I like this guy, but...
by
mrseigen
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· Score: 5, Informative
...command-line MPlayer works perfectly for me. Aside from that, he certainly lets people know what's wrong with the projects they've spent most of their lives on.
Re:I like this guy, but...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
command-line... works perfectly for me
Everytime that phrase comes to your mind I want you to take a deep breath and think whether you would say that to your non-technical mother/father/granny/whatever. This is a great review in that it takes it from a true end user perspective. This is the experience that a regular joe would have. This is the battle that we must fight and the answer is not "command-line... works perfectly for me."
Re:I like this guy, but...
by
seanellis
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Sorry to disagree, but the original author is right, and you even point it out yourself:
Interaction is a bit different than usual, i'll admit, but it's intuitive and easy once you get used to it.
There's the problem right there, staring you in the face.
Why should I have to "get used to it"? I have already spent time and effort gaining knowledge about how to deal with scroll bars, file selectors, bringing windows to the top, minimizing windows, etc. If I can't apply that to this app, and have to learn all those things all over again just for this app then I lose.
I haven't got the time to "get used to" every app's idea of a pretty UI. I want something that works the way everything else works, thanks.
For some reason, it's media stuff that tends to sport these kinds of interfaces. Non-standard windows. Controls I can't see, or that don't work the way I expect, or that don't do anything because they are cruft that just looks like a control. More pixels dedicated to the skin than to the movie. Favorites bars. Channel bars. Media bars. Quicklaunch bars. For all I know or care, topless bars.
WHO ON EARTH THOUGHT I WANTED ANY OF THIS CRAP?
What I want from a media player is simple: a rectangular window with a standard title and menu bar. Controls: play, stop, and a horizontal scroll bar for fast forward/rewind - and it had better be a proper UI standard scrollbar too. Maximise widget for full screen video. Standard menus for everything else.
Of course, Linux isn't the only OS that has this problem. Windows Media Player is another execrable pile of "cool" skins and stuff. I selected the "classic" skin as soon as the thing installed, and turned every UI option off. And Quicktime player's UI rightly has its own page in the UI hall of shame. You don't even get a choice with this one.
No wonder users these days get confused. And when users get confused, they leave.
OS X + Fink = bliss
by
IvyMike
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I know he poo-poos this idea, but he really should go to OS X. JWZ highly prizes usability, and so do most Mac developers (quicktime viewer aside), so it seems like a good match. He wants xemacs; he can get xemacs with fink and run it on a rootless X server, and thus get the best of both worlds. All the video stuff is likely trivial on a Mac.
And admit it, any time you see someone with hair like his, you immediately think, "Mac user".
Finally, somebody who else who is unafraid to point out the stupidity of the interfaces being foisted upon us!
Look, folks - your program is NOT a physical device I can stack in my equipment rack - DON'T MAKE IT LOOK LIKE ONE! It is a PROGRAM! Make it look like a program! I want a simple menu bar across the top of the window. I want that menu bar to follow accepted standard practice - File, Options, Help. I want a minimum of BS - just play the DAMN FILE!
Re:This guy is way off base
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Firstly I don't believe that he wrote this intending for it to be posted to Slashdot: It'd likely be much more politically correct if it were. Having said that, you are not JWZ (nor am I)--The guy was one of the primary developers at Netscape, was a major impetus in getting Mozilla up and going, and then flamed out of Netscape when the suits/AOL took over. You don't have to respect his opinion, but realize that a lot of people do give it credence because he has proven himself in the industry.
The primary point that he seems to be making is what a lot of people feel about Linux/open source: This isn't a hobby for me, so what's the point? For someone for whom it's a hobby, using a command line with reams of intricate command line options is a very reasonable option, but for someone who it isn't they want a clean and clear interface that affords usage in obvious ways (for a media player that of course is for VCR like functionality).
All that said, if you dont like it the way it is, break out your EMacs, and Write something better, otherwise, quit bitching!
But i was sure EMacs has its own built in movie player:P
This also applies to XMMS
by
Avumede
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I've been saying the same things about skinnable interfaces for a while now. I've never found one that is acceptable. Look at xmms and winamp skins. I'd say 70% are just plain ugly, 30% are good to beautify, and 100% (as far as I've seen) are unusable. When they have text at all, they have tiny unreadable fonts. They have buttons that don't look like buttons, and they are bitmapped so you can't resize it like a normal app.
