rulesPlayer

It’s been a long time since I last touched the player, but I had a sudden change of heart. I felt a desire to continue the work. And I actually started. So I decided to put up this little blog and keep people that are still interested informed what is going on.

So where we’re at? The current version of the player is pretty stable. It has (almost) everything I wanted and many people seem to like it. It lacks any major bugs and is stable. What I don’t like about it is that the code is a bit dirty… I was actually learning how to embed MPlayer. Anyway I think the result is pretty useful. But there are some other major problems. It’s with my toolkit. First the user interface library that I was using is now dead. Its maintainer went away and I am not keen on maintaining a whole GUI library because of this project. Then the standard library of the language that I am using became not so popular (I have explained in more detail in the forum). To say it plain words, the basic stuff that my player is built on is not useful anymore for my case. And this is a pretty discouraging situation. That kept me from developing the player. Recently I have found a great and very fast GUI library that I used for another project. It is called HTMLayout and it is based on HTML. Which means it offers much greater possibilities for visual presentation. Read skins! This is little cue for the next version - skins. And this where we’re at - next version. This means a complete rewrite. Changing the UI library is a big deal and it means everything will be rewritten. And since I will rewrite everything I have the opportunity to revisit everything that needs a touch and do it the right way. This is risky. Making such a big change there is the risk of breaking what was done right. So it is important to have some kind of guideline. What is most important and what shapes the player as it is? Why the project started in the first place? To have what the others players lack:

• Blazing performance. Both startup and playing the movie (this means fast rewinding). The next version must be even faster.
• Simple, non-bloated interface. The interface must be intuitive to navigate and provide fast access to everything one needs.
• Customizable. One must be able to customize the player. The current player is very customizable, but it is not done the right way. The console approach is not too user friendly.
• Never worry about codecs - they are all included.
• And of course - free.

This is what I intended. Now it must be perfected and extended:

• Eye candy. I am not a big lover of skins but they could be nice if done right. Also there is always the possibility of making Windows like skin.
• More extensible - plugins. It is impossible for one man to please everyone. So I will do what I can - keep the above points. Build a basic player, but make it extensible. So everyone could add what he likes.
• Easier to install and update.

That’s it for now. This is my idea. It may or may not work out. Now is the time for suggestions, feature requests, etc. Comments are welcome. Next time I will give some information about the next version of the player. If you are interested drop by from time to time to see what’s happening.