CODECs [LWN.net]

CODECs

Posted Feb 21, 2008 3:16 UTC (Thu) by midg3t (guest, #30998)
Parent article: Rob Savoye discusses the Gnash project

I think the time has come to consider "codec" a word, just like "laser". Reading CODEC and LASER is a bit jarring.

(I also advocate "Gnome" over "GNOME", but I think I'm in more of a minority on that one.)

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CODECs

Posted Feb 21, 2008 4:47 UTC (Thu) by Burgundavia (guest, #25172) [Link] (9 responses)

The difference between CODEC and GNOME is that the former is an acronym and the latter a
trademark.

CODECs (going off-topic)

Posted Feb 21, 2008 4:56 UTC (Thu) by pr1268 (guest, #24648) [Link] (8 responses)

Well, CODEC might better be written as CoDec (as in Coder/Decoder). GNOME (be it in all capital letters or not), is an acronym: GNU Networked Object Model Environment (or so I've read).

CODECs (going off-topic)

Posted Feb 21, 2008 7:46 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (7 responses)

So it's like the Holy Roman Empire, then (`not Holy, nor Roman, nor an 
Empire'), except this is no network, no object model.

There simply isn't an object model there, nor has been for, well, ages.
aWhile KDE has just about everything accessible via KParts/dbus
interfaces, GNOME's been busily ripping *out* support for bonobo, and 
replacing it with nothing, as far as I can tell.

CODECs (going off-topic)

Posted Feb 21, 2008 11:24 UTC (Thu) by patrick_g (subscriber, #44470) [Link] (6 responses)

>> GNOME's been busily ripping *out* support for bonobo, and replacing it with nothing, as far as I can tell.

By D-Bus i think. See http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus

CODECs (going off-topic)

Posted Feb 21, 2008 14:57 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (5 responses)

Well, bonobo's been vanishing since GNOME 2.8 or something, and d-bus hasn't arrived in 2.20,
and I can't imagine that many apps have gained much automation support in the time since that
was released (what, a few months?)

Still it'll be nice if it can get to where KDE is now (the easy embeddability KParts provides
is lovely; you can pretty much write a minimal KPart in a few lines).

CODECs (going off-topic)

Posted Feb 21, 2008 15:58 UTC (Thu) by Frej (guest, #4165) [Link] (1 responses)

Why hasn't d-bus arrived?

CODECs (going off-topic)

Posted Feb 28, 2008 8:30 UTC (Thu) by goaty (guest, #17783) [Link]

It's d-layed.

CODECs (going off-topic)

Posted Feb 21, 2008 17:31 UTC (Thu) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link] (2 responses)

Pardon? DBus is used heavily -- it's how NetworkManager signals the presence/absence of
network connections, how applications inhibit Gnome Screensaver from activating, etc.

It's not an embedding mechanism like Bonobo and KParts, true. And it's true that Bonobo is not
as widely used as KParts is in KDE land. But that does not make DBus a failure.

CODECs (going off-topic)

Posted Feb 24, 2008 13:57 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

I was assuming the `bonobo is dead, use d-bus instead' messages implied 
that one was being used as a replacement for the other, especially given 
that KDE *has* successfully used d-bus to implement an embedding 
mechanism.

So, er, GNOME doesn't actually have a non-deprecated embedding mechanism 
right now, then?

CODECs (going off-topic)

Posted Feb 24, 2008 20:10 UTC (Sun) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

D-Bus is being used in a lot of places to replace Bonobo.  See, Bonobo was originally meant to
be far more than just an embedding technology (it was a compound document format,
inter-application communication framework, etc etc).  D-Bus is just meant to replace the IAC.

> GNOME doesn't actually have a non-deprecated embedding mechanism right now, then?

Bonobo isn't deprecated yet.  It's still used for embedding and a few other legacy places.
Its days are numbered, yes, but the number is still pretty high.  :)  The Gnome project seems
to be moving methodically, replacing Bonobo one piece at a time.  Personally, I don't think
that's a bad strategy.

CODECs

Posted Feb 21, 2008 12:05 UTC (Thu) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

codec: coder-decoder
modem: modulator-demodulator

Neither is an acronym.