The VideoLAN Forums

We are currently looking for more developers for the Mac OS X port of VLC. Needed skills are C-knowledge and some experience in programming for Mac OS X by using Cocoa and Xcode. Know-how on programming A/V applications will probably make the work easier for you, but is not essential.

At present, one of our goals is to create a new more user-friendly preferences-window without obvious bugs. Thus, if you have experience on this topic, any help will be appreciated, but there are also other subjects where we would be happy about another helping hand.

If you would like to join the project, feel free to send us an e-mail to the vlc-devel mailing list or to contact us on IRC (freenode-network, #videolan). You can also simply answer in this thread of course.

Hey guys.
I'd be happy to help out with the MacOS X version of VLC. I have many years experience in C/C++, and Obj-C for Mac.

J. Lindberg.
<jkel@gmx.net>

if I can be of use, I would be happy to help out with some Cocoa programming. I have been using VLC for a while now, and I ported UVMapper 3d software from PC to Mac.

s dot martin at unimelb dot edu dot au

i could help too maybe, iangreen @ gee mail

I'd like to help.

I'm a C programmer and I have a bit experience with Xcode and L10N (localization) into spanish. I'm an entusiast of GUI's and Apple Look n' Feel, so I could help with that features.
But I have no experience with A/V programing.

I'm going to dl the source to see what it's done right now.
I shall visit the website...

sorry... i forgot my email, by the way... saftel2004-macdev at yahoo dot com

I am interested helping but i am quite young and never had participated to a project. I am student with only one year in computer sciences.

I would be happy to learn about Cocoa programming. Now I only know how to compile simple code with Xcode.

Furthermore I am not ease with compiling other project that mine unless the procedure is simple.

ybarthelemy@free.fr

Got my Cocoa legs at WWDC 2004 and would be happy to help. My strength, however, lies in Java but I just finished porting all my CodeWarrior projects to Xcode and I use that very well. So I think I can be of some help.

If you don't mind me asking, what do you mean by "a more user friendly preferences panel?"

r_rodriguez0@hotmail.com

If you don't mind me asking, what do you mean by "a more user friendly preferences panel?"

Well, at present, our preferences-window is very difficult to understand for users who does not know anything on the internal structure of VLC or A/V apps in general. Most of the options are not sorted by a pattern and in terms, the normal user will look for, but by the structure of the internal modules.
Furthermore, the current implementation is quite buggy (for example: you can only change options on one page per visit of the prefs), which is also not that user friendly, especially if they don't know about the bugs.
Additionally, the window does not really comply to the Human-Interface-Guidelines of Mac OS X. We want to change to the view of Firefox or Camino, but no-one in the team has done something like that yet.

Regards,

If you don't mind me asking, what do you mean by "a more user friendly preferences panel?"

Well, at present, our preferences-window is very difficult to understand for users who does not know anything on the internal structure of VLC or A/V apps in general. Most of the options are not sorted by a pattern and in terms, the normal user will look for, but by the structure of the internal modules.
Furthermore, the current implementation is quite buggy (for example: you can only change options on one page per visit of the prefs), which is also not that user friendly, especially if they don't know about the bugs.
Additionally, the window does not really comply to the Human-Interface-Guidelines of Mac OS X. We want to change to the view of Firefox or Camino, but no-one in the team has done something like that yet.

Regards,

That's very nice thing for us(OSXusers). Well, I'm not good at program of Cocoa, but I have an idea.
There is a lot of Open-Source Cocoa software. For example, Adium. Adium is very nice user interface(Release version isn't so, CSV version is so.)

That is, you can extract prefernces codes from Adium. Yes, it's not exact extract. It's just consult codes.

Thanks.

The problem is the way preferences are implemented in the core of VLC. VLC is a multiplatform application and cannot use the preferences system of OSX therefore...
So this complicates everything.

The problem is the way preferences are implemented in the core of VLC. VLC is a multiplatform application and cannot use the preferences system of OSX therefore...
So this complicates everything.

er, didn't it mean that the interface only for OSX was offered?

Yes but the two are connected.
Basically VLC is a very multilayered system with it's own object, preferences system, variables, notifications etc......

