[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] New API usage example (reading, converting, encoding and muxing an audio file)

[Anton Khirnov]

Quoting Paolo Prete (2022-06-07 12:59:05)
> What you say is true, IMHO, as long as the functions (in which the
> code is split) do really group logically related tasks and they have
> names that summarize what they are doing. In the examined case this is
> not true, see for example (in muxing.c): static void
> open_video(AVFormatContext *oc, const AVCodec *codec, OutputStream
> *ost, AVDictionary *opt_arg)
> 
> The name "open_video" is too generic and it doesn't let the user know
> what the function is actually doing, without jumping from line to line
> in the code. In fact the function mixes different tasks: it opens the
> codec, it allocates a frame, it copies the stream parameters to the
> muxer.

All the things it does relate to preparing video encoding. You might
argue that the function name is suboptimal, in which case it should be
improved. But it is certainly not true that the function just groups
random unrelated code.

> Same thing for write_audio_frame(), and in fact a comment is
> put just above the function, and it says: "encode one audio frame and
> send it to the muxer,,," ...which is obscure from the function's name
> (and, again, the user is forced to jump often from a chunk to another
> chunk of code in order to understand what the code is _generally_
> doing).Note too that this can't be fixed by using more explicative or
> longer names, because the functions mixes tasks which are _different_.
> Therefore, these functions in many cases do not improve readability
> and IMHO is better to have a longer code instead of forcing grouping
> different tasks in the same function with an ambiguous name.

Your argument seems to amount to "the existing structure is imperfect,
so it is better to have no structure at all", with which I disagree.

And even if you convinced me, adding a whole new example while keeping
the old one is not a good solution - people would just be confused by
multiple examples doing the same thing in different ways.

-- 
Anton Khirnov