[MPlayer-dev-eng] GUI status

[Diego Biurrun]

On Sat, Apr 05, 2008 at 08:35:35PM +0300, Uoti Urpala wrote:
> The GUI won't compile after the libvo changes I posted, and I plan to
> make several more changes that break assumptions the GUI code currently
> relies on (especially removing globals that the GUI currently accesses).
> I'm not willing to maintain the GUI myself to keep it working.

What do you mean by "maintain" and how much work do you think your
latest libvo changes would require to get the GUI back in sync?  One
day?  One hour?

I have very mixed feelings about removing the internal GUI.

Without a doubt the GUI is clearly unmaintained, has known bugs, has its
tentacles all over the codebase where it does not belong and the code is
ugly.  Nonetheless the GUI has its users who appear to be more or less
happy with the way it works.

In the past, several others have voted for or requested removing the
internal GUI before.  So far I have always opposed this idea because I
thought that we would be doing our users a disservice by removing it.

Clearly most people do use a GUI with their player.  And clearly no
developer uses the GUI.  Who is best served by which course of action?
Users by keeping the GUI, developers by removing it?  I'm not sure.

So what is the alternative.  Has anybody tested the external GUIs and
checked if any of them is in good shape?

In any case, removing the GUI before the next release is not acceptable
IMO.  Which reminds me, what about creating a release soon?

Diego