Re: Helix Player virtual team meeting

[Ryan Gammon <rgammon real com>]

Hello folks,

As the clarifications on the licensing issues are happening in other 
threads, I also wanted to discuss some of the other interesting things 
that came out of the virtual team kickoff.

The first has to do with our use of the gtk_hxplayer prefix for our 
GtkWidget-based wrapper around the helix client.

There have been suggestions, from Hadess and Havoc in particular, that 
we not use the gtk prefix with our widget, as it implies that we are 
part of the gtk namespace, and hence under the control of the gtk project.

This makes sense to me.

At the same time, I feel that it is too hard for your average gtk 
developer to drop a video widget into his or her application.

Gtk has a number of complex widgets -- GtkCalendar, GtkGammaCurve, and 
even non-bundled projects like GtkDataBox. Why not some sort of first 
class gtk-prefixed base video widget?

Can we come up with something that makes a video widget as easy and 
natural to use as a calendar widget?

Another topic I'd like to bring up is our build system, ribosome. I 
think that ribosome's starting to get a reputation for being more 
confusing than it actually is.

Ribosome is very similar to the autotools in many ways. It has:
- A tool similar to jhbuild called "build" that is used to solve 
dependancies, check out source code, set profiles of #defines, generate 
makefiles, and run a build

- A tool similar to automake called "umake" that generates Makefiles 
from Umakefil's (instead of Makefile.am's). Umakefil's are written in 
python instead of m4.

Ribosome is written in python, and integrates into development 
environments across the many platforms we support. It's definitely worth 
checking out.

Ribosome can also be automated -- One of the best kept secrets of helix 
are our source tarballs, available through 
http://forms.helixcommunity.org/helixdnaclient/. These are really simple 
to build -- just untar, type make, and you're done.

If you still don't like ribosome, we have also experimented with mixed 
autotools-ribosome projects with our gtk example player. If you like 
this sort of thing, by all means send your thoughts out to the 
dev player helixcommunity org mailing list.

We always enjoy hearing from you on the dev player helixcommunity org 
list, and listen closely to what you have to say. Hope to see you there!

--
Ryan Gammon
rgammon real com
Developer for Helix Player
https://player.helixcommunity.org