Re: media files

["c. schwarm" <c schwarm gmx net>]

J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote:

> But other project managers look at the situation differently, using a 
> different metric altogether.  You, for instance, said that you want to 
> provide an interoperable choice.  This would suggest that you are 
> interested in media formats that aren't as fully supported in free 
> software (like MP3, RealAudio, etc.) as other formats are.
> 
> These are points that are not at all clear when reading the wiki page or 
> the GNOME-marketing thread pointed to earlier.  They will directly 
> affect what people suggest you add or remove from the demonstration 
> media files.  Please do try harder to read things without malice.  Some 
> people are just trying to figure out what is important to your project 
> so they can comment in a way that others in the project have asked for.


IMHO, this is about a LiveCD. Only a minority of users will mount their
windows data partition and try to open an existing MP3 file.

If there's no MP3 on the LiveCD, people will just double-click the audio
file icon to find out if their audio card works (or start Rhythmbox to find
something in there).

For those users that will try to open an existing MP3/WMV/Wahtever on their
data partition, it would be sufficient to explain the situation with a
dialog, wouldn't it? Sort of a "dead end" application, linked with the
propriatery mime types.

Example text:

"We're sorry. 

You tried to open an <Whatever> file but we can't provide official support
for it because these files are <protected by patents in some parts of the
world>. 

Please note, you can install additional but inofficial software from
third-party sources to play this file after a harddisk installation.

Thank you for your understanding."

This way, they'll know why there's no MP3 support on the CD but that they
will be able to add it from third parties after installing the distribution
on their harddisk.

The application may even have a start menu or desktop entry on the real
installation CD which adds those inofficial sources to apt, and updates from
the internet.


Cheers, 

Claus

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