Re: GNOME Development Series Snapshot 2.3.0: "Mighty Atom"

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

<quote who="Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller">

> I think that adding a media player to the desktop release that do not use
> the standard media backend and do not use the standard gconf keys defined
> for audio and video ouput and which contains functionality already bundled
> with nautilus-media would be a mistake.

Devil's Advocate:

It's also fundamentally important that stuff in our Desktop release works
reliably and as per user expectations.

Thus far, I see Totem as the media player of choice because it provides a
pleasant and predictable user experience [1], has a responsive maintainer
who releases regularly and cares about GNOME direction and user experience,
and "just works". It is already widely used and tested, and has a fairly
large and satisfied user base.

You mention gst-player in your email. I haven't seen it operate in such a
seamless, predictable manner as Totem. We haven't seen a GStreamer release
for GNOME 2.2.1, nor GNOME 2.3.0. No one from the GStreamer project has
posted reasons for this, or an update about development to d-d-l or r-t. I
assume that most people are using gst-player from CVS?

Can GStreamer/gst-player provide the features (ignore proprietary formats
for the moment) and user experience that Totem does?

- Jeff

[1] Except for when it shows visualisations for the sounds in video formats
it doesn't recognise. Somehow, I think I'd prefer it to either a) not show
any visualisation, only show sound and a "this format is not supported"
thingy, or just say "this format is not supported" and not do anything. I'll
take it up with Bastien. Notice how this fault is really minor and
behavioural?

-- 
linux.conf.au 2004: Adelaide, Australia         http://lca2004.linux.org.au/
 
    "Basically my philosophy on release management is that it should be
                like police brutality." - Maciej Stachowiak