Hi All<br><br>Here's what I think about the disablement of "vlc.misc" for extension scripts in VLC v2.x. Â My "Media Context" (MC) extension needs the "vlc.misc.version()" function to ensure that it isn't being run on an old edition of VLC.<br>
<br>This is absolutely necessary, as anything earlier than VLC v1.1.11 was horribly buggy. Â Some lazy users might still be running VLC v1.1.10 or earlier. Â My MC extension tells them they must upgrade their VLC version first.<br>
<br>Suppose something similar happens in VLC v2.x.  There are still some pretty major bugs in VLC's extension code that cause it to freeze. When these finally get fixed, I will want to force MC users to upgrade VLC then too.<br>
<br>MC also uses "vlc.misc" in several other ways. Â It uses "vlc.misc.mwait()" and "vlc.misc.mdate()" to wait for the new metadata to stabilise after each track change. Â Using callbacks alone can't get the job done in this case!<br>
<br>This is because an inconsistent number of metadata changes occur per track change when listening to streams. Â There's simply no way of predicting which of these metadata changes will be the (final) one that MC should use.<br>
<br>The only way to wait for the final metadata change is to call a "vlc.misc.mwait()" delay for a couple of seconds after the first one. Within that timeframe, all of the metadata changes have occurred and it has finally stabilised.<br>
<br>MC must wait for this final metadata change because it'd be downloading context information - and temporarily stalling VLC - multiple times per track change otherwise. Â I hope it's now obvious why "vlc.misc.mwait()" is needed!<br>
<br>MC uses "vlc.misc.cachedir()" to save downloaded image files about the current context (e.g. artist, album, track). Â Without this, MC would have to rely on unreliable environment variables (e.g. "TEMP", "TMP", "TMPDIR").<br>
<br>For all of these reasons, it's absolutely necessary to have "vlc.misc" or an equivalent in VLC v2.x. Â For the benefit of my reasonably popular MC extension, will you please enable access to "vlc.misc" via extensions again?<br>
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