GMF (was Re: GScrea..., um, GStreamer 0.0.9 released)

[sopwith redhat com (Elliot Lee)]

On 1 Nov 1999 00:35:58 -0500, Erik Walthinsen <omega@cse.ogi.edu> wrote:
>And GMF?
>========
>
>I first learned about GMF at the LinuxExpo '99 in Raleigh, NC.  This was
>literaly a day after I had finished and promptly abandoned the first
>version of this package.  Since then, GMF has languished for 4 or 5
>months, with no development.

This isn't quite true - I did a fair amount of workk on it in June/July, got
it to the point of having a working media player and basic set of plugins,
and then had other stuff to do (OG).

>I tend to disagree with the premise of GMF, which is that DirectShow is
>good and should be copied basically verbatim.

Again, this isn't quite true. GMF uses what makes sense, and since a lot of
DirectShow makes sense, I used some of those ideas in its design. I also
looked at a lot of other architectures, used ideas from them, and came up
with new solutions to some problems that DShow solved in different ways.

It is just as illogical to say that all of DirectShow is bad and should be
ignored or left at a distance as it is to say that all of DirectShow is
good.

>I think using CORBA for the
>filter graph is overkill for this kind of application, and will make
>people less likely to write plugins due to the use of an ORB.

Why will plugin writers care about what libgmf is using to implement the
framework? They don't have to pay attention to it.

>I'm not
>convinced there are any serious advantages to using CORBA, and know there
>are disadvantages (speed, ease of programming).

I don't think you've looked at GMF closely enough to be able to give a good
commentary of the issues involved. If you see actual problems, fine, I just
dislike people's speculation. (i.e. If you have benchmarked it and speed
sucks, that is one thing, but saying that you think that CORBA will slow it
down without you even knowing how it works is entirely another).

But, I don't want to discourage people from working on their favorite
projects, and it's not like I have put much work into GMF lately. Maybe next
weekend I will make a new release for people to try out, we'll see.

-- Elliot
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.