[MPlayer-dev-eng] talk on mplayer and xine.

[Attila Kinali]

Moin,

On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 01:22:13 +0000
James Courtier-Dutton <James at superbug.co.uk> wrote:


Please, don't ask so difficult questions where there is
not one definite answer. Every developer has his own
views on these points. Some have even more than one.
And of course, there are some who do not have an opinion.

This said, the following ansers are only from my point of
view and purely my personal opinion and most probably
will not reflect the projects opinion at all.

>    1. Focus and activity - describe the areas that your project is
> focusing and working on. This will put your goals and contributions in
> context for other participants.

Currently, there is not much focus in MPlayer as a project.
There are some fields where individuals put a lot of work
into it, but there is no generel direction. Two of these
are the dvdnav and ass support that Nico and Evgeniy
are working on.

>    2. Problem areas - describe problems that your project has
> encountered, things that are not working or not available. These items
> will contribute to a gap analysis and areas for further discussion.

The biggest problem MPlayer faces is its lack of design.
MPlayer grew from a 10 minutes hack into a full fledged
video player application. There were some minor redesigns
and refactoring of components, but overall we still have
the same structure with which Arpi started over 5 years ago.
It's this very same structure that limits us in further
development in some specific areas becaus changing it
would mean to rewrite big parts of MPlayer. And because
the structure is complex (due to lacking design) it is
also very hard to understand, making refactoring even more
difficult.

>    3. Dependencies - describe the organizations, projects and
> components that your project depends on. This helps everyone
> understand the map of the community.

MPlayer does not really have a dependency on anything.
Though MPlayer is of very little use without parts
taken out of the FFmpeg project (lavc, lavu, lavf).
MPlayer did also fork some other projects into its
own tree because it needed specific changes that
were unacceptable for upstream (libdvdread, libdvdread)

>    4. Next steps - suggest concrete goals and objectives that you wish
> to see followed.

Keep on going. Fix bugs, add more codecs, features.
The biggest point that i would like to see solved
would be a proper GUI infrastructure. Not for myself
(who needs a GUI anyways? ;) but for the users.


			Attila Kinali

-- 
Praised are the Fountains of Shelieth, the silver harp of the waters,
But blest in my name forever this stream that stanched my thirst!
                         -- Deed of Morred