Re: [GnomeMeeting-devel-list] Re: [OpenH323]VIDEO ISSUE SOLVED:Reg Latest Openh323 compilation in Linux

[Craig Southeren <craigs postincrement com>]

On Thu, 02 Sep 2004 13:32:51 +0200
Kilian Krause <kk verfaction de> wrote:

> Hi Craig,
> 
> > c) explain to me specifically what the GM team wants (because I don't
> > yet understand it), and I'll code it if I can. Note that I will be
> > unable to test the code because I don't have access to a Linux camera
> > and I can't run GM on my Linux machine.
> 
> that's fairly simple, so let me try.
> GM is a GUI based H323 app, so as long as there's one entry per device,
> that's perfectly fine. Listing multiple entries for the same device will
> just bring us users asking :
> "which of those do i need to choose"? 
> Or maybe even worse that "/dev/video0" does work when i do ............
> but not when i ..............., yet "MyFavouriteCam" works always.
> What's the difference, is it bad that i use the latter?"
> 
> So for a support point of view, as we've now gotten our users used to
> the full-text names; so this should be kept as is. Yet for those drivers
> where your argument is true that there's no fancy-name available, the
> plain device should be used.  (Don't worry about testing, we'll let you
> know)
> 
> To make this stringent with your needs, we'd just need another option in
> the v4l plugin code that does allow to choose the list-style (i.e.
> request a plain /dev/ enumeration *OR* a fully-featured-text-name). Only
> for listing this is. As Damien has already put it, the OPENing of a
> device should support both ways (and aparently is mostly implemented
> already). Having this will bring your ohphone back the "i can use
> /dev/video0" feature as you wish, and render the GM click'n'go users
> with their old look'n'feel of GM 1.0 in GM 1.2 too. (the part if GM
> should allow a device to be specified on the commandline is another
> story, which i'll not address here)
> 
> As I'm not sure if the current plugin API allows a new "option" to be
> added easily to the v4l plugin or not, i cannot tell if it's easier to
> have a "v4l_fancy" plugin *AND* a "v4l_native" (as 2 plugins) or address
> this issue within the same plugin and just pass it some API option thru
> the plugin manager (from some commandline parameter or gconf setting
> etc.).

If GM wants their own forked set of plugins, then I don't need to get
involved. So I'll not bother discussing that any further - if the GM
team decides to follow this path then I guess I will see the new plugin
code eventually.

As for how the video plugins work, and how they interacts with GM and
ohphone, then I have to admit that I lost track of that code shortly
after it was redesigned by Snark. To my mind, the confusing part is the
multiple functions that return similar, but not identical, lists of
devices/services/names, none of which are documented anywhere and all of
which seem to do slightly different things depending on which operating
system and/or device is selected. 

I suspect this very mail thread is caused by this confusion - I would
desperately like to see this API rationalised and simplified or at least
documented, but as everyone is too busy doing other stuff I suspect this
will remain yet another part of the code that will remain a mess.

In any case, it may well be that ohphone does not do the correct thing
with video devices/servides/names, but I have no way of knowing as I
cannot run that code myself. But then, no-one has offered patches to fix
it either.

I don't understand the comments indicating that OpenH323 is somehow
stopping this from working. If that was true, then how does GM work?

   Craig

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 Craig Southeren      craigs postincrement com / craigs voxgratia org

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