[XviD-devel] new gui proposal

[Christoph Lampert]

On Fri, 28 Mar 2003, Radek Czyz wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I had a bit different ideas about vfw gui. I'll think them over again
> and post them - not that I really really care, I can work using any
> gui ;))
> 
> > 1.0 MAIN DIALOG
> 
> Let me just tell you that I don't really like this very small 'main
> dialog'. You have to click on 'advanced' to do most things. Oh well,

Maybe we should fix who is the key audience: 

a) Joe User, who doesn't know what he is doing and we want him to simply
   click "okay". 
b) Johnny "I am such a great ripper" User, who will click everything he
   sees and no matter how many secret buttons he has to search (he asks
   for them in the ripper's forum). It does without saying that he does
   not know what he is doing, either.
c) J|Mb0 "I'm a pretty good ripper" User, who knows what the buttons are 
   and knows what to click on for optimal quality.  
d) Developers, who have no time for encoding, but just for testing. 

I'm not sure if a) or b) is the majority. 

For a) it should be as simple as possible, just a slider 
"faster -> better quality" and maybe button 
"single pass", "1st pass of 2", "2nd pass of 2" 
or something. 

So he won't see anything which might hurt him. The rest can be in 
sublevels of configuration, which he won't dare to click on. 

For b) there shouldn't be too many option at all, not even in subwindows. 
Good defaults are important. 

For c) and d) everything should be configurable, and the GUI can be as
difficult als wanted, als long as it's somehow logical. 

I think we should have a "user friendly" top level. Where the important 
stuff can be changed using default settings without breaking too much, but
also without having to switch to subpanels. 
Maybe a tiny bitrate calculator, too, because people simply don't know how
to do arithmetics. 

In the "really internal" submenus, chaos can rule, everything as 
condensed as possible. No problem... 

Or maybe have an "advanced" mode, where user gui is replaced by advanced
GUI, so stuff like bitrate settings doesn't have to be present twice, but
simple one is replaced by a tab for difficult one? 

gruel