[MPlayer-dev-eng] The GUI and the configuration files

[Reimar Döffinger]

On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 12:38:10PM +0200, Ingo Brückl wrote:
> Although the GUI complies with that, it stores all its settings when ending
> which will result in command line options (if they happen to be some of the
> GUI options of any type) to become fixed settings for the next run without
> command line options. (Same if a first type GUI option had a different
> default than the corresponding MPlayer option.) And that is weird and must
> not happen.

Well, I admit it was sometimes a convenient way to change GUI settings,
but I agree the kind of people that want to use the GUI probably won't want that.
Particularly since it doesn't always work quite right.

> 1. (now) Don't store settings automatically. Only store them (explicitly) in
>    the GUI's configuration dialog.

Makes sense if you can do it without making it too messy.
Though what do you mean by "explicitly"?
It might be more resilient to have flags that indicate which options were changed
in the config dialog an only write those out, but I don't know if the
config writing code can do that.

> 2. (later) Change gui.conf to use nothing but the same variables as MPlayer.
>    Add a translation from legacy options to new ones so that the user isn't
>    affected (too much).

I think there are some gui settings taht don't make sense as MPlayer options
(e.g. whether the Gui should use a separate video window).

> 3. (later) Add all GUI options to its configuration dialog. (And somehow show
>    which MPlayer settings will (currently, from MPlayer's global variables)
>    be used if a GUI options remains unset.)
> 
> Is this a reasonable plan? Do I miss something or are there any proposals?

I think you'll run over quite a lot of problems/annoyance while trying to do it.
But you'll notice that yourself.