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Hello,
About a month ago, I created a Wine Wiki account and requested that it be activated, explicitly so that I could add an entry to the FAQ page [1]. After going to reference this new entry to someone today, I noticed that my changes were reverted soon after my submission and the page was subsequently locked [2]. This submission was made after consulting wine developer, Sebastian Lackner.
I think this information would be very useful to users starting to adopt Winegstreamer, now that Andrew Eikum has updated it to gstreamer 1.0 and it is functioning again. I'd like to inquire why the change was reverted, if my content is deemed unnecessary, and if not, why it was not moved elsewhere.
- -- NP-Hardass Gentoo Wine maintainer
[1] https://wiki.winehq.org/index.php?title=FAQ [2] https://wiki.winehq.org/index.php?title=FAQ&action=history
On Thu, 7 Apr 2016 02:54:28 -0400 NP-Hardass NP-Hardass@gentoo.org wrote:
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Hello,
About a month ago, I created a Wine Wiki account and requested that it be activated, explicitly so that I could add an entry to the FAQ page [1]. After going to reference this new entry to someone today, I noticed that my changes were reverted soon after my submission and the page was subsequently locked [2]. This submission was made after consulting wine developer, Sebastian Lackner.
I think this information would be very useful to users starting to adopt Winegstreamer, now that Andrew Eikum has updated it to gstreamer 1.0 and it is functioning again. I'd like to inquire why the change was reverted, if my content is deemed unnecessary, and if not, why it was not moved elsewhere.
NP-Hardass Gentoo Wine maintainer
[1] https://wiki.winehq.org/index.php?title=FAQ [2] https://wiki.winehq.org/index.php?title=FAQ&action=history
I reverted the item because:
1. It is not a frequently asked question. As written, it is not even a question. 2. The "answer" to this non-question served no purpose other than to advertise a third party project, giving the impression that it was officially recommended and supported here.
The "information" in that item is not needed. If users are missing a gstreamer plugin needed by one of their apps, they will find it out as soon as they try to run the app. The console output will have a message from gstreamer complaining about the codec that was not found, and one from Wine suggesting a missing plugin. Users might need help figuring out exactly which package to install, but the "tool for developers to build and test DirectShow Graphs" project you were trying to drive traffic to won't help with that.
The wiki is not a venue for free advertising.
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On 04/07/2016 07:14 AM, Rosanne DiMesio wrote:
On Thu, 7 Apr 2016 02:54:28 -0400 NP-Hardass NP-Hardass@gentoo.org wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256
Hello,
About a month ago, I created a Wine Wiki account and requested that it be activated, explicitly so that I could add an entry to the FAQ page [1]. After going to reference this new entry to someone today, I noticed that my changes were reverted soon after my submission and the page was subsequently locked [2]. This submission was made after consulting wine developer, Sebastian Lackner.
I think this information would be very useful to users starting to adopt Winegstreamer, now that Andrew Eikum has updated it to gstreamer 1.0 and it is functioning again. I'd like to inquire why the change was reverted, if my content is deemed unnecessary, and if not, why it was not moved elsewhere.
- -- NP-Hardass Gentoo Wine maintainer
[1] https://wiki.winehq.org/index.php?title=FAQ [2] https://wiki.winehq.org/index.php?title=FAQ&action=history
I reverted the item because:
- It is not a frequently asked question. As written, it is not
even a question.
The Wine Wiki has 1 place for troubleshooting information, that's that FAQ. The entire "Troubleshooting" section of that page is littered with troubleshooting information that is devoid of questions. It's the only source of troubleshooting information that you have.
- The "answer" to this non-question served no purpose other than
to advertise a third party project, giving the impression that it was officially recommended and supported here.
The "information" in that item is not needed. If users are missing a gstreamer plugin needed by one of their apps, they will find it out as soon as they try to run the app. The console output will have a message from gstreamer complaining about the codec that was not found, and one from Wine suggesting a missing plugin. Users might need help figuring out exactly which package to install, but the "tool for developers to build and test DirectShow Graphs" project you were trying to drive traffic to won't help with that.
