[MPlayer-users] Comments on Joe Barrs MPlayer critizism

[Arpi]

Hi,

>  I'm a happy MPlayer users since way back but to some degree I have to
>  agree with Mr Barr. 
> 
>  The two main things wrong with installation as I see it are
>  the neglectance of 'make install' to put codecs.conf and config
>  in 'etc' and not including (and installing) the default skin in
>  the tarball.
> 
>  It has been a standard since ages in installing unix software to
>  put default config files (with sane defaults) in 'etc'. Why 
>  doesn't MPlayer ?
Compatibility. Strange, yeah? it's not windows.
Old versions put it to different location, and we kept it for compatibility.
If you want it to /etc, just say so, and use --confdir=/etc
and rtfm.

>  Since there is GUI support, why not include (and install) a default 
>  skin?  (Since there acctually IS a "default", shouldn't it be included
>  by default?) And perhaps loose the gmplayer link so the GUI version
>  starts by default and you run pmplayer (or whatnot) for plain mplayer.
>  I respect Arpis dislike for GUI:s but let's face it; it's a GUI-centric
>  world (I bet even Arpi's using X. Isn't that a GUI?)
only for netscape

>  Perhaps there should be a default OSD-font included and installed
>  as well for the ease of the not-so-skilled user.
no.
gui is still in early beta stage, not ready for endusers imho.
and, from download stats, gui stuff is downloaded by only ~20% of people
downloading mplayer. and mplayer is not a primary gui player, it's
designed for console, and most of its drivers are for console, not X.
gui is just an _option_.

if we would include everything in the tarball, it would be big (>5mb
compressed) and many user get angry when he find just 20% of the tarball
needed by him. now everyone can download what he needs.
if he don't need gui or fonts or whetever, he don't have to download it.
if he need latin-2 fonts, he probably don't want to download russian and
latin-1 fonts. you're probably on high bandwith. not everyone is.
and our server's bandwith is also limited. very limited, and we're already
on its limits.

>  I'd really like to hear the developers reasons for not doing the
see above

>  above. I mean, it's nothing a little RTFM-ing can't cure but on the other
>  hand the less RTFM the not-so-skilled user has to do, the less the
>  "Linux is so hard to use, you have to be a guru to even view an .avi"
>  advocates have behind their claims.
?

>  Oh, and as per the language in the FAQ and so on, I _really_ think
>  you should review and rewrite some of the answers. It isn't that
>  funny to having struggled with a problem and finally looking it up
>  in the FAQ to be told you're stupid and should go away. That really
>  does not help the open source community a bit.
patches? if you want to help opensource comminity, don't blame the
developers (who don't really like to write docs, especially for r=1 silly
users), instead try to help, send patches and so on.
YOU are who don't help the community, not us.

>  Peder Hedlund (a very happy MPlayer user, all in all)
A'rpi / Astral & ESP-team

a not so happy developer who spent most of his spare time for this stuff and
most of the answers he got is just flame and blame from users.

--
mailto:arpi at thot.banki.hu
http://esp-team.scene.hu