Re: crufty mhn.default.sh stuff

[David Levine]

Paul wrote:

> "mpeg_play" isn't even available on a current Ubuntu (so also not
> Debian, right?) release.

Also not readily available for Fedora.

> Seems like the right swiss army knife to be using these days would
> be mplayer, which appears to be available in most places, and which
> has never failed to play any type of video I've given it.

I like it.  How about ffplay as a fallback?

> I got curious, and found that the mpeg_play support was in the
> initial Doug Morris version, dated April '99.  There are other
> suspicious program recommendations from the same commit:
>
>     ivs_replay (for mhshow-show-application/x-ivs)
>     richtext   (for text/richtext)
>     rt2raw     (for text/richtext)

None of those are readily available for Fedora.

> plus probably half a dozen someone archaic looking programs for audio
> support.

I don't use any of them.

> And others that Doug didn't introduce, but which are somewhat long in
> the tooth:
>     xv
>     soffice

Both are readily available and work on Fedora.  It can create /bin/soffice
as a symlink to libreoffice.

> Seems like some of this could be cleaned up, but some degree of
> backward compatibility (for folks that actually have mpeg_play
> installed, or for those that actually have all of the patches and
> libraries needed for xv these days) would probably be good.

The current choices could be left as the initial choices in
mhn.defaults.sh.  Though I wouldn't mind if the obvious obsolete ones
were ripped out.

David