[MPlayer-dev-eng] More On Automatic Codec Downloader

[Arpi]

Hi,

> 	Thanks for all the responses about the automatic codec downloader
> scheme. The reason I chose Perl and LWP is that, per my understanding, LWP
> is a standard part of the Perl distribution (apparently with v5.6.0 and
> up, at least), so there's a good chance that the necessary components
> would already be on a user's system without having to install more stuff
> first. This might (if you can stomach the prospect) help new users with
> their initial out-of-the-box experience

I'm against perl... it is not as usual as you think, and it's very uncommon
with mplayer. There is an installer for mplayer, made by .so, check
out module 'installer' from mplayer cvs server:
cvs -d:...../cvsroot/mplayer co installer

it downloads selected tarballs (source, fonst, skins etc) from mphq http and
extracts it to user... you could reuse parts of this source to implement
your http downloader (it's very easy) or add this feature to the installer.
it will be standard part of next mplayer release.

> key/value pair to send in the POST:
>   CLSID={<GUID>}
> where <GUID> is a Microsoft codec GUID as documented here:
>   http://www.jmcgowan.com/avitech.html#FOURCCGUID
> For example, when I requested the codec for WMV1:
>   CLSID={31564D57-0000-0010-8000-00AA00389B71}
> (31564D57 = 1VMW) The server will reply with a 302 Object Moved response
> and reveal the location of the CAB file with the codec, e.g.:
>   Location: http://codecs.microsoft.com/codecs/i386/wmvax.cab

sounds really easy.
using perl 5.6+ for such easy (2 pages of code in C) thing is overhelming...

> After fetching the CAB file, use this GPL'd utility:
>   http://www.kyz.uklinux.net/cabextract.php3
> to extract the codec file.

we should convert it to installer 'plugin', just like its tar and bz2
extractor.


A'rpi / Astral & ESP-team

--
Developer of MPlayer, the Movie Player for Linux - http://www.MPlayerHQ.hu