[gst-devel] media-info, and old streaminfo tags

[Thomas Vander Stichele]

Hi,

> Making something possible requires fitting it into the design first. And if we 
> haven't found a way to fit it into the design yet, we need to think about it.

Agreed.  OTOH, it was in the design and functionality in 0.6

> Luckily we even have it in our design. Rhythmbox even behaves exactly like a 
> player should behave.

Now you lost me again - are you saying it is correct for apps to set the
output sink to NULL to pause it ?
 
> Oh, we will do this. But not now. The same goes for a lot of other things. But 
> people understand that.
> Some things are easy, some things are hard. The Gtk file selector sucked far 
> longer than this and people still used Gnome. I'm not worried.

Agreed.  Only there is quite a difference, GNOME is well-established, while we are still working on securing our position in general.

> What it tells me is that you prefer trashing the design than actually thinking 
> about ways to make it work with our current design. ;/

Why do you call this "trashing" ? AFAICT it's a flaw in our design, and
I already said so when we had a meeting in Barcelona.  I didn't then
suspect however, that apps would find it so bad to live with it that
they'd rather set sinks to NULL to release the device than follow our
design.  I don't see why it's wrong for me to say something negative
about our design.

> You would have had enough time to fix those issues earlier, if you had cared. 

The issue, to be clear, is not that the fact that Gst locks the device. 
We all knew that was what we were doing, and there were some who said
this was going to be a problem for apps.  The real issue is that app
developers find this so bad to live with that they chose to work around
it, triggering more important user-visible brokenness.

It's this second issue that is relatively new, I only know about it
since the last month.

> Anyway, you know what I'm getting frustrated with? People showing up 2 weeks 
> before release and well into freeze date accusing me of sticking my head in 
> the sand.

"sticking head in the sand" wasn't to you personally, the line read
"WE're (as a project) sticking our hand in the sand".  We tend to blame
the outside a lot for bugs, which, while might be correct technically,
doesn't help our users at all.

>  They come around, select their two to five favorite bugs and 
> proclaim they need to be fixed _now_ or the project will be doomed. And since 
> those people have cvs access they start messing around with our code trying to 
> hack in a way that makes this work in a hacky way that breaks the next time 
> someone changes something. But what do they care, they can show up on the next 
> release when it is broken again and wield the even bigger "regression" hammer.

I'm not sure why you're trying to make it personal.  I respect your
desire to deliver the ultimate ideal perfect framework.  I don't think
it's wrong for me to ask you to respect my (and other people's) desire
to deliver features, try and stick to releases, and generally keep the
interest going.  I know you disagree with the opinion that GStreamer
needs users today to survive.  That doesn't mean it doesn't need users
today to survive.

And on the other hand, there is work that needs doing that nobody else
seems to want to do.  This includes maintaining builds, fixing those
issues, fixing the website, making the release process go smoother, and
so on.  I don't mind you not respecting any of the work I do on
GStreamer, people are allowed differing opinions.

> Now it would be nice if those people did some work in between releases so they 
> knew how hard it was to get something right. But for some funny reason they 
> never did that. 
> 
> It's certainly easier to do it half-assed a week before release.

To wit, it would also be nice if the people that call themselves the
designers share enough of the information so that they can use the
resources of all the satellite hackers at large to actually implement
and fix stuff.  It would surely prevent them from doing it half-assed a
week before release.

OTOH, They could also just proclaim themselves core hackers, pick a
favourite problem, and hack it in so that it works the way they want it.

Thomas



Dave/Dina : future TV today ! - http://www.davedina.org/
<-*- thomas (dot) apestaart (dot) org -*->
The blood before me makes me open up my heart again
And I feel it coming over like a storm again
<-*- thomas (at) apestaart (dot) org -*->
URGent, best radio on the net - 24/7 ! - http://urgent.fm/