Media Options for KDE 4

[Scott Wheeler]

On Monday 24 February 2003 21:30, Neil Stevens wrote:

> > If you're talking about extending the system, well I don't think that's
> > a fair requirement or one that's applied elsewhere in KDE.  i.e. We
> > don't require X extensions to be comprehensible to average KDE
> > developers, yet obviously this is accessible to some...
> 
> Yes, I am talking about extending the system.  If it's not possible to 
> extend the system without glib, then this "wrapper" idea is probably too 
> limited to be sufficient.

Ok, so let's run with this a bit:

There *are* many parts of KDE where there is knowledge required significantly 
above basic C++, KDE, Qt programming.  Hell, aRts is dang hard and 
significantly beyond what most simple multimedia developer need to know.  I 
think it's fair to assume that whatever we choose as a backend will require 
some knowledge, for the backend implementors, beyond "normal" KDE development 
skills.

First, many of us are competent C programmers.  While it would be nice to have 
something that was all nice, clean, intuitive, Qt based, C++, being 
pragmatic, it makes more sense in my opinion to concede that much is what is 
available is C based and such is not *that* bad.

Second, glib *is* becoming a standard toolkit for C programming on Free 
operating systems.  I'd personally consider knowing glib more useful and 
reusable than say, knowing aRts.  And there are several people on this list 
that do know glib (Tim, Stefan, Guillaume come to mind).  There are probably 
at least as many that know glib as know aRts.

And I don't mean this as a slam on aRts -- again -- I'm not sold on GStreamer 
or any other solution at the moment.  I just don't yet understand why a glib 
dependancy for *extending* the multimedia system is not acceptable, or in 
fact more than we demand now in terms of counter-intuitiveness.  Again, I 
think we require this type of specific knowledge in many areas.  More kde 
devels knowing glib might even open up the door for further code sharing 
between Gnome and KDE, which at least at a fairly low level like this, I 
think would be a good thing.

> Oh sure.. they were very cooperative with me when I asked about it when 
> considering video options for KDE 3.1.  It's from them that I found that 
> GStreamer is tightly bound to glib.
> 
> Please don't make this out to be a personal thing.  It's purely technical.  
> Purely on merit.

Oh, no.  I just meant this in the "they're motivated, active and helpful" 
category.

Cheers,

-Scott

-- 
There are 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and 
those who don't.