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0 pointsDonHopkins7y ago0 comments

You really shouldn't accept features that don't work and allow "very buggy" yet only marginally useful untested features to exist in the code base for decades.

If a new feature breaks an existing feature, then don't accept it until the developer fixes the problem. And simply don't accept untested features with such tightly coupled interactions with so many different parts of the system.

If you let anybody who wants toss in willy nilly unreviewed random features that can all be enabled at once, but have never been tested against each other, then you're going to have a lot worse than user interface bugs: you're going to have security bugs.

The video effects interface clearly lets you enable them all at once, so they should have been tested together, and the bugs either fixed or the features rejected until they were.

I could also write a lot of bug reports about the spectacularly horrible Video Effects / Crop user interface (and how it interacts with rotations), as well as about why the shuffle button sometimes inexplicably turns on when you press the repeat button (it must be a Heizenbug since it's not doing it now, but I'm sure I've seen it do that many times, causing me to have to click again and again to get it back to how I wanted it). But I was discouraged after you brushed off my previous bug reports.

As it turns out, I already described a lot of the Video Effects user interface bug in great detail five years ago, but your reply brushed of what I said without acknowledging it, and literally discouraged me from writing detailed descriptions of bugs, how to reproduce them, and how they interact with each other: "If you did shorter posts, maybe people will read them...".

I will point out that your very own signature quoted at the end says "If you want an answer to your question, just be specific and precise. Don't use Private Messages." I was being specific and precise, and not using private messages. That's why I'm being specific and precise and posting this publicly: Because you said so.

https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=103604&p=407...

>There are many things about the "Video Effects" window that are terribly designed and implemented.

>Is it really supposed to randomly enable the effects when you change movies, some times remembering them from movie to movie, sometimes forgetting them, sometimes even remembering between invocations of VLC, and sometimes not?

>Is there some reason the "crop" dialog only lets you click on the arrows to change it from 0 to 100 pixels, but you can enter any number and it's not limited to the actual video size? And why the scale seems to be greater than pixels when cropping 90 degree rotated video? And that it's so incredibly hard to reset or change the numbers, resulting in pop-ups that scold you for entering a bad number, instead of helping you correct the error? Is there some reason the letters "px" follow the number, and it's an error to enter other letters or if you accidentally delete one of the letters? That "crop" dialog seems to be as user hostile and maliciously designed as the magnification dialog (although at least it is not drawn over the video in low resolution pixels -- even though it would be much easier to use than the four numeric fields, if that were the case and it were well designed).

>There are just so many problems with so many parts of the VLC user interface, that it's extremely hard to keep it down to "a couple of small paragraphs". Is there a back story about the design and implementation of those Video Effect dialogs, and why they are so terrible? Were they done by the same person? Or did many different people contribute to them, with no overall design or code review?

>Is there something about the Mac version of VLC that makes it fundamentally random and non-deterministic? Does the Windows version suffer from the same kind of unpredictability? (I only use the Mac version regularly.)

>[...] The reason it's so hard to enter a number, is that you have to select both the number and the "px" which is separated by a space, in order to delete them before typing the new number, and it's very easy to screw that up, because the field is so small, and double or triple clicking is so unreliable, and most of the time does not actually select both words, but one or the other, or part of each, so when you type a new number, it often still has the prefix of part of the previous number, or the suffix of part of the space followed by "px", so it is syntactically invalid, then the extremely obnoxious dialog pops up and scolds me for entering an invalid syntax, without actually doing anything to help correct the problem, as I already described.

>A single click simply sets the cursor position without selecting any of the text, so if you type a number, it will definitely be a syntax error.

>A double click selects either the number, or the "px", or the space between them, or most likely (since the area is the largest) double clicking in the space to the left of the number selects absolutely nothing and leaves the cursor before the number. So in most of those cases, typing a number will result in a syntax error, which leads to the punishment of the obnoxious dialog:

>"The value "0 px0 is invalid." Please provide a valid value. [Discard changes] [OK]" -- the escape key does NOT dismiss the dialog. The return key goes back to editing the field with the invalid value, and pressing return again pops up the same error message, so you have to type "cmd-a" to select all and then enter a correct value. Terrible user interface design.

>[...] "0px" is invalid. when you type "0 px", the space does not appear until you type the "p", which leads you to think it's ignoring the space even though it's not. If you're going to REQUIRE people to type a space between "0" and "px", then you should bloody well echo it when people enter it.

>The "px" suffix is totally useless. No, "10%" does not work. "10 %" does not work. "10 + 10" does not work. Nothing I can think of works. The " px" suffix is just useless decoration that does NOTHING useful but make it very easy to make a syntax error. [...]

https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=103604&p=407...

    Re: does vlc really have a zoom feature ?
    Post by Jean-Baptiste Kempf » Wed Jul 30, 2014 10:06 pm

    If you did shorter posts, maybe people will read them...

    Jean-Baptiste Kempf 
    http://www.jbkempf.com/ - http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/category/Videolan
    VLC media player developer, VideoLAN President and Sites administrator
    If you want an answer to your question, just be specific and precise. Don't use Private Messages.

Your reply is self-contradictory. So which do you want: "shorter posts" or "specific and precise"?

Re: does vlc really have a zoom feature ? Post by Jean-Baptiste Kempf » Wed Jul 30, 2014 10:06 pm If you did shorter posts, maybe people will read them... Jean-Baptiste Kempf http://www.jbkempf.com/ - http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/category/Videolan VLC media player developer, VideoLAN President and Sites administrator If you want an answer to your question, just be specific and precise. Don't use Private Messages.

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2 comments · 2 top-level

comex7y ago

As a bystander, I have not checked the earlier correspondence you mentioned, but this post comes off as quite excessively aggressive. If they were unfairly dismissive, that’s one thing, but you’re in no position to demand that they fix or improve anything in particular. If you’re dissatisfied with VLC in any way, you are eligible for a full refund of what you paid for it.

pwinnski7y ago

I once also thought that providing detailed descriptions of every possible issue after extensive context was clear communication. I have since learned that this is not at all true.

A very long post cannot be specific, and precision is lost in too much detail.

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