[MPlayer-dev-eng] User Frendly mplayer

[Ivan Kalvatchev]

--- D Richard Felker III <dalias at aerifal.cx> wrote:
> On Sat, May 11, 2002 at 10:31:01AM -0700, Ivan Kalvatchev wrote:
> > 3. Propoce official user irc channel. There is one in
> > irc.openprojects.net #mplayer. Irc is the fastest way to ask
> > right questions, and help compleate newbie users. A lot of
> > people just stay in their favorite program channel and could
> > answer questions like 'how to add subtitles?', 'can mplayer do that'.
> 
> Already exists, IRCNet #mplayer.
Nobody there (sorry Ayanami, i have seen at most 5 silent users), users don't like it. 
The channel is mention in 1 or 2 places, deep in the manual. There are 15-20 users 
constantly in Openproject. IRCnet may be good for developers (gabu likes it), 
but some time ago there were horrible splits. Openprojects is smaller irc net, but have
specific profile (Open Projects:), and users have an idea what could
expect there.
It is not enough to excist, user must know where it is. 
That's why point 5 is most importan.

> 
> > 3. Make a forum. It is easyer to browse in forum.
> 
> Arrg, mailing lists are so much easier, and they let the user decide.
> Users can browse them online like a forum, if they like, but those of
> us who hate wading through slow tedious web interfaces can subscribe
> and read in the comfort of mutt.
They are easier for you, not for lusers. It is easyer to see the main topics,
rather that looking over 30 mails with nearly same names "RE: blabla". Forums
don't need mail client, just browser. It is not the question can you do it
with maillist or not, the question is how easy it is. The users won't investigate 
in searching megabytes of mail to find that somebody else have the same problem, 
and not finding the solution they need.
Anyway forum will need someone to maintein it. Pure loose of time.

> 
> > 7. At least one skin should be included in the realese.
> 
> No, that's been discussed before. The problems are that many users
> don't enable the GUI and don't care for the wasted dl time, and that
> it's stupid to have to redownload the same skin that doesn't change
> every time you upgrade mplayer.
I think that there are more releases for one and same skin than mplayer releases
(since gui support:)
If you have working GUI then you need skin. It is annoing to download 
more and more packeges to get something working.
BTW there is no need of this if we made point 11 (all in one).

> 
> > 8. It is not bad to include a short video clip to test does mplayer work
> > at all.
> 
> Again, that's a huge waste of resources downloading the test clip
> again and again. MPlayerHQ ftp has plenty of sample clips in different
> formats that try for testing.
When i meen short i meen really short (10-15k). FTP, most lusers don't know 
what it is, and how to use it, and more over where it is. 
Anyway, we could include it in the compleate package (point 11).

> 
> > 9. A lot of users say that mplayer is slow. By default mplayer uses x11. 
> > Maybe configure could be used to chose best (xv,sdl) driver.
> 
> Last I checked xv was default. And I've never heard anyone say mplayer
> was slow -- any other movie player with xv is about the same speed as
> mplayer with x11 vo...
I knew few people that don't use mplayer becouse of first impression.
(and lazyness i guess, they just don't know how good mplayer is).
The speed depends on a lot of things. X11 with sw scaler is slower than
the bugiest xv (like mine:).

> > 12. Automated Bugreport. Something like ./mkbugreport test.avi
> 
> I think the was discussed before too and there were problems with it.
I know, I said that not all ideas are mine.

Best Regards
  Ivan Kalvachev

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