[MPlayer-DOCS] [PATCH] How to build MPlayerOSX

[The Wanderer]

Guillaume POIRIER wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Here is an updated patch that features hopefully The Wanderer's
> suggestions and latest Nicolas' explanation.

And another review, on perhaps a different level from before (I really
thought I'd gotten everything... maybe it's just me being persnickety.)

> Here also, the XML layout is likely completely broken.

Unfortunately I'm not particularly competent to evaluate *ML, except in
very general terms; I'd have to do a lot of fiddling and
experimentation, and even then the most I could say would be that it
looked right to me.

> +Fortunately, <application>MPlayerOSX</application> has been taken over
> +by <application>MPlayer</application> dev team, and is now part of the
> +official projects supported by <application>MPlayer</application>.

Missed this one before (easy to do when reading unparsed *ML): "the
MPlayer dev team" or "MPlayer's dev team". I'd probably prefer the former.

I believe you need a singular noun to use with "part of"; it looks a
little odd to me as it stands. Several possible other forms spring to
mind, but the one with the fewest potential problems of its own is to
just use "one of" instead.

> +In order to build <application>MPlayerOSX</application>, you need
> +<systemitem>mplayerosx</systemitem> module, <systemitem>main</systemitem>
> +module and a copy of <systemitem>main</systemitem> module named
> +<systemitem>main_noaltivec</systemitem>.

I'd alter this, either slightly or not quite so slightly; the more minor
change (since I'm reasonably sure the remaining objections are just me
being uncooperative with the world) would be to say "the mplayerosx
module, the main module, and a copy of the main module named
main_noaltivec".

(Looking at that suggestion now, I can see one way in which it would be
slightly ambiguous, but I'm beginning to suspect I'm in high-nitpick
mode at the moment; we'll see how I feel about it after coming back
around later on.)

> +<systemitem>mplayerosx</systemitem> is the GUI frontend,
> +<systemitem>main</systemitem> is mplayer and
> +<systemitem>main_noaltivec</systemitem> is mplayer build without Altivec
> +support.

"mplayer" > "MPlayer"

"build" > "built"

"Altivec" > "AltiVec"

> +</para>
> +<para>
> +You can get the latest source from CVS:
> +<screen>
> +cvs -d:pserver:anonymous at mplayerhq.hu:/cvsroot/mplayer login
> +cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous at mplayerhq.hu:/cvsroot/mplayer co -P mplayerosx
> +</screen>
> +
> +In order to build <application>MPlayerOSX</application> you will need to
> +setup something like this:

Again, you want "set up" rather than "setup". (Alternatively, to achieve
the same end result by a slightly different meaning along the way, you
could change "to" to "a".) The problem is that "setup" is a noun,
whereas "set up" is a verb phrase.

> +<screen>
> +MPlayer_Source directory
> +    |
> +    |--->main           (mplayer CVS source)
> +    |
> +    |--->main_noaltivec (mplayer CVS source configured with --disable-altivec)
> +    |
> +    |--->mplayerosx     (mplayerosx CVS source)

I believe that you may want "MPlayer" instead of "mplayer" here, but I'm
not entirely certain.

Why the form "MPlayer_Source"? Is this the name of a specific, existing
directory the user will have to interact with somewhere? If not, I'd be
inclined to simply say "<MPlayer source directory>" or the like - or, at
the least, decapitalize "source" and join the pair to "directory" with
another underscore. (The two alternatives move in opposite directions,
but both work well enough.)

> +</screen>
> +
> +You first need to build main and main_noaltivec.
> +
> +To configure and build the main module you need to set a global variable.

Because you pick up in the middle of a sentence after this, you need to
either change that fact (something like "Next, configure" below) or
remove the period here. Actually, I'd probably prefer something closer
to the latter: change the period to a colon here, say "Next, configure:"
below (again with a colon), and so forth.

> +<screen>export MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.3</screen>
> +
> +and configure
> +
> +<screen>
> +./configure --with-termcaplib=ncurses.5 --disable-gl --disable-x11
> +make
> +</screen>

Below, you specify what type of system the configure line is intended
for; here, you don't. It might be a good idea to keep the two examples
in parallel.

Actually, looking at these again, it looks like the above configure line
is for 'main' and the below one is for 'main_noaltivec'. It might be a
good idea to say so explicitly, given that it took me a good bit of time
to figure it out on my own.

> +To build for a G3 powered machine:

I'll probably lose this, since it's a hyphenation issue, but: as things
stand, this reads "a powered machine of the type known as G3", unless
one disambiguates based on the preexisting knowledge of what was most
likely meant. I would much prefer to say "G3-powered" instead.

> +<screen>
> +./configure --with-termcaplib=ncurses.5 --disable-gl --disable-x11 --disable-altivec
> +</screen>
> +You may need to edit config.mak and change the -mcpu and -mtune from
> +74XX to G3.

Not a problem with this patch, but if that little note is correct, I'd
probably say that this is a bug in configure which needs to be fixed...

> +<screen>
> +make
> +</screen>

Because you broke out of the string of commands to make a side comment,
and did not put the side comment more effectively to the side (i.e., in
a literal sidebar-ish box or the like), this needs another instruction -
something like "Continue with" (no colon, because you're picking up in
the middle of the same sentence immediately afterwards).

> +You can also use the xcode 2.1 project: the old project for xcode 1.x is
> +not working anymore.

Incorrect punctuation; you want a semicolon here, not a colon, since
you're neither providing an example nor beginning a list.

-- 
       The Wanderer

Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.

A government exists to serve its citizens, not to control them.