IPODSLAVE - an iPod IO slave

This ioslave enables KIO aware apps like konqueror or amarok to access the
Music stored on an Apple iPod. It further allows you to organize playlists.

To have access to your iPod mount it (some distros do this automatically when
the iPod gets plugged in) and open the URL "ipod:/".
If you have more than one iPod connected to your system you'll get a list of
directories named after the mountpoints of the iPods found. If you open one
of the directories you'll get a list of 4 directories:
Artists, Playlists, Utilities and Transfer.

If just one ipod is found the slave will automatically redirect to it's
directory.

You can copy songs from an Album to a playlist, move tracks between
playlists or albums or copy songs from one iPod to another.
You can also add new mp3 files or directories containing them to your iPod(s)
by copying them to the "Transfer" directory.
Be aware though that the changes you make aren't saved automatically to your
iPod's database - use the "Synchronize" utility under ipod:/Utilities to do
this.
Make sure 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.


Features:
* browsing and opening the mp3s with KIO aware apps (like konqueror,amarok or
  krusader)
* browsing and copying songs and playlists with konqueror
* copying tracks and albums off of the iPod
* copying mp3 files and directories to the iPod
* renaming/moving albums
* accessing playlists
* when using konquerors detailed list view it'll show meta information about
  single tracks (like author, length etc)
* On The Go Playlists and Playcount support provided by Benedikt Elser
* iPod shuffle support by Guenter Schwann


What next:
* kded plugin to provide access to the core functions via DCOP (thanks to
  Andrew De Quincey for this and lotsa more good ideas and code) and to
  provide notifications when something changed
* Podcast support
* smart playlist and podcast support
* photo / artwork support
* upload/download videos to the new iPod Video


Bugs/noticable problems:
* when deleting a Track from a 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 (almost always) you need to hit the "reload" button to make changes
  visible
* please report any problem you encounter with the software to the sourceforge
  project page at http://sourceforge.net/projects/kpod
* Since podcasts and smart playlists are unsupported at the moment you'll lose
  them when synchronizing the database.


Hints for installation:
 * 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
   (is this true for other AMD64 distros too?)
 * id3lib is needed now


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.
Thanks again to Andrew De Quincey and other people for new ideas and feature
requests.

Links:
You can find the project homepage at http://sourceforge.net/projects/kpod


License:
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or   
(at your option) any later version.                                 
                                                                    
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,     
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of      
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the       
GNU General Public License for more details.                        
                                                                    
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License   
along with this program; if not, write to the                       
Free Software Foundation, Inc.,                                     
59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307, USA.           
