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smplayer for os/2 ecs

Started by Saijin_Naib, 2008.10.15, 18:30:56

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Saijin_Naib

Excellent, excellent, excellent, excellent. It's nice to have a functioning GUI player for eCS. Shame it's not native like WarpVision but this should probably prove to be more stable anyway :P

Good work guys!

chennecke

If you use the same critera, WarpVision is not "native" either.

Actually, this whole "native" thingy is pretty much a moot discussion. It is a native app as Qt is available for OS/2. Non-native would mean run via the DOS box or Odin. If you extend your definition of native to "has to use standard OS/2 GUI elements," Mozilla, OOo, and everything that uses skins wouldn't be native apps either.

Saijin_Naib

Warpvision uses a Window Abstraction kit? Which one? QT3 or WxWidgets? In any case, SMPlayer is pretty excellent and I look forward to it becoming a full Mplayer front-end exposing all it's features (according to their About SMPlayer page). This should fill the A/V gap in eCS a little bit better.

lewhoo

Quote from: chennecke on 2008.10.16, 15:52:04
If you use the same critera, WarpVision is not "native" either.

I guess native in this case means PM native, meaning using PM controls etc.

It's great to have smplayer, but I personally think that apps using native PM controls are a better choice for user (unfortunately not for a programmer ;) ) - every hange applied to PM applies also to those apps. And not native apps nearly always lack full PM functionality.

Thus I also hoped for more rapid development of wxWidgets, for it is something native like - interface for PM native controls in most cases...

chennecke

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2008.10.16, 18:11:32
Warpvision uses a Window Abstraction kit? Which one? QT3 or WxWidgets?

It doesn't use such a kit but thanks to the skinning crap the GUI doesn't use PM controls either, except for the partially functional play list and the settings notebook.

ddan

#5
smplayer: okay, I've tried it (10.20 version); best I can say is needs more work.

First and most important, its GUI file selector is typically clumsy, requires
complicated and precise mouse movements to navigate. The selector is SIMPLY
buggy too, wouldn't display even one .avi file in the directory I went to
first, nor could I find ANY .avi, only .wmv files -- and those wouldn't play
until I browsed to set executable path as "C:\mplayer\mplayer.exe" rather than
"mplayer/mplayer.exe". While trying various items, I managed to create "New
Folder 1" despite clicking "Cancel". Great. Just like Windows.

2nd, those .wmv files played, jerkily, in upper left corner rather than full
window. Whether that can be "fixed" by settings, I don't really care, as I
already have a system that works better.

It's upsetting to me to criticize when I wish the developers all the best, and
I'd certainly overlook bugs and development problems, BUT the GUI bit, while
SLICK in appearance and impressive in number of functions, is for me nearly
fatally flawed in the file selector. -- Oh, and on program start, it spins up
my second drive needlessly; that's just plain annoying, and some opinion holds
that each spin up shortens drive life. Please don't touch ANYTHING that you
don't actually need.

I don't complain without an alternative to suggest, and will be so immodest as
to suggest that everyone should try GFilSel2 from Hobbes to see what can be
done on the old-fashioned command line with just a bit of REXX code. I can
look into directories ten times as fast with the keyboard. (Being a "general"
selector, the file types aren't filtered to just videos, but this turns out to
not be an obstacle if one can navigate quickly.)

And it's not even exactly any inherent advantage to keyboarding, it's that GUI
file selectors are still arranged in the first crude way that occurred to
whoever twenty years ago -- probably more feebleness we can blame on Bill,
certainly so because never improved -- still tiny buttons that require time to
locate, still slow to read and display files, still awkward to navigate, and
worst of all, upon entry to or exit from a directory, reset EVERY time to the
first file/folder instead of any attempt to keep track of place: that works
okay only when are few files and folders, just multiplies annoyance now.

Yes, are some nice features and a deal of promise. However, the combination of
clumsy, buggy file selection with not-great playing isn't yet even adequate.

Saijin_Naib

#6
You are of course aware that SMplayer is a Linux app right?

Also, there is no way this app is not an improvement over WVGUI which simply failed to do anything worthwhile other than crash.

ddan

Uh, you're aware that GFilSel2 is a REXX command-line program, right?

You evidently missed my point, that I ask people to try my simple little
program for a better, or at least alternate, way to select files.

I tried NOT to bash smplayer as such. Wish I had the talents they show on the
complex parts just in making the port work, BUT that still doesn't make the
file selector part fun for me. And overall it doesn't work as well as the
current mplayer with my text front-end.

That GUI isn't necessarily better you know to be my on-going theme. I wish
you'd just try -- oh, right, you no longer use ECS. Hmm.

Saijin_Naib

#8
I've downloaded GFilSel2 before, but I am very fond of the GUI. The CLI is always great to have around, but I simply don't want to HAVE to use it.

I also find it odd that you make snide remarks against Windows and Microsoft for the implementation of a GUI file selector from a Linux native app that has been ported to OS/2. I just simply don't see the connection, but this type of argumentation is common among those who may be a bit too passionate for or against something, whatever their reasons may be...

