2007/5/20, Laurent GUERBY <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Today I installed canola. Removed it after 10 minutes. > > Why are developpers of media application using the "scan+database" based > approach instead of just letting user browse folders to open > the media they want?
Because people are lazy and want the machine do the organizing for them. That's why we have metadata in the files, so that the user can safely keep the files in gigantic blobs and still find the correct one when they want to, without scanning the thousands of crappily named files over. So in short, because people want them to do it. That said, for an power-sensitive situation, the indexing should be very conservative (which I guess the current ones are not?). > The scan+database approach: > > - wastes precious energy on mobile devices (99% of the scan will be > wasted and I assume reading the card is not free) As I said above. > - slow things down by wasting system cache (useless IO) I guess... > - doesn't work at all when the user has multiple cards holding well ... > media (why would one buy multiple cards otherwise?) Why not? The cards have an unique ID to which the player could link the media on it, and hide the media that's on a non-present card. Surely this is considered in any indexing system, right? ;) > - doesn't work when the user reorganize its folders (start scan again) I think "doesn't work" is a bit strongly said here, it's just extra work... > - prevents user to remove cards "in use" with scary messages That's bad. But I haven't seen this though, is it a common problem? > - doesn't work when the card has many non media folders and files (eg: > maemo mapper which is a great application) Again, IMO "doesn't work" is a bit off. > - presents the user with an awful install experience: "please wait" and > you can't do a thing for minutes (or hours I can't say). > - is totally user-interface incoherent with about all the other apps on > the device > > Folder approach is intuitive, shared by all reasonable apps on all > platforms, doesn't waste anything and just works. It does waste the users time (in the long run), which to me seems more important than the machines time. > How long before common sense returns? I bet there are players that can be used without the media library approach (like the already mentioned Kilikali), but I doubt that will be a winning trend. In fact, I expect the folder approach (as it has been since the eighties) to give away for more powerful (and yes, more power consuming at the same time) approaches like searching/indexing and contextual linking (as opposed to navigational linking). That's how the massive amounts of data on the web is handled, and that's how it is going to be on the desktop too. And, since you are not organized on the desktop, you won't be on your handheld either so.... But those are only my speculations naturally. -- Kalle Vahlman, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Powered by http://movial.fi Interesting stuff at http://syslog.movial.fi _______________________________________________ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
