HAL policies for port. music players

[Michael A. Peters]

On 01/09/2005 02:50:52 PM, Havoc Pennington wrote:

> 
> My prediction is that mounting it by default is what virtually
> everyone
> wants.

I don't know that I would necessarily agree with that.
If they are using it for a general data drive, sure.

If they are using it for its intended purpose, a storage facility for  
media files to be played later, then there is no purpose in mounting it  
until an application needs it, and no purpose for an icon to appear on  
the desktop.

What I'm guessing most users want to do is add and remove files for use  
on the device itself later, which needs to be done with a front end  
that speaks to the devices library database. Thus I would think most  
users want an _application_ to be able to talk to it, which can be  
accomplished by mounting the device when the application wants it.

This is what gtkpod does when used with autofs. It's not mounted until  
you click the button to read from the iTunesDB. Then it mounts via  
autofs and the iTunesDB is read (or written). When gtkpod exits, the  
volume soon unmounts, as nothing is accessing it.

I suppose some users might want the interface application launched when  
they connect the device. That's the default behaviour in Windows (which  
I find annoying but that may just be me). But unless they plan to  
manually move files to and from the volume, then the user has no need  
for it to automount unless an application wants to interface with it.