[MPlayer-users] two cents: why dvdnav is needed (why mplayer will die from this)

[D Richard Felker III]

Since Steven Adeff apparently really wants to hear, I'll make a few
comments about this post. But don't expect a long involved discussion.
If you don't want to wade through all the crap, the basic idea is that
most of Daniel Hauck's analogies were totally bogus and half the
message was trolling (pro-windows/pro-commercial crap). If I wanted to
read that idiocy I'd go to slashdot, not the MPlayer lists.

Anyway, here it goes...

On Mon, Mar 03, 2003 at 03:08:18AM -0600, Daniel Hauck wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> I've been watching this list for a bit and I am observing why mplayer
> will die the way so many other decent projects do.

This is total nonsense. Unless by "die" you mean the whining idiots
will stop using it. I see no evidence of MPlayer dying now or in the
near future.

> Quite a few years ago, before Windows was the only way to do things and

Windows the only way to do things? What rock have you been sleeping
under for the past five years?

> all the best games were in DOS, I knew this one guy who once told me,
> "...I'll never use Windows!  It's just a fancy menu system and who needs
> that?"  DOS is dead along with just about every program which was
> exclusive to it.

This is a really really stupid analogy. DOS died because it plain
sucked, and because the only party with the source decided to stop
maintaining it. It had nothing to do with windows or menus being good.

> I posed a question about enhancing the abilities of the "gmplayer" and I
> received similar responses the gentleman I reference below.  Such
> responses as "code it yourself" "it's too trivial" and "it's not needed
> [enough]"  
> 
> It's good that Linus Torvalds could see that while there are many
> "trivial" inclusions into the Linux kernel, they are present to fill
> various needs and uses.  Some of these things were even removed
> eventually but were at least given a chance to grow.  So now Linux
> supports a huge range of things such as obscure file-systems and
> executable binary formats that allow Linux to be useful not only in a
> majority sense, but in a minority one as well.

Did Linus code that stuff himself because someone whined for it? NO!
He accepted patches from other people who wanted it enough to code it
themselves, or to hire someone to code it.

> "Code it yourself" isn't always an option.  That's like telling someone
> to build his own car if he needs something changed in the car he drives

You're free to hire someone to make the changes for you.

> now.  Its not much of a stretch of the imagination to see why DVDNAV is
> needed.  Sometimes it's the only way to make some things happen. 
> Another person mentioned a desire to have mplayer blank the screen and
> pause for a key-press between clips.  (Clearly he wants to use it as
> part of a presentation of some sort) While I think this is a very
> trivial addition, I can see where it might be a good thing to have even
> though I, personally, do not foresee myself ever using such an option. 
> Asking that "gmplayer" remove some of its annoyances such as the huge
> logo display, remembering its location on the screen, remembering the
> magnification setting and forgetting its play-list and a host of other
> functions that make it more useful in a GUI oriented file-browsing sense
> doesn't seem unreasonable or non-productive. (Looping is a nice option
> too...)

I never followed these discussions so I can't comment on the issues
involved. Usually I skip threads about GUI stuff.

> We're not all Henry Ford.  We want cars of many colors and styles --

Old. Worn out. Cliche. Please at least make the analogy original if
you're going to argue by analogy.

> that's why there are so many of them.  The "engineer-friendly" style
> isn't the only and certainly isn't the best approach to a project that
> virtually demands that a graphics-delivering application utilize common
> graphical interface standards and uses.  The "engineer-elite" mentality
> here doesn't serve to help this project grow, but hinders it by limiting
> the user and interest base.  

Limited user base and interest? Hmm, maybe that's why MPlayer is the
#1 in freshmeat's popularity ratings... Yep, that must be it.

> While the true owners of the project are the actual coders and the users
> are mere leeches, the input of users should be respected without grudge
> or malice as soon enough another project (probably commercial) will

Haha, what a joke. Commercial software all sucks. Get back under the
bridge, stupid troll.

> answer the call of the end user thereby proving that open source doesn't
> serve the community at large [read "main-stream"] and remains the tool
> of the "elite hobbyist" and never taken seriously.

Or go back to dweebdot, same difference.


Rich