Ocarina started in April 2009 as an experiment in writing my own music player. I used to use one of the big players included as an option in most Linux distributions, but they released a major update that happened to remove most of the features I relied on. Clearly the only reasonable solution was to write my own, and so Ocarina was born!
Ocarina 1
I started working in Python, and wrote mostly experimental code that provided me with an opportunity to learn about both GTK+ and GStreamer.
Ocarina 2
A rewrite soon followed, adding many new features. This was the first version to support a feature I can’t live without: the ability to queue up songs to play later.
Ocarina 3
I never got very far with Ocarina 3. The goal was to create a generic Python framework that I could share with other projects, but I never got very far. The code I wrote was too complicated to use, and I eventually tossed it out.
Ocarina 4
Ocarina 4 was when I really began to innovate. I quickly decided that I should emphasize the “currently playing” song list, and the rest of the UI flowed from there.
Ocarina 5
I rewrote Ocarina 5 in C++ so I could take advantage of the syntax checking that compilers offer. I also added in several new features including AutoPause, a visual history tab, and multiple rearrangeable queues.
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