When I got a Mac and started using iTunes, I was a much happier person.
Re:What's the point?
by
swordgeek
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· Score: 5, Insightful
"Maybe he could try developping sommething, since the source code is there."
I just have two things to say to this comment.
1) Shut. 2) Up.
I am so SICK and TIRED of people mistaking the point of open source in this way! I am not a developer. I am not a programmer. I do not have the time, skills, or inclination to write a media player from scratch, or even fix one of the many broken ones. The fact that I (theoretically) CAN get and modify the source doesn't automatically mean that I MUST do so, if I don't like what's out there. It also does not affect the degree to which the existing players suck!
Once again:
1) The openness of the source code doesn't make the current software suck any less. 2) The OSS-given ability to (re)write software is not a de facto requirement to (re)write said software. It does not absolve the original programmers of their responsibilty to write non-crap.
--
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Re:Shouldn't rant about things you don't understan
by
siphoncolder
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Why do people get off on putting other people's work down? Just because you made a quick buck in an IPO doesn't give you the right to rant about whatever you want and expect people to bow down.
1) People don't get off doing that. They're actually saying something about what they don't like. Progress, as you should remember, is not about sitting silently and taking whatever is handed to you. Progress is made by telling someone what's wrong with what they've done. So what if his tone is nasty? His words are what's important, and his words equate to: "Why is this so hard. Make it consistant, make it easy."
2) He has the right to say whatever he wants. Just like you. Besides, attacking his position or money doesn't invalidate or make less important anything he says unless he can be proven to be wrong. Opinions can be tough to validate or invalidate, but in this case, he makes some very specific points about what he thinks is good and what's not. At no point does he say "I have a lot of money, which makes my point more imporant." He has a WEBSITE which makes his voice simply HEARD.
-- i'm amazed that i survived - an airbag saved my life.
Re:This guy is way off base
by
Waffle+Iron
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· Score: 5, Funny
>>> they want a clean and clear interface that affords usage in obvious ways >>> (for a media player that of course is for VCR like functionality).
Re:This review sucks..
by
Tackhead
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· Score: 5, Insightful
> Mainly because he limited himself to RPM's and didnt specify what WM he was using. > > I use both mplayer and gmplayer on Mandrake just fine. It doesnt have resize problems, has resize ability, etc. That _may_ be because Im using windowmaker and/or blackbox, but it seems to work fine in KDE as well. Course, I installed the source for them, and compiled from scratch, after doing all the enable/disable flags the right way for my system.
Congratulations.
So write up an FAQ. Tell us:
1) What WMs work with what video programs.
2) What libraries are required.
3) What version of gcc you used *G*
4) What flags are set, where to set them, and what's "right" for a wide range of systems, say, a few nVIDIA and ATI systems on AMD and Intel chips, and/or any specific motherboard-related issues.
5) All the other variables I've overlooked, but that you didn't, that make the difference between "It Works" and "It Doesn't".
The problem JWZ is ranting about is usability, not functionality. You don't have a usability problem, because you already have a large base of knowledge, because you've made a large investment in time and energy to figure out how to make it work.
I made a similar comment the other day - and I've seen the same flames today, which pretty muchn boil down to "Hey, asshole, we code for the fun of it, not because we want to save the world from Microsoft! We code because we like to, and couldn't care less if anyone other than us ever uses our code!"
(The rest of this comment isn't addressed at you per se, it's addressed to the readership who've flamed JWZ for being a clueless and ungrateful twit - you've seen 'em - "hey, asshole, what have you coded for us lately", and "hey, be thankful you have any code at all, just 'cuz you're not 31337 enough to run it!")
Well, that's fine. Good to have you guys out of the closet. Billgatus will take over the world - and hey, that's fine, since it won't stop you from coding.
But if your code compiles in a forest where there are only 100 systems that can execute it (because those 100 systems all belong to the developers working on the project, as opposed to those of us who develop other things don't have time to keep up with the developments in every open source/free software video project), can you really be said to have created something useful in the first place? If code compiles on no machines, can it really be said to be code? And if you don't give a shit about your code running on a wide variety of platforms ("What, our code only runs on Distro X! You wanna run his app that needs Distro Y, and my app, you gotta dual-boot, or choose between his app and my app! Choose my app, 'cuz I'm cooler!") why should I give a shit about your code in the first place?
If that's how you want it, hey, it's your code, but under that scenario, what value does open source/free software offer me?
"Well", you say, "if you haven't coded anything for us, why should we give a fuck what you? It's open source, take it or fuckin' leave it."
Fair enough - but then why should any of us give a rat's fried patoot about freeing that DeCSS guy, or that Ogg Theora stuff, when it's plain as day that I'll never view a video with code based on it anyways?
The difference between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs offering me closed-source binaries on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, and you offering me code that I can't necessarily compile or use on a take-it-or-leave-it basis -- is that at least the frickin' movie plays on Windows and OS X.
Re:This guy is way off base
by
On+Lawn
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I agree. The importance of "JWZ" is lost withough knowing a few of his choice quotes...
"Unix sucks. I use it becuase it sucks less then everything else."
and
"Linux is free only if you do not value your time".
He's an edgy glass-half-empty sort. I like his reading and commentary personally, and think its dead on. But I have never let it deture me from anything, he's just wired to compain about things.
Linux users must hate themselves
by
Space+Coyote
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· Score: 5, Insightful
If I brought home a hardware DV DVD player, set it up on top of my TV, plugged it in and turned it on to find a command prompt and no way to play movies without me going out on the Internet, finding the proper program, in the proper packaging format, compiled for the proper architecture, installing it, then realizing my video hardware isn't configured properly. Having to upgrade my X-windows, and subsequently patch my 'kernel' with some kind of library.. and so on and so on. Well, the girl I brought home to watch a movie with me will have gone off to find something more interesting to do long ago. And said video player would have been thrown out the window.
When I can buy a computer with linux on it and have stuff just work, I'll say it has a chance of being useful for someone rather than a giant time-sucking virus.
Until then, I'll use a Mac.
-- ___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
Re:This guy is way off base
by
Trepalium
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Except he's right. Video players on Linux do suck. The only real problem is, the brain damage isn't limited to Linux. Virtually every operating system is overrun by these monstrosities of application skinning. The blame probably should lay squarely on WinAMP, which pretty much pioneered the idea of skinning media applications. Everyone's doing it. Everyone from Apple and their Quicktime software, to Microsoft and their Media Player software are doing it. Is it any wonder that Linux developers are doing it, too?
Apple, above all else, should know better, but instead cave into customer demand, and produced Quicktime Player, with an interface that is neither uniform or intuitive. Older versions of Quicktime were not pleasant to use on Windows, but at least they didn't have these disgusting custom widgets.
Then there's Microsoft Media Player. The last useful version was 6.4, which still had a sane, native interface. 7, 8 and 9 all share the 'skinned html' interface, which is difficult to use and slow. Microsoft's only solution to this was to provide a skin that provides poor emulation of the old 6.4 features with non-functional menus and permanently stuck in the extended mode instead of compact.
Real has never been immune to the influence, with even early versions of RealPlayer using custom widgets. Things only got worse with the release of RealOne. Need I say more?
Now, there are applications for Linux, Windows, etc, that do have a decent interface. I'm sure old versions of Quicktime were great to use on MacOS, although they have always been a little cumbersome on Windows because of the menu issue. Windows Media Player 6.4 has served me well for some time when I'm using Microsoft Windows. I liked using XMPS (gnome user interface) on Linux until it stopped being developed. VLC doesn't have a terrible UI, but it doesn't have a great one either.
Perhaps it's just easier to make a pretty bitmap with clickable portions that developing a real usable UI for media applications? Perhaps there's something special about media players that make them immune to normal UI development research? Or have we just become so accustomed to the status quo, that we don't expect any different?
-- I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Uselessness.
by
Lemmy+Caution
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I can figure out a command line. I can type "man foo" or "foo -h" and get a general sense of what I'm supposed to do, and if it's only a matter of a couple flags and args, it may only be twice as long as it would take for me to look at a page of prefs and checked settings.
JWZ is, I believe, somewhat smarter than I am, and far more technically sophisticated, and he's sick of having to do that. He *can*, of course, and if you knew jack shit, you'd know that he probably is much better at programming, unix, and the like than you are, but the point is that like everyone with better things to learn than command line switches if we have to do this with every command in a series of commands that are being piped into each other, we're going to get sick of it - especially with plenty of alternatives (MS, Apple, etc.) available.
A well-designed GUI will present far more information far more quickly than a CLI. Processing visual information is a parallel process - scanning text is a serial one. Looking at a single window, being able to check 6 or 7 checkboxes and hit the "enter" button is more efficient than trying to figure out which of 6 or 7 flags to use, their arguments if necessary, and then enter a string on a command line.
When the software at hand is a media playback software, where you may have to go back and rescan the text and edit the command string if things aren't right, the inefficiences of a CLI are even more striking.
Re:JWZ=Moron WITH No CLUE! I do video on Linux
by
markv242
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Couple of points, before you start feeling too good about yourself. (er, whoops, too late)
- First of all, Jamie was talking about just trying to play video. If he has to do any kind of configuration or compilation at all, he's done too much. Video playing is the easiest thing on the planet! Why is it so damned time-consuming under Linux?
For the rest of your self-praising argument,
- How long did it take you to compile and configure vcr, avilib support, transcode, mpeg2enc, and all the various patches that are required to get your video to record?
- "Also I create videos with a (...) camcorder (...) and Kino (...)"
Congratulations. Kino provides the same functionality that even the shittiest NLE, Adobe Premiere, had in version 1.0 (in... 1994?). Way to be on the cutting edge there.
From the Kino site: "It does not support multiple layers or tracks of video and audio." Huh? How can it be an NLE if it doesn't do more than one track? Have you ever sit in front of an Avid bay and done any kind of real video editing? Because I have news for you: Kino is to a NLE as a Kia is to a Ferrari.
- "I then save to mpeg2 and encode 9kbit video (...)"
I'm going to assume you meant 9Mbit video, because 9kbit video is like looking at an old, worn-out three-quarter-inch reel-to-reel tape from the 1950s. Still, though, let's review: you're shooting with a single-chip camera, importing as a lossy format, editing with a one-track editor, and exporting as a lossy format. Again, way to be on the cutting edge.
...all to do the most basic of tasks, record video from line in and encode to mpeg2?
What you're doing can be done by my eight-year-old cousin on his iMac, using iMovie and iDVD, which (last I checked) doesn't take any time to install, because they come with OS X. And I'd bet the quality of his resulting video is completely superlative to yours, because the tools he's using are actually modern software (where the engineers have spent more than five minutes on the interface).
Jamie needs to bite the bullet and spend the cash for a good Powerbook or G4 tower. Linux on the desktop is dead. It will never get to the level that OS X is currently at. Face the facts.
Re:How about what's wrong with JWZ?
by
Raul+Acevedo
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It's probably fun to make lists of things that suck all day long, but why not use some of that talent and nervous energy to join in and help?
Because part of his point is that at this point in the history of the computer, being able to use a simple app to view video under Linux should not require one to have to do it oneself from scratch to do it right.
This gets mentioned a lot on slashdot; "if you don't like it, stop complaining and YOU do it right!" While there's a lot of validity to that, there are many times when the issue is that by now, certain basic things of using a computer have been solved 10000 times over.
I mean come on, "://", or the "MRL browser", to open a file dialog? WTF? I went through the same frustration with Xine, it took forever to figure how to do something as simple as open friggin' files.
Innovation is one thing. But coming up with a hard to use interface, ignoring some really, really basic UI guidelines that have been around for what 30 years is another. At that point, "if you don't like it, do it yourself" becomes an excuse, not a valid response.
-- In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror,
and you would not have been notified.
Re:What a grumpy asshole
by
mixmasta
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Just because he is a grumpy asshole, doesn't mean he's not right.
Slashdot Mirror
...command-line MPlayer works perfectly for me. Aside from that, he certainly lets people know what's wrong with the projects they've spent most of their lives on.
I know he poo-poos this idea, but he really should go to OS X. JWZ highly prizes usability, and so do most Mac developers (quicktime viewer aside), so it seems like a good match. He wants xemacs; he can get xemacs with fink and run it on a rootless X server, and thus get the best of both worlds. All the video stuff is likely trivial on a Mac.
And admit it, any time you see someone with hair like his, you immediately think, "Mac user".
Dammit, when you worked at Netscape, JWZ, Navigator sucked ass. Sorry, dude, but Communicator has improved since you had a hissy fit and left.
What, I'm not allowed to criticize the great JWZ?
So do it, JWZ; either put together something that works the way you think it should work, or give up and buy a fucking Mac already.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Finally, somebody who else who is unafraid to point out the stupidity of the interfaces being foisted upon us!
Look, folks - your program is NOT a physical device I can stack in my equipment rack - DON'T MAKE IT LOOK LIKE ONE! It is a PROGRAM! Make it look like a program! I want a simple menu bar across the top of the window. I want that menu bar to follow accepted standard practice - File, Options, Help. I want a minimum of BS - just play the DAMN FILE!
www.eFax.com are spammers
Firstly I don't believe that he wrote this intending for it to be posted to Slashdot: It'd likely be much more politically correct if it were. Having said that, you are not JWZ (nor am I)--The guy was one of the primary developers at Netscape, was a major impetus in getting Mozilla up and going, and then flamed out of Netscape when the suits/AOL took over. You don't have to respect his opinion, but realize that a lot of people do give it credence because he has proven himself in the industry.
The primary point that he seems to be making is what a lot of people feel about Linux/open source: This isn't a hobby for me, so what's the point? For someone for whom it's a hobby, using a command line with reams of intricate command line options is a very reasonable option, but for someone who it isn't they want a clean and clear interface that affords usage in obvious ways (for a media player that of course is for VCR like functionality).
All that said, if you dont like it the way it is, break out your EMacs, and Write something better, otherwise, quit bitching!
:P
But i was sure EMacs has its own built in movie player
I've been saying the same things about skinnable interfaces for a while now. I've never found one that is acceptable. Look at xmms and winamp skins. I'd say 70% are just plain ugly, 30% are good to beautify, and 100% (as far as I've seen) are unusable. When they have text at all, they have tiny unreadable fonts. They have buttons that don't look like buttons, and they are bitmapped so you can't resize it like a normal app.
When I got a Mac and started using iTunes, I was a much happier person.
"Maybe he could try developping sommething, since the source code is there."
I just have two things to say to this comment.
1) Shut.
2) Up.
I am so SICK and TIRED of people mistaking the point of open source in this way! I am not a developer. I am not a programmer. I do not have the time, skills, or inclination to write a media player from scratch, or even fix one of the many broken ones. The fact that I (theoretically) CAN get and modify the source doesn't automatically mean that I MUST do so, if I don't like what's out there. It also does not affect the degree to which the existing players suck!
Once again:
1) The openness of the source code doesn't make the current software suck any less.
2) The OSS-given ability to (re)write software is not a de facto requirement to (re)write said software. It does not absolve the original programmers of their responsibilty to write non-crap.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
1) People don't get off doing that. They're actually saying something about what they don't like. Progress, as you should remember, is not about sitting silently and taking whatever is handed to you. Progress is made by telling someone what's wrong with what they've done. So what if his tone is nasty? His words are what's important, and his words equate to: "Why is this so hard. Make it consistant, make it easy."
2) He has the right to say whatever he wants. Just like you. Besides, attacking his position or money doesn't invalidate or make less important anything he says unless he can be proven to be wrong. Opinions can be tough to validate or invalidate, but in this case, he makes some very specific points about what he thinks is good and what's not. At no point does he say "I have a lot of money, which makes my point more imporant." He has a WEBSITE which makes his voice simply HEARD.
i'm amazed that i survived - an airbag saved my life.
>>> they want a clean and clear interface that affords usage in obvious ways
>>> (for a media player that of course is for VCR like functionality).
Here's your VCR functionality user interface:
#!/usr/bin/python
import curses, curses.wrapper
def vcr(scr):
scr.addstr('12:00', curses.A_BLINK)
scr.refresh()
raw_input('')
curses.wrapper(vcr)
:)
>
> I use both mplayer and gmplayer on Mandrake just fine. It doesnt have resize problems, has resize ability, etc. That _may_ be because Im using windowmaker and/or blackbox, but it seems to work fine in KDE as well. Course, I installed the source for them, and compiled from scratch, after doing all the enable/disable flags the right way for my system.
Congratulations.
So write up an FAQ. Tell us:
1) What WMs work with what video programs.
2) What libraries are required.
3) What version of gcc you used *G*
4) What flags are set, where to set them, and what's "right" for a wide range of systems, say, a few nVIDIA and ATI systems on AMD and Intel chips, and/or any specific motherboard-related issues.
5) All the other variables I've overlooked, but that you didn't, that make the difference between "It Works" and "It Doesn't".
The problem JWZ is ranting about is usability, not functionality. You don't have a usability problem, because you already have a large base of knowledge, because you've made a large investment in time and energy to figure out how to make it work.
I made a similar comment the other day - and I've seen the same flames today, which pretty muchn boil down to "Hey, asshole, we code for the fun of it, not because we want to save the world from Microsoft! We code because we like to, and couldn't care less if anyone other than us ever uses our code!"
(The rest of this comment isn't addressed at you per se, it's addressed to the readership who've flamed JWZ for being a clueless and ungrateful twit - you've seen 'em - "hey, asshole, what have you coded for us lately", and "hey, be thankful you have any code at all, just 'cuz you're not 31337 enough to run it!")
Well, that's fine. Good to have you guys out of the closet. Billgatus will take over the world - and hey, that's fine, since it won't stop you from coding.
But if your code compiles in a forest where there are only 100 systems that can execute it (because those 100 systems all belong to the developers working on the project, as opposed to those of us who develop other things don't have time to keep up with the developments in every open source/free software video project), can you really be said to have created something useful in the first place? If code compiles on no machines, can it really be said to be code? And if you don't give a shit about your code running on a wide variety of platforms ("What, our code only runs on Distro X! You wanna run his app that needs Distro Y, and my app, you gotta dual-boot, or choose between his app and my app! Choose my app, 'cuz I'm cooler!") why should I give a shit about your code in the first place?
If that's how you want it, hey, it's your code, but under that scenario, what value does open source/free software offer me?
"Well", you say, "if you haven't coded anything for us, why should we give a fuck what you? It's open source, take it or fuckin' leave it."
Fair enough - but then why should any of us give a rat's fried patoot about freeing that DeCSS guy, or that Ogg Theora stuff, when it's plain as day that I'll never view a video with code based on it anyways?
The difference between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs offering me closed-source binaries on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, and you offering me code that I can't necessarily compile or use on a take-it-or-leave-it basis -- is that at least the frickin' movie plays on Windows and OS X.
I agree. The importance of "JWZ" is lost withough knowing a few of his choice quotes...
"Unix sucks. I use it becuase it sucks less then everything else."
and
"Linux is free only if you do not value your time".
He's an edgy glass-half-empty sort. I like his reading and commentary personally, and think its dead on. But I have never let it deture me from anything, he's just wired to compain about things.
If I brought home a hardware DV DVD player, set it up on top of my TV, plugged it in and turned it on to find a command prompt and no way to play movies without me going out on the Internet, finding the proper program, in the proper packaging format, compiled for the proper architecture, installing it, then realizing my video hardware isn't configured properly. Having to upgrade my X-windows, and subsequently patch my 'kernel' with some kind of library.. and so on and so on. Well, the girl I brought home to watch a movie with me will have gone off to find something more interesting to do long ago. And said video player would have been thrown out the window.
When I can buy a computer with linux on it and have stuff just work, I'll say it has a chance of being useful for someone rather than a giant time-sucking virus.
Until then, I'll use a Mac.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
Apple, above all else, should know better, but instead cave into customer demand, and produced Quicktime Player, with an interface that is neither uniform or intuitive. Older versions of Quicktime were not pleasant to use on Windows, but at least they didn't have these disgusting custom widgets.
Then there's Microsoft Media Player. The last useful version was 6.4, which still had a sane, native interface. 7, 8 and 9 all share the 'skinned html' interface, which is difficult to use and slow. Microsoft's only solution to this was to provide a skin that provides poor emulation of the old 6.4 features with non-functional menus and permanently stuck in the extended mode instead of compact.
Real has never been immune to the influence, with even early versions of RealPlayer using custom widgets. Things only got worse with the release of RealOne. Need I say more?
Now, there are applications for Linux, Windows, etc, that do have a decent interface. I'm sure old versions of Quicktime were great to use on MacOS, although they have always been a little cumbersome on Windows because of the menu issue. Windows Media Player 6.4 has served me well for some time when I'm using Microsoft Windows. I liked using XMPS (gnome user interface) on Linux until it stopped being developed. VLC doesn't have a terrible UI, but it doesn't have a great one either.
Perhaps it's just easier to make a pretty bitmap with clickable portions that developing a real usable UI for media applications? Perhaps there's something special about media players that make them immune to normal UI development research? Or have we just become so accustomed to the status quo, that we don't expect any different?
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
JWZ is, I believe, somewhat smarter than I am, and far more technically sophisticated, and he's sick of having to do that. He *can*, of course, and if you knew jack shit, you'd know that he probably is much better at programming, unix, and the like than you are, but the point is that like everyone with better things to learn than command line switches if we have to do this with every command in a series of commands that are being piped into each other, we're going to get sick of it - especially with plenty of alternatives (MS, Apple, etc.) available.
A well-designed GUI will present far more information far more quickly than a CLI. Processing visual information is a parallel process - scanning text is a serial one. Looking at a single window, being able to check 6 or 7 checkboxes and hit the "enter" button is more efficient than trying to figure out which of 6 or 7 flags to use, their arguments if necessary, and then enter a string on a command line.
When the software at hand is a media playback software, where you may have to go back and rescan the text and edit the command string if things aren't right, the inefficiences of a CLI are even more striking.
- First of all, Jamie was talking about just trying to play video. If he has to do any kind of configuration or compilation at all, he's done too much. Video playing is the easiest thing on the planet! Why is it so damned time-consuming under Linux?
For the rest of your self-praising argument,
- How long did it take you to compile and configure vcr, avilib support, transcode, mpeg2enc, and all the various patches that are required to get your video to record?
- "Also I create videos with a (...) camcorder (...) and Kino (...)"
Congratulations. Kino provides the same functionality that even the shittiest NLE, Adobe Premiere, had in version 1.0 (in... 1994?). Way to be on the cutting edge there.
From the Kino site: "It does not support multiple layers or tracks of video and audio." Huh? How can it be an NLE if it doesn't do more than one track? Have you ever sit in front of an Avid bay and done any kind of real video editing? Because I have news for you: Kino is to a NLE as a Kia is to a Ferrari.
- "I then save to mpeg2 and encode 9kbit video (...)"
I'm going to assume you meant 9Mbit video, because 9kbit video is like looking at an old, worn-out three-quarter-inch reel-to-reel tape from the 1950s. Still, though, let's review: you're shooting with a single-chip camera, importing as a lossy format, editing with a one-track editor, and exporting as a lossy format. Again, way to be on the cutting edge.
- "This is TOO simple."
I question your definition of simple. Check:
- Compile
- Find driver
- Compile
- Compile
- Install
- Try to find package
- Compile
- Install
- Cross fingers
- Compile
- Install
What you're doing can be done by my eight-year-old cousin on his iMac, using iMovie and iDVD, which (last I checked) doesn't take any time to install, because they come with OS X. And I'd bet the quality of his resulting video is completely superlative to yours, because the tools he's using are actually modern software (where the engineers have spent more than five minutes on the interface).
Jamie needs to bite the bullet and spend the cash for a good Powerbook or G4 tower. Linux on the desktop is dead. It will never get to the level that OS X is currently at. Face the facts.
This gets mentioned a lot on slashdot; "if you don't like it, stop complaining and YOU do it right!" While there's a lot of validity to that, there are many times when the issue is that by now, certain basic things of using a computer have been solved 10000 times over.
I mean come on, "://", or the "MRL browser", to open a file dialog? WTF? I went through the same frustration with Xine, it took forever to figure how to do something as simple as open friggin' files.
Innovation is one thing. But coming up with a hard to use interface, ignoring some really, really basic UI guidelines that have been around for what 30 years is another. At that point, "if you don't like it, do it yourself" becomes an excuse, not a valid response.
In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
Just because he is a grumpy asshole, doesn't mean he's not right.
#6495ED - cornflower blue