On Thu, 2005-09-15 at 12:58 -0400, sjoeboo wrote: > >>Erm, the original proposal was not to write the One True Media Player. > >>It was to write a panel applet consolidating simple controls for all > >>current media players, instead of the current situation where they all > >>stick a non-removable notification area icon in my panel with their own > >>controls on it. The discussion kind of sprawled in a major way from that > >>point. > > > > > > Oh, sorry. I don't believe in that either. :) > > > > Applications in Desktop should agree on a general layout for the > > notification area, but I also don't believe that the notification area > > is a good use for media player remote controls. > > > > Ross > > > yes. I'm not a UI/HIG expert, but i would imagine it would be fairly > difficult/clumsy to write an applet/control, that would distingish which > media player is acctually doing something, and sent signals/messages to > that individual player. god forbid someone is playing a movie muted > with music playing, it wouldn't know what app to control. then you have > to think about how it would go about controling said applications. each > media player, from my experiance, has a completly diffrent and > individual way of receiving signals or invoking plugins. i know > rhythmbox (and maybe totem?) can use bonobo controls (i have attached > python to rhythmbox many a time), but what about xmms, or beep, or any > KDE based applications like mplayer? or vlc? > > no, one applet to to attempt to control all of these is not that way to > go. it would just be far to complicated and clumsy to write and most > likly use. > > thats just my 2 cents on the disscussion i have seen rage on for a day > or 2 now. Ah, glorious on-topic-ness! Well, someone already commented earlier in the thread people don't actually often (nearly at all) use two media players at once. Seems to me an implementation detail that could be sorted out as users give feedback on how they actually use it. The other problem is, to me, not a problem. I originally got this idea after using Bluemote with my bluetooth cellphone. This implements the exact same idea on a phone. It has play, pause and skip menu options which control any active media player. I managed to get it to support just about every media player I've ever installed, because they all implement (or will implement, if you bug their author nicely enough) command line remote controls. e.g., totem --next. or xmms --next. or beep-media-player --next. or rhythmbox --next. I suppose you could try and make it all 2001 and use Bonobo controls, or all 2004 and use dbus, but you don't really _need_ to. the remote control commands work just fine. -- adamw
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