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Perfect Software?

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nosh:
You're the kind of guy who goes to AA meetings and tells people about the great new Scotch you tried, innit? :P

It's a personal thing, Dirhael. The version I'm currently using does everything I want it to, including synching with my iPod. I installed the new release and immediately lost my customizations and I really have no patience for that sort of stuff so I got rid of it. I'm sure I'll take another look at it when I have a bit more mind-space, the only reason I'd upgrade right now is if a player was giving me better _sound_. 

Dirhael:
You're the kind of guy who goes to AA meetings and tells people about the great new Scotch you tried, innit? :P

It's a personal thing, Dirhael. The version I'm currently using does everything I want it to, including synching with my iPod. I installed the new release and immediately lost my customizations and I really have no patience for that sort of stuff so I got rid of it. I'm sure I'll take another look at it when I have a bit more mind-space, the only reason I'd upgrade right now is if a player was giving me better _sound_. 
-nosh (November 09, 2007, 08:05 AM)
--- End quote ---

Hehe, well I do like me some good whisky ;)

I understand how you may not want to upgrade if it's already customized the way you want it, but if you had to do so [customize foobar2000] to the point where is becomes a hassle to re-install/upgrade it then the current version doesn't really qualify as a "perfect" software product and as such requires further work...right?

nosh:
Reinstallation is not a problem at all - you have to just dump the installation folder to the install location, the program settings, tabs/playlists, library are taken care of - I don't think it gets much simpler.

About losing some settings on upgrading, the onus of backward compatibility lies on the latest release. I agree, some work is required but the last release seems to have caused this particular issue rather than resolved it.

Dirhael:
Reinstallation is not a problem at all - you have to just dump the installation folder to the install location, the program settings, tabs/playlists, library are taken care of - I don't think it gets much simpler.

About losing some settings on upgrading, the onus of backward compatibility lies on the latest release. I agree, some work is required but the last release seems to have caused this particular issue rather than resolved it.
-nosh (November 09, 2007, 09:52 AM)
--- End quote ---

That is only true as long as the foobar folder under appdata is intact (or program files if you don't use per-user profile). It is also impossible to share complete configurations without messing up your music database with the current version, whereas the new beta lets you import/export complete setups without touching you data. It's a whole lot easier to explain to someone that they should use the import dialog and open your config file than it is to explain to them that they need to locate the %appdata% folder (or the program files folder), overwrite the old files there with a bunch of files you copied from your setup, then having to re-add their music folders and scan them all over again loosing any additional data (play counts, ratings etc. if they were using components like that) in the process.

I also don't see how backward compatibility should be a requirement in any software product. This is one of the major problems that faces Windows, and one of the things I blame for making Vista the mess it currently is. Wasting time on fixing something that is broken by it's original design is usually not a good idea, when you can write something new that works better in half the time. Again, look at Windows, but this time Win9x. It was not written as a multi-user networked OS, and these functions wasn't really fixed or even really working until the move to the NT kernel in Win2000...and even there it is somewhat lacking due to the compatibility requirement with older applications. I'm not saying that Microsoft should have gone this route with Windows though, as compatibility is a major reason to it's success but I do think that it could have gained a lot (e.g. better performance, stability and security) from being able to get rid of the legacy code in there.

Going back to the topic of foobar2000 again, using simple config files is a much better idea than having both the configuration and data blended together in a mess, as it should (at least in theory) be a whole lot easier to make use of this even if something major changes is done in the feature. Also, it means that if one the items [data or config] gets corrupted, it doesn't mean that you loose both.

The next version of foobar2000 is not a perfect software product, but it's a step closer towards it rather than away from it so I don't see why one would feel the need to boycott it.

nosh:
The next version of foobar2000 is not a perfect software product, but it's a step closer towards it rather than away from it so I don't see why one would feel the need to boycott it.
--- End quote ---

Because the current version meets all my needs and I have far more productive things to do with my time. I'm not recommending the approach to everyone, just saying it's best for me.

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