So the key is to bind the generic 'linux code' to a nice looking GUI on the mac.

Yes but the two are connected.
Basically VLC is a very multilayered system with it's own object, preferences system, variables, notifications etc......

So the key is to bind the generic 'linux code' to a nice looking GUI on the mac.

I see.
Whichever it makes it, it is good to develop Prefernces Panel gentle to a user.

Are you guys still looking for MacOS developers? I've been programming for Mac for about 8 years, but my job moved on to coding for Solaris for the last couple of years, so I'm looking for opportunities to get back into the game. I've done some fairly large GUIs for publishing systems in the past. I'd like to check in to see what's currently being done before I jump in to avoid duplicated effort.

I don't have the necessary expertise to make a prefs dialog from scratch, but I happen to have modified the current stable release (0.7.2) to look and work better for my own use.

I mostly changed the default size and layout of the prefs and info windows to make them more usable, simply by editing the nib file in Interface Builder.

Details, screenshots and download link there:
http://vric.free.fr/mac/mods/VLC_0.7.2_VRic_mod_3/

I got more information from Felix, and it looks like what they want is a whole new cross platform preference system, not just a new dialog. The RFE that he pointed me to is

http://www.via.ecp.fr/via/ml/vlc-devel/ ... 00409.html

The way that the preference dialog is generated now is to traverse the module tree and put in individual controls in the table. It's hard to get a good looking dialog that way. However, since we don't have a closed set of modules, I don't see how we can do better in general (we can obviously put in a nib for each of the module shipped with VLC, and default back to dynamic generation if a nib is not present for a module, but that sounds like a kludge).

In short, this new preference feature is not Mac only. I don't know why they request Mac developers to work on it, when all of the plumbing needs to be done underneath the cross platform hood first. It sounds to me that the plumbing should be put in place first (which doesn't require any MacOS expertise), and then test it by building a GUI around it on a platform. In any case, I'm going through the code in libvlc to get a better understanding of how the whole thing hangs together. Once I understand it, I can perhaps appreciate the difficulties a bit better .

Actually, it's more a combination of the both. First the current dialog is broken in several places. (most of which is in the creation of some of the elements).

2nd our current preferences system as we have it now is starting to become so complicated that it is no longer usuable for our mostly "ignorant" users. We have been thinking about a new design in which clear and often used options are readily available in a simple 6-8 category dialog, while still having a way to retrieve all the options if you really want to.

To keep things simple for novice users, I wonder the concept of user saved setting (or profile, whatever you call it) can help. Looking at Final Cut Pro, whose preferences is way more complicated than VLC, the introduction of several pre-defined combination of preferences really help makes it easy for users to accomplish 80% of the common tasks. Users can also make their own saved settings for special things that they want to do. This will ideally be layered on top of whatever preference system native to VLC. Just some thoughts.

Well the idea is that ideally, users will never have to change a single preference. We have a gazillion of options, but 99% of them are useless to 99% of the users. Here is where we will have to strike a difference in the visual representation of the options i think.

I guess the plan is than to fix up the current dialog while the new preference system is implemented? Is there a list of bugs for the current dialog?

Quite some yes.

1: Hotkeys, only one change per hotkey per time is saved
2: options with more descriptions don't show all the descriptions for all the options
3: options with lists aren't always shown as lists.

I want to help.

I graduated from computer engineering(EE core + SE). However did very little programming outside school. But I am very interested in learning stuff.

I have six years experience using Macs. I know some object-C, some Cocoa, some C, some C+, some C#, some Java, some Cobra, but never been involved in mid or large projects. so Please guide me.

So the key is to bind the generic 'linux code' to a nice looking GUI on the mac.

Cocoa actually has some controller technology that could make this really easy to do, but it is 10.3-only. What version of Mac OS X would you want to target with the updated preferences? I'm really loathe to maintain free code for people who don't keep a current OS. Also, can I assume that platform-specific code doesn't need to use the, ahem, "questionable" coding conventions? Hungarian notation and Cocoa just don't mix.

We really want to keep supporting 10.2 for a while longer. To many people still use it.