[MPlayer-DOCS] [homepage]: r3403 - trunk/src/news.en

[The Wanderer]

Carl Eugen Hoyos wrote:

> The Wanderer <inverseparadox <at> comcast.net> writes:
> 
>> If I can't get the updated drivers, I obviously can't test them.
> 
> The announcement on mplayerhq.hu contains a link to a forum.

It does? Where?

I just checked the front page in case there was something not obvious
from this commit, and I see nothing which I recognize as being any kind
of forum link.

In hindsight after your comment, I'm guessing that the nvnews.net
"report bugs here" link (which, based on context, I expected to be a
link to a place to report bugs in MPlayer related to the new feature) is
the one you're talking about. It is not remotely obvious that this is
where to look to find the needed drivers.

> The forum's top sticky post contains three drivers for your graphic
> card (and several drivers for older ones). 180.29 does not allow
> compilation with vdpau support for latest svn. Choose one of the
> newer ones and you are fine.

But none of those are available via NVIDIA's own site, unless you happen
to know the direct links to use.

Thus the drivers in question have not been released.

> I understand now that the commit that broke compilation with the
> older driver (not the one for the homepage) may have been too early.
> But first, 180.29 has some issues, iirc.

I'm not objecting to having the newer drivers be required. I do object
mildly to that change being made when they aren't actually out yet.

I simply think that it is goiing to cause confusion, at best, to require
official NVIDIA drivers which cannot be found by looking on NVIDIA's own
site.

Including a comment to the effect of "these drivers have not been
released yet; to find them, go here" with a link to the appropriate
post, or perhaps even just to the forum and mentioning the post, would
probably obviate that confusion.

> Then, while I remember years ago, I had to search endlessly on a
> particularly ugly homepage filled with elements we all don't like to
> find a driver announcement filled with marketing speech we dislike
> even more that finally (iirc) pointed to an ftp side.

I've had this kind of issue with various other companies.

I've never seen anything like it with NVIDIA.

> Following above forum link, you get to a short and amazingly clear
> driver announcement with a link to the same ftp side.
> 
> I will surely never again search for a nvidia driver on the nvidia
> homepage (but only in the sticky post) and I somehow imagined
> (prematurely) that everybody would feel this way.

People who knew about the post, and are comfortable using 'unreleased'
drivers, might well agree with you. They are, however, vastly
outnumbered by people who do not fall into one of those two categories.

> I will not revert the commit (if somebody else believes it is a good
> idea, I will not start a flame-war), but I wanted to try to make it a
> bit more clearer on the homepage.

Making it clearer is a good idea. It's the fact that it is not clear now
which prompted me to post about this in the first place.

> It is exactly the same as with MPlayer: Go for latest version;-)

With MPlayer, that is recommended, and there is never supposed to be an
unstable or broken development version - but it sometimes happens
anyway, such that people on the -users list are told "don't update until
it's announced that this has been fixed".

With almost any other project, that is not the case.

Even so, I have no objection to using the latest version of the NVIDIA
drivers. I just don't consider something that far into "unreleased"
territory to be the latest version; I consider it a future version,
which isn't out yet.

-- 
       The Wanderer

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

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.