[vlc-devel] mrl & uri

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:44:29 +0200, Rafaël Carré <rafael.carre at gmail.com>
wrote:
> IMO we should just stop using "mrls" but URIs (explanation at the end)

There are no URI schemes for discs, DVB, radios, RTP, etc, that I know. So
err... we are kind of bound to use a superset of URIs. I definitely agree
that we should accept URLs, and use them when possible, but I am afraid we
are bound to MRLs as a *superset* of URLs.

> Use cases of MRLs :
> 
> - access/demux://blabla
> 
>     The demux should be specified otherwise since schemes (the part
>     before ":") can not contain "/".
>     With input_item_AddOption() for example.

Unfortunately, it seems that --demux is inherited, in case the input item
gets children items, which is typically inappropriate. IMHO, the fact that
the slash violates the URI grammar is a non-issue, so long as it does not
create any ambiguity. If I'm not mistaken, the scheme always ends with a
colon, so there should be no parsing ambiguity. I must say, I fail to see
what problem you are trying to solve by forbidding the VLC demux specifier.

> - access://blabla@options (for example cdda:///dev/cdrom@53 , or vcd)
> 
> We should use something more correct, but it's not very important
> since cdda: is not a registered scheme
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URI_scheme for the list)
> 
> Here is an example from rfc3986:
> 
>          foo://example.com:8042/over/there?name=ferret#nose
>          \_/   \______________/\_________/ \_________/ \__/
>           |           |            |            |        |
>        scheme     authority       path        query   fragment
> 
> cdda:///dev/cdrom#53 looks fine to me.

This might be a good idea.

> If you know of other cases for "MRLs" please state so.

SSM with UDP and RTP remain problematic; we have two address & port tuples
to fit in the location.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont