[Fedora-packaging] Packaging Gnac (An audio converter for GNOME)

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 01/18/2010 08:43 PM, Michal Ambroz wrote:
> Hello guys,
> < So I would say that Michael is right, unsupported types should not be 
> < registered.
> < And after all, what would be the usefulness of lying to the users ?
>
> I beg you pardon, but I tend to disagree. 
> >From user perspective I would be more than happy to see that I have got 
> the right application to handle given format already.
> Only thing I am missing is the right codec.
>   
Actually as an ordinary user you would see an application that claims to 
support a file type, but it does not. Most users have no idea what a 
plugin is. And they do not care. They just want the application to 
simply work (trust me on this one, I am doing user support since '87 and 
I've had my share of WTFs). I might be persuaded to accept an error 
message saying "It seems you want to play a file of type XYZ but 
unfortunately you miss some bits. For a full blown experience, please 
visit http://<useful hint goes here>  install the support for XYZ and 
retry". But I would remove without hesitation an application which pops 
in just to say "Hey, Johny! Remember what you have just tried ? Guess 
what ! It does not work ! (No, Johny, I will not tell you why, go figure 
that yourself.)".

> Gnac is using gstreamer that means that support for some other type of media 
> could be probably added just by installing plugins to gstreamer.
> The fact that it is not supported out of the pure Fedora repository doesn't mean 
> that the support cannot be added by the user by installing the right plugin
> (for example from the rpmfusion repository). 
>   
In which case the app should register those media types in the moment 
when the right plugins are installed

> That is probably the reason why other media players do register for all possible 
> media types even without the right codecs present already in the system.
Or maybe they are all wrong. The most frequent reason I uninstall an 
application is when trying to use it and notice that it does not perform 
the tasks that it claims it. (Second reason is when the application 
keeps crashing or misbehaving )