Re: GtkMediaPlayer widget

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM>]

Ryan said:
> Bonobo and supporting technologies add up fairly quickly if you're
> dealing with an embedded environment, and they add to the developer
> learning curve. Bonobo isn't without its costs.

Bonobo is already a key part of the GNOME desktop.  And honestly,
it's not that hard, in the context of the learning curves for
non-trivial Gtk+ and GObject usage.  If we're talking about
developers building things that will actually be bundled with GNOME,
Bonobo is a small part of the knowledge base indeed.

> I'd rather see gtk make media widgets first class widgets.
... and later...
> The importance of multimedia in GUI's is only going to grow over time,
> and it makes sense to have an interface in gtk in which to express this.
> 

OK; first of all, I think GtkEmbed embedded components, such as Bonobo
components, _are_ "first class widgets".  "Horses for courses" as they say here,
you use what fits the need.

I think that the "importance of multimedia" argument, and the fact the
"multimedia isn't just audio and video" are both arguments for why a 
simple "play/stop" interface won't cut it.

The needs of useful multimedia widgets are great enough, and
the use cases broad enough, that a more flexible API is required, with
generally pluggable queries, etc.  Bonoboui provides this, and can IMO
be extended to meet these needs better than trying to write a
"catch all" gtk+ API.  We have a powerful embedding technology, why not
use it?

regards,

Bill