[MPlayer-dev-eng] Re: [Q] How to build a universal binary for, the Mac OS X?

[JongAm Park]

Wow!

Did I set fire in this mailing list?
I am the one who asked this question, but I didn't expect that it would 
be discussed this hotly.

By the way, according to some people, this "build" issue is not "dev" issue.
So, why don't we talk it at... Ah.. Is there any forum available on the 
mplayer web site?

Some people argue that the MacOS X portion in the market is small, and 
few people reported bugs on the MacOS X platform. He seems to say, "Why 
bother?"
However, I believe there are a lot of Mac users who use the mplayer on 
their Macs.
On Windows, most end-users use the Windows Media player. ( I don't have 
statistical data with me about this. However most of people I know in 
Korean web BBS only cares about the Windows Media Player, or the GOM 
player.)  However, Mac users are adventurous. They use VLC, mplayerOS X, 
Celluo and so on. So, "let's take care of big pies only" doesn't sound 
reasonable. Probably the most actual users of the mplayer may not be 
Windows users.

I was a member of a Korean Macintosh user group, http://www.maczoo.com.
There are lots of people who use the mplayer and the VLC. People have 
problems with sub titles, especially the smi format, for example. I know 
that their concerns are mostly wrong.
They don't understand text encoding well. Although they act like 
professionals, but they are not.
However, they show the tendency of end users you can meet everyday.
They have many "I want this" for media players on Mac. However they are 
not comfortable in discussing in English. So, they can't give you guys 
lots of feedback.

Also, unlike users on Linux, the distinction of developers and end users 
are clear on Mac.
As a Linux user, I build open source codes for personal use. I make a 
living by writing codes.
However, I work usually with the Windows, although I also write codes on 
Unix environment.
Many Linux users so far seem to be similar to me.
They know how to build the source code. So, they may give feedback to 
open source community easily. However, pure end-users don't. They feel 
headache when they look at source codes. They don't know how to download 
through SVN, at least.
So, they can't feedback to "dev" mailing list. With similar reason, they 
can't to the "users" mailing list also. "mailing list" is too difficult 
to them. They only open a web browsers and call it "doing internet"!.  
Although they complain about the performance or some glitches of the 
Windows Network neighborhood, or SAMBA, they don't use the good and old FTP.
They are that kind of people. Do you expect that they can "subscribe" 
mailing list which only contains text which looks boring, and give feedback?
Although the end users pretend to be a software expert, they are not.
So, they have lots of complaints about programs they use, but they don't 
give feedback to their developers.
So, this can be one reason that there are few feedback from Mac OS X 
users. ( Or others also. )
How about Windows users? Well.. the default build generate "DOS" 
mplayer. So, they may not have as much interest as Linux users have in 
this project. Personally I use the VLC on my Windows machine. Do they 
give lots of feedback? ( I am just asking. )
So, although the Mac has small market share, there can be many more 
users than you think.
So, just disregarding them may be a bad idea.
Although the pie for the Windows is the biggest one in the market, how 
many of them use the mplayer? Probably not so many.. I assume that most 
users of this mplayer are Linux users.
So, the actual constitution for the mplayer users can be different from 
the that for OS.
So, let's think about this issue more logically, OK?

And.. this is not "dev" issue. :)