jonas: I'm working on making A.K. use the TagLib audio file metadata library, which will make A.K. support a couple of new fileformats.



BuzzLog: Which formats will this add?



Jonas: ID3v1 and ID3v2 for MP3 files, Ogg Vorbis comments and ID3 tags and Vorbis comments in FLAC files



BuzzLog:  Any other new features or changes we're likely to see?



Jonas:  There will be some interface changes. Better keyboard shortcuts. Possibly a resize bar.



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Thanks much to Jonas for the interview, and for his work on updating Army Knife, which Jonas thinks will be out there for public consumption within a week! I'm sure there are lots of people who appreciate this valuable contribution to the BeOS/Zeta community.

# posted by Dane Scott @ 1:51 PM