On Thu, Feb 21, 2019 at 9:07 AM Bastien Nocera <bnocera@redhat.com> wrote:


----- Original Message -----
> I just want to bring a point that may be relevant. At some point I asked
> @csoriano if video thumbnailing would move to the core of nautilus because I
> usually prefer another media player, however, their response was that totem
> is part of the core and if it is not included in the distribution it should
> be considered a bug. Thumbnailing is something desired for new users and it
> may be the case that a user simply installs an alternative media player and
> does not know that totem is "necessary" to provide this functionality in the
> file manager.

This would obviously be fixed if totem wasn't in the core. I've already fixed
it weeks ago for Flatpaks that need video thumbnailing:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/totem-video-thumbnailer

Problem being that, as it stands, it has the same problems as totem without
any way to trigger downloading and installing codecs.

So, do I understand correctly that if you install Totem from Flatpak, there will be no thumbnails in Nautilus? For thumbnails, you need codecs installed locally in the system? That would be another argument for improving the local codecs installation procedure/guide, instead of trying to rely on Flatpaks (which only solve part of the story).

In any case, one of two things needs to happen:
- either we keep totem in, and somebody needs to fix PackageKit-gstreamer
  to actually follow the interface it needs to have
- or we remove totem, and we need to figure out what to do with that
  "search for movie players" link into GNOME Software

I don't understand why you paint it as the only two available options. The first one is an improvement, yes. The second one is a decline (at least in my eyes). We can still keep the current state (not ideal, but still better than the second option). Or perhaps do something else (like the virtual package in rpmfusion which can be easily installed and provide good guides in many places, improve messaging in totem when a codec is not found, etc).