[Gtkpod-questions] Podcasts, id3 tags and gtkpod

[Jaume A. B. <tx...@gm...>]

Hi there,

First of all, thanks all of you that make gtkpod and the use of iPod 
avaliable for Linux! Nice work!

Here is my story:

I want podcasts downloaded to my PC, and I want them transferred to my 
iPod. So far, no problems. I want them to behave the same as if they 
were downloaded and transferred to my iPod from iTunes. What I mean, is 
that I want the iPod to remember the place where I paused (instead of 
restarting the podcast), and I also want them to be grouped by album 
(more than one episode in a radio show), and finally I want it to show 
the day and some extra info when I click twice in the center button. And 
I would like to do all these "automagically" ;)

Here is my "investigation" / experience:

I download the podcast with anything (I tried ipodder, gpodder, 
bashpodder) and I don't get an id3 tag if the original mp3 doesn't have 
it. I mean, it's not set from the feed xml.
Ok, no problems, I can write an id3tag with something like id3v2 and 
hook it with bashpodder.
If I transfer this tagged mp3 to my iPod with gtkpod (via Podcasts), the 
info I see (in iPod) is different than what I get if iTunes handles the 
whole process.
Ok, then I have googled around and finally thought that I should write 
some especial (non standard) frames in the tag, notably PDCST (from 
podcast) or WFED and TSIG. Funny though, people are trying to strip this 
iTunes generated tags. It seems that iTunes overwrites the podcast tag 
with info from the feed... (http://www.pixeltree.org/code/). These tags 
appear as "frame" when I see them with id3v2 --list, and watching with 
strings some appear blank, some filled. With vi (gvim) I see something 
like ^@ which I have no idea of what it is...
So when I thought I had to write this especial tags, playing around with 
gtkpod, I found that with "edit track details", there is a "Podcast" tab 
!. Editing info in this tab and in "Other" tab, I could reach my objective!
But I wasn't totally happy... I want to do this "automagically" when I 
download the podcast... So I exported the track to my fs and did some 
id3v2 --list, strings and gvim. And I couldn't find the PDCST frame 
anywhere!! I checked that iTunes podcast do have this frame. Checking 
with more detail, I found that iTunes podcast also appear in the 
"normal" album music. And also that even the flag to remember podcast 
position for both, the podcast transfered with gtkpod don't remember the 
playing position, while iTunes transferred do. So now come my questions...

Main question:

How can I "automate" the process of having the info from the feed shown 
in the iPod when I play a podcast? Is it only tag related or is there 
something else? Do you know any tool that already handles this?

And, is there a reason that prevents gtkpod to handle the whole process 
of subscribing to a podcast feed, download and transfer it to iPod? Well 
sure there is, otherwise it would have been implemented already... I 
mean some design reason.

Versions: libgpod-0.4.0 (no python hooks), gtkpod-0.99.8

Thank you!

Jaume