Could there be an improvement in the GUI of SMplayer? Certainly. They also have a feature-suggest tracker specifically for this purpose. I appreciate having it over WVGUI which was highly unstable and certainly no easier to use (the settings notebook was horrendous).

And yes, I no longer use eCS. I've paid up my Software Subscription and I await RC6 or GA with USB booting ability. I'd like to see eCS on my netbook because I'm finding Xubuntu and gOS far too limited and unstable. The 8.10 Ubuntu release may fix some of these issues, but I still prefer eCS over Linux.

ddan

No, the odd part is that you consistently defend Windows HERE. However, doesn't matter where the GUI came from, all I've seen have the same problem of resetting to first file/folder, EVERY time you enter or exit a directory. Just that one item in my command line version can save literally minutes a day over any GUI.

What I wish is for someone to re-do GUI file selectors. These are an atomic, basic, low-level, FREQUENT and ESSENTIAL item, easily improved, yet they're all flawed.

And another thing, all GUIs are simply manual labor, no automation or customization is possible. What looks sophisticated is in fact the most rigidly hard-wired part of the OS.

rudi

Quote from: ddan on 2008.10.23, 19:08:23
BUT that still doesn't make the file selector part fun for me

It's the standard Qt file selection box, which is IMHO is much better than what
OS/2 provides by default: It's resizable, has the abilitiy to create new directories,
has a detailed view with sort function, can rename and delete files and behaves
as expected on files with multiple dots in their names. It is, indeed, a bit slow in
loading, but that's the price we have to pay for the multiplatform approach.

As part of the Qt library it is not specific to smplayer. If you don't like it or have
ideas for improvements you are free to go to:  http://svn.netlabs.org/qt3
and fix it. BTW, the only thing that I really had to complain about is this one:
http://svn.netlabs.org/qt3/ticket/49


RobertM

Quote from: ddan on 2008.10.23, 18:06:46
smplayer: okay, I've tried it (10.20 version); best I can say is needs more work.

First and most important, its GUI file selector is typically clumsy, requires
complicated and precise mouse movements to navigate. The selector is SIMPLY
buggy too, wouldn't display even one .avi file in the directory I went to
first, nor could I find ANY .avi, only .wmv files -- and those wouldn't play
until I browsed to set executable path as "C:\mplayer\mplayer.exe" rather than
"mplayer/mplayer.exe". While trying various items, I managed to create "New
Folder 1" despite clicking "Cancel". Great. Just like Windows.

I didnt experience those issues (not finding certain files)...


Quote from: ddan on 2008.10.23, 18:06:46
2nd, those .wmv files played, jerkily, in upper left corner rather than full
window. Whether that can be "fixed" by settings, I don't really care, as I
already have a system that works better.

I increased the cache size someplace in the settings to take care of that, and it now plays better than mPlayer alone (simply because I am too lazy to increase the cache sizes for running mPlayer standalone).

It does seem to improperly recognize window/video sizes from time to time - but I find enlarging the window to the same size or larger than the video resolves that (when the output/screen mode is set to "auto")

Also the lack of full screen ability is kinda annoying, especially since one can change to full screen via the options while a video is playing - but no such feature is available from the menu.

Robert


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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ddan

Well, I'm trying to not be negative, because the rest of it -- besides file selection and playing! -- looks slick, but I'm utterly tired of file selectors that require me to scroll with the mouse EVERY time I go into or exit a directory with more than a couple of files/folders. Better ways are easily possible even with a GUI, but they seem absolutely locked into the clumsy methods of Win3, and without ANY alternative to using the mouse for everything. Simply implementing page up / page down from the keyboard would be an enormous improvement (I didn't test that in smplayer, though).

In any case, I couldn't find a single .avi with that selector, or rather, when I typed "*" as the name, they appeared, but couldn't be selected.

And, I suspect that the development hardware was a lot faster than my 2800+ with unaccelerated SNAP, though the latest mplayer works fine on it, even full screen.


Saijin_Naib

DDAN, have you tried using Panorama VESA as opposed to SNAP VESA? It's much faster for everything, though still significantly less fast than accelerated SNAP.

Also, you should really be fine on your 2800+, I never had issues on my weak P4 with Panorama, especially after our OS/2 ports of MPlayer gained support for lman(believe that is what its called) [the Panorama backend].

ddan

No, I haven't tried Panorama, though have some version of it, somewhere. But unless it somehow fixes the file selector, I don't see it helping a major obstacle.

Because, although the file selector, whatever its origins or similarities, isn't exactly bad, it does waste my time. If you're ever idle, calculate how much time is wasted, two or three seconds at a go, by hundreds of millions of people fumbling with antiquated file selectors, and other senseless but standard items of GUIs, which could be done BETTER. I'm not even arguing at the moment that keyboarding is better, but WHY are buttons so tiny when there's oodles of blank space in a dialog box?

Point is, now that I DO have experience with something better, it's difficult to bear the old clumsiness.

Now for a little balance: the file selector IS better than usual for allowing delete, for fairly large areas of text on ONE line instead of piled up, which is always unreadable, and one can re-size its window. -- You're right, it's not of Windows origin.