Re: Presets and profiles

Hey,

On Mon, 2009-05-04 at 10:20 -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
> * snip *
> 
> There's an issue on this topic where I know what the problem is, but I
> don't know what a good solution would be: what do you do about devices
> where the support depends on the installed software or firmware?
> 
> Obvious example is a Windows Mobile smartphone, like mine. (But there
> are other cases, I think the PSP would be one, for instance...and Nokia
> phones, where you can get third party player apps that extend the
> functionality, too.) As it comes from my provider, it could only handle
> a limited range of audio formats (no Vorbis support, for e.g.) But now
> I've installed TCPMP and the Vorbis plugin on it, it *does* support
> Vorbis. And then it may come with different default software installed
> if you buy it from another carrier, but as far as any kind of hardware
> detection would be concerned, it'd look like the same device...

This sounds like a total and utter mess to me. I'm in favor of only
supporting the latest released firmwares and a format we think is good
enough, but that's probably not acceptable for many people. The idea of
this whole project is to simplify things, not make them even more
complicated ;-)

> Should we just require some kind of interface layer provide this
> information - as in the iPod example, where libgpod could do it based on
> the device firmware? For Windows Mobile, when the device is connected in
> sync mode these capabilities could theoretically be detected (as you can
> tell what software's installed on the device), but not when connected in
> mass storage mode. Do we set up some kind of interface for the user to
> define what capabilities the device has, to cover situations like this?
> Or is this just an insoluble issue? Hopefully someone smarter than me
> has ideas. :)

Getting info from the device is a great idea, but what about when the
user wants to convert something for her iPod that isn't currently
connected for example? From a purely UI perspective this presents a mess
- who knows what iPod with which software version they have? Same with
smartphones? And how would we present this to the user, with a thousand
devices each with a dozen hard/software revision options? People
generally just want stuff to work.

I've also been thinking about this a lot and can't seem to come up with
an elegant solution that provides everything most people want.

Take care,
-- 
Daniel G. Taylor
http://programmer-art.org

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