Re: [Mlt-devel] mlt/src/modules/gtk2 producer_pango.c,1.35,1.36

[Dan D. <da...@de...>]

On Saturday 15 October 2005 03:10 pm, charlie wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-10-15 at 11:59 -0700, Dan Dennedy wrote:
> > What if a '~' is intended? It is not that uncommon. There should be a
> > better convention. Why is not explicit '\n' more a obvious convention
> > that appears to require no special handling?
>
> Agreed, only I need a multi line input option which can be represented
> in a single line text (temporarily anyway).
>
> This is partly a precedent set by the original usage (for the command
> line parsing) and then carried into the mpl files which have a dumb
> syntax of:
>
> 0=i can only specify a single line
> 25=what if i want~to have two?

does "25=what if i want\nto have two" work as well?

> This is parsed via the mlt_properties_load function which doesn't handle
> multiple lines values at all.
>
> And then it came up again with restrictions in the jahshaka gui which I
> had hoped to overcome by this point - again, all text is collected in a
> single line text box and the lack of a line break was proving too
> restrictive and a multiline would have broken things too much (with the
> current UI anyway).
>
> It's a nasty hack, but the loss of the ~ in this case isn't such a big
> one I think.

OK, I think the UI issues are irrelevant unless I am missing something. I am 
thinking more along the lines of obviousness and conventional convention :-)
IOW, if I am facing a situation of single line input UI, and I need to insert 
a newline, my first inclination is to attempt to use '\n' and then subvert 
any UI (i.e. shell) processing by proper quoting or additional escaping. I am 
just concerned that we are over-compensating and sacrificing obviousness and 
the tilde character in the process. 

P,S, I just received an e-mail from Jason Wood that kdenlive has resumed 
activity by porting to MLT, and I am very interested contributing to this.