Hey, On Mon, 2009-05-04 at 10:20 -0700, Adam Williamson wrote: > * snip * > > There's an issue on this topic where I know what the problem is, but I > don't know what a good solution would be: what do you do about devices > where the support depends on the installed software or firmware? > > Obvious example is a Windows Mobile smartphone, like mine. (But there > are other cases, I think the PSP would be one, for instance...and Nokia > phones, where you can get third party player apps that extend the > functionality, too.) As it comes from my provider, it could only handle > a limited range of audio formats (no Vorbis support, for e.g.) But now > I've installed TCPMP and the Vorbis plugin on it, it *does* support > Vorbis. And then it may come with different default software installed > if you buy it from another carrier, but as far as any kind of hardware > detection would be concerned, it'd look like the same device... This sounds like a total and utter mess to me. I'm in favor of only supporting the latest released firmwares and a format we think is good enough, but that's probably not acceptable for many people. The idea of this whole project is to simplify things, not make them even more complicated ;-) > Should we just require some kind of interface layer provide this > information - as in the iPod example, where libgpod could do it based on > the device firmware? For Windows Mobile, when the device is connected in > sync mode these capabilities could theoretically be detected (as you can > tell what software's installed on the device), but not when connected in > mass storage mode. Do we set up some kind of interface for the user to > define what capabilities the device has, to cover situations like this? > Or is this just an insoluble issue? Hopefully someone smarter than me > has ideas. :) Getting info from the device is a great idea, but what about when the user wants to convert something for her iPod that isn't currently connected for example? From a purely UI perspective this presents a mess - who knows what iPod with which software version they have? Same with smartphones? And how would we present this to the user, with a thousand devices each with a dozen hard/software revision options? People generally just want stuff to work. I've also been thinking about this a lot and can't seem to come up with an elegant solution that provides everything most people want. Take care, -- Daniel G. Taylor http://programmer-art.org
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