On 30 Aug 2009, at 17:40, Alan McKinnon wrote:
...
mplayer support for realplayer was a right royal cockup. The only
thing it
could ever have meant was that mplayer could play Real videos. But
the way it
was documented, users couldn't figure out if this would install the
binary
realplayer, provide support for real from some other party, or do an
entirely
different third action.
I _believe_ that at one time the "real" USE flag installed
RealPlayer's binary codecs, but that with USE="-real" mplayer would
still play most Real streams, anyway.
This is - as you say - confusing and non-intuitive.
When the the "real" USE flag was masked there was, therefore, uproar
because it was assumed by the unwashed masses (including myself) that
"OMG! mplayer won't play the BBC Radio 1 Real stream anymore", and
this assumption was incorrect.
IIRC the RealPlayer's binary codecs were pretty much used only for
streams of an obsolete format depreciated by Real themselves. Newer
Real streams used codecs like MP3 that mplayer would quite happily
decode on its own (providing USE="mp3").
I gather, however, that the "real" USE flag may now have been
reinstated with a different meaning - the intuitive one. :/
Stroller.
