[vlc-devel] Re: libcddb added, playlist interface - disappointing

[R. Bernstein]

Derk-Jan Hartman writes:
 > Combining several of your messages here, rocky. It's gonna be a long  
 > read :)

I don't mind in the least. Thanks for the thoughtful reply. 

Won't respond to everything in detail, but will give some summary
comments and observations. 

In general I think one sort of votes by doing things. No doubt people
will voice strong objections when they feel strongly. But I think if
you have a vision or interest as to playlists should be or how to
present what I call general media information, go for it and make it
so! But if it is a drastic change, perhaps you might want to make a
branch of the VLC code or have a patch for people to try before
committing.

For my part, I'll be happy to change any of the code I know well to
assist. But on the other hand, it is nice to have something working in
the interrum. If for no other reason so to you have a couple of
plugins that can modified in some new scheme so folks can get a sense
of how it works. 


--- Where another media player puts this information ---

> We should also look at the playlist systems of some other players and  
> see if we can get any good ideas from them.

I hesitated to bring this up before, because I didn't want this to be
an "us" versus "them" kind of thing - an idea should be valued for its
merit. 

The xine X11 GUI (i.e. the "default" GUI) in fact does have general
info -- CDDB info or VCD info -- right there above the stream info in
the "Stream Info" window. The hotkey is Alt-I. You can *also* get this
information overlaid on the screen via OSD - the hotkey for that is
Ctrl-I.

As someone else said, I don't see any reason one can't allow for both
as xine does. (Being xine, each implimentation has its peculiarities).

--- MP3 tags which duplicate collection information ---

> True, but isn't this information also duplicated in every MP3 for  
> instance? I don't think this is truly a problem. total CD size in time  
> is irrelevant to us, because you can just as easily fit a DVD in  
> between your Audio CD tracks.


id3tags are for MP3's which are more of a dice and slice kind of
thing. The the notion common collections of CD's containing MP3's
isn't that common. Certainly not as common as Audio CDs. And although
CD-DA tracks can be mixed, turned into MP3's and put in a filesystem
and so on, generally one is supposed to think of the CD as a static
collection. In fact the *static* nature of a CD is makes CDDB work in
the first

The problem with storing collection information inside each unit is
not so much a space thing (although you have that too), but what in
database terminology is called an update anomaly. If someone updates
the collection information in some of the items in the collection but
not all, which version of the collection information do you believe?
It's better to change the information in one place and have it
reflected everywhere than make several changes which hopefully are the
same.

--- "Info" vs "File Info"

> I prefer more general the term "Info". the most basic should go into a  
> General section as discussed before.

"Info" I think is a little too broad. Whatever is in the "File Info"
is also "Info". But someone thought that Media/Stream info should have
its own window and I agree. I just don't think it should be called
"File" but rather "Media/Stream Info." Unless someone objects, I'll
make that trivial name change of "File" to "Stream/Media"

By the way, I sometimes see "Informations" or "infos." The word
"Information" or "info" is plural (and perhaps singular as well), no
final "s" is used.


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