[MPlayer-users] gui suggestions

[frederik at ugcs.caltech.edu]

I've just started using mplayer; I'm running running 0.90pre3-gcc on
debian-powerpc. It's been a good experience overall but there was a
small snag. An old man page says that "-gui" will "Start mplayer in
GUI mode", without mentioning gmplayer. The new one mentions gmplayer,
but also responds to the -gui flag:

    $ mplayer -gui 
    ...
    The gui option can't be used on the command line

This isn't a very useful error message, as it suggests that the gui
option should be used somewhere else. Putting it in
"~/.mplayer/config" causes a segfault, no more informative to the user.

Another complaint about the -gui mode is the continuous stream of
dialog boxes, even when user input isn't required. I would prefer if
informative messages were sent to stdout or stderr - just as with
mplayer. Keeping an xterm open to look at these messages is easy and
works a lot better, no constant interruptions to say that my computer
is too slow. If some users prefer the dialog boxes, they could be
controlled via a switch, perhaps with default "off" when stdout is a
tty.

Finally, I have to thank the developers for their hard work - I've
really been quite impressed by the quality of the software and
documentation.

Frederik