[gst-devel] [KC]lasses proposal #1

[Erik Walthinsen]

First of all, please note that I'm talking about the element klass *ONLY*.
This is primarily visible to people as the tree structure you see when you
try to select an element in the editor, and should be thought of and
designed mostly as such.

As I told thomasvs, the key here is to discuss the klasses on their own,
without worrying about any directory hierarchies.  What I'm hoping is that
something that makes sense will magically appear.  Regardless, we all seem
to agree that the element klass should be used more broadly (whatever that
means), so we should settle on a basic structure *first*.

The categories I laid out a while ago still make sense to me, but various
suggestions have been made that not all elements fit into them cleanly.
I'll see if I can come up with a hierarchy that makes sense:

Encoder/
	Audio/
		a52enc
		flacenc
		gsmenc
		lame
		mpegaudio
	Video/
		flxenc
		dvenc
		ffmpegenc
		mpeg1encoder
		mpeg2enc
		rtjpegenc
Decoder/
	Audio/
		a52dec
		flacdec
		gsmdec
		mad
		mikmod
		mpg123
	Video/
		flxdec
		dvdec
		ffmpegdec
		mpeg2dec
		mpeg2play
		mpeg_play
		rtjpegdec
Format/
	Mux/
		avimux
		system_encode
	Demux/
		quicktime_demux
		mpegdemux
Source/
	Device/
		alsasrc
		cdparanoia
		dv1394src
		dc1394src
		qcamsrc
		osssrc
		v4lsrc
		vcdsrc
	File/
		afsrc
		filesrc
		gnomevfssrc
	Network/
		httpsrc
		rtprecv
		udprecv
Sink/
	Device/
		aasink
		alsasink
		dv1394sink
		osssink
		xvideosink
		sdlvideosink
	File/
		afsink
		filesink
		gnomevfssink
	Network/
		icecastsend
		rtpsend
		udpsend
Filter/
	[everything else, in some other general scheme
	 I haven't figured out yet]

Now, I've thought about swapping the level of things relative to
encoder/decoder and audio/video, etc., but I'm not sure that would make
sense because it would be counter to the other top-level classifications.
But it would be more intuitive: "I need a [Video] [Decoder] for [MPEG]".
Then again "I need a [Decoder] for [Video] in [MPEG] format" makes just as
much sense.

/me goes to sleep

      Erik Walthinsen <omega at temple-baptist.com> - System Administrator
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