I'm a downstream maintainer, and in bumping Wine, I had to verify that the Gstreamer functionality was working. In my experience trying to get and verify that Winegstreamer is working, even with WINEDEBUG=+gstreamer, Wine will often output ABSOLUTELY nothing related to Gstreamer, even when it is running Gstreamer. Moreover, when Wine encounters a lack of Gstreamer plugin, it straight up crashes Wine (sometimes just a straight up core dump, I encountered no recommendation of plugins, just straight, meaningless coredump), meaning people aren't going to say, "I wonder why I seem to be missing this Gstreamer plugin..." They are going to be saying, "Time to file a bug report on WineHQ, wine-x.x.x crashes when trying to run app xyz."
Let's be clear here, Winegstreamer uses Gstreamer to create DirectShow filter graphs, so investigating filter graphs is the most straightforward means of identifying if support is working correctly. To that end, one can either use the Microsot provided "graphedit.exe" which requires installing the Microsoft SDK (which isn't even supported, and is extremely heavyweight), or one can install one of the third party DirectShow filter graph viewing/editing programs. That leaves you with several options, one of the the proprietary, nonfree applications, or one of several open source or free applications. In this case, the recommendation was to use an open source project. I am not associated with it at all, it just fits the bill. Directly accusing me of trying to advertise for a piece of software is, quite frankly, rude, and serves no purpose here.
The wiki is not a venue for free advertising.
I repeat the above.
- -- NP-Hardass
On Thu, 7 Apr 2016 12:28:36 -0400 NP-Hardass NP-Hardass@gentoo.org wrote:
The Wine Wiki has 1 place for troubleshooting information, that's that FAQ.
You obviously haven't read much of the wiki.
The entire "Troubleshooting" section of that page is littered with troubleshooting information that is devoid of questions.
You are correct, many items are not phrased as questions, usually because trying to do so would result in tortured syntax. They do, however, all address issues that have come up frequently for ordinary users on the forum and/or bugzilla. "Verifying winegstreamer support" hasn't.
I'm a downstream maintainer, and in bumping Wine, I had to verify that the Gstreamer functionality was working.
The FAQ is aimed at ordinary users. Your needs are obviously quite different.
In my experience trying to get and verify that Winegstreamer is working, even with WINEDEBUG=+gstreamer, Wine will often output ABSOLUTELY nothing related to Gstreamer, even when it is running Gstreamer. Moreover, when Wine encounters a lack of Gstreamer plugin, it straight up crashes Wine (sometimes just a straight up core dump, I encountered no recommendation of plugins, just straight, meaningless coredump), meaning people aren't going to say, "I wonder why I seem to be missing this Gstreamer plugin..." They are going to be saying, "Time to file a bug report on WineHQ, wine-x.x.x crashes when trying to run app xyz."
Ordinary users faced with a crash and no console output mentioning gstreamer or winegstreamer would never think to look under an item entitled "Verifying winegstreamer support" for a solution to their problem.
Let's be clear here, Winegstreamer uses Gstreamer to create DirectShow filter graphs, so investigating filter graphs is the most straightforward means of identifying if support is working correctly. To that end, one can either use the Microsot provided "graphedit.exe" which requires installing the Microsoft SDK (which isn't even supported, and is extremely heavyweight), or one can install one of the third party DirectShow filter graph viewing/editing programs. That leaves you with several options, one of the the proprietary, nonfree applications, or one of several open source or free applications.
That sounds like information that might be suitable for one of the pages aimed at developers.
On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 3:14 PM, Rosanne DiMesio dimesio@earthlink.net wrote:
On Thu, 7 Apr 2016 12:28:36 -0400 NP-Hardass NP-Hardass@gentoo.org wrote:
The Wine Wiki has 1 place for troubleshooting information, that's that FAQ.
You obviously haven't read much of the wiki.
The entire "Troubleshooting" section of that page is littered with troubleshooting information that is devoid of questions.
You are correct, many items are not phrased as questions, usually because trying to do so would result in tortured syntax. They do, however, all address issues that have come up frequently for ordinary users on the forum and/or bugzilla. "Verifying winegstreamer support" hasn't.
Getting winegstreamer to work certainly has been, at least in the past.
On Thu, 7 Apr 2016 15:25:26 -0500 Austin English austinenglish@gmail.com wrote:
Getting winegstreamer to work certainly has been, at least in the past.
Yes, it has. The dominant problems are:
1. I'm trying to build Wine on a 64 bit system. ./configure keeps telling me it can't find the 32 bit gstreamer development files, but I have them installed.
2. My app doesn't work and winegstreamer is complaining about a missing plugin. Which package should I install? (Or the variation, "But I've already installed all the gstreamer plugins available in the repository and it still doesn't work. What should I do?")
The info on building with gstreamer support on a 64 bit system does need to be added to the Building Wine page (it's on my wiki todo list). The second item is difficult to handle in the FAQ because the answers vary so much by distro. Specific information could be added to the individual distro pages (Debian in particular seems to need it).
On 04/07/2016 03:18 PM, Rosanne DiMesio wrote:
On Thu, 7 Apr 2016 15:25:26 -0500 Austin English austinenglish@gmail.com wrote:
Getting winegstreamer to work certainly has been, at least in the past.
Yes, it has. The dominant problems are:
I'm trying to build Wine on a 64 bit system. ./configure keeps telling me it can't find the 32 bit gstreamer development files, but I have them installed.
My app doesn't work and winegstreamer is complaining about a missing plugin. Which package should I install? (Or the variation, "But I've already installed all the gstreamer plugins available in the repository and it still doesn't work. What should I do?")
The info on building with gstreamer support on a 64 bit system does need to be added to the Building Wine page (it's on my wiki todo list). The second item is difficult to handle in the FAQ because the answers vary so much by distro. Specific information could be added to the individual distro pages (Debian in particular seems to need it).
I'll keep my thoughts short but I think we could come to a compromise pretty easily on this:
1. Since Gstreamer integration is ideally a problem a normal end-user shouldn't have to deal with, I can see the argument for not keeping it in the normal FAQ. All of the changes can still be recovered and moved from the page history though.
2. That info could be nice to have on one or more of the dev-oriented pages. I didn't port over the old wiki's Gentoo page because what little it had was already on the Gentoo wiki with more context. If there are any Gentoo specific problems though, definitely feel free to start a Gentoo page.
3. A stand-alone page just for Gstreamer support might not be a bad idea either, if anyone wants it bad enough. At least on the Debian side of things, I haven't checked to see if there are any bugs in the packages' Gstreamer support, but it is still one of the major libraries blocking a multiarch build.
And don't forget everybody, since we're on Mediawiki now, every page can have a corresponding Talk page. Whether you bring up issues there or on the mailing list is really up to you, but discussions on the mailing list may slip away into the archives without being resolved.
Kyle
On Thu, 7 Apr 2016 17:02:18 -0600 Kyle Auble kyle.auble@zoho.com wrote:
All of the changes can still be recovered and moved from the page history though.
It is completely unsuitable as written and I would oppose restoring it.
What would be most helpful to users would be to include information on any gstreamer plugins needed by specific apps/games in their respective entries in the AppDB.
- That info could be nice to have on one or more of the dev-oriented
pages.
The Wine Developer's Guide has a Multimedia section that looks like it hasn't been updated in quite a while.
There's also the Packaging page.
And don't forget everybody, since we're on Mediawiki now, every page can have a corresponding Talk page.
Suggestions for changes to the FAQ should be made there.
-
Austin English -
Kyle Auble -
NP-Hardass -
Rosanne DiMesio