Re: CD writing in future Linux (stirring up a hornets' nest)

[lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Lennart Sorensen)]

On Wed, Feb 08, 2006 at 10:02:19PM +0100, DervishD wrote:
>     Joerg, I know you're going to ignore this email just as you
> ignored other emails I sent you in the past regarding cdrecord, the
> annoying numbering scheme and the stupid "your DMA speed is too slow,
> you cannot write at more than 12x" (fortunately, my CD writer doesn't
> know that and writes correctly at 50x and even more). Anyway, I want
> to tell you that I've been a cdrecord _real_ user for more than 5
> years, and while I consider your work valuable and clever, you have
> NO respect for anybody who doesn't think the same as you. I know many
> cdrecord users (_real_ ones, IMHO), and ALL of them think that the
> numbering scheme to access their writers is CRAP: crappy design,
> crappy coding and crappy user interface.
> 
>     I'm going to be a bit more respectful: I don't consider it crap.
> I just consider it bad. Bad because cdrecord is the only program in
> my system that forces me to think what the heck is the correct number
> for my CD writer (which is /dev/cdrw in my system) or which number do
> I have to use to READ a CD image using "readcd" (instead of /dev/cdrw
> or /dev/dvd, or even the ugly /dev/hdc). I end up using "-scanbus"
> everytime I use a system which is not mine, and that's bad, because
> most of those systems have /dev/cdrw, or /dev/cdrecorder, or
> something like that.
> 
>     Joerg, the problem is that you never listen to things you don't
> like. I understand, because I sometimes do exactly the same, but I
> don't maintain a program with thousand of users...

I agree entirely and wish I could have put it that well.

>     cdrecord is GPL, so in the end nobody has the right to ask you to
> modify it in ways you don't like or you don't want it to. That goes
> with free software: you don't pay, you don't have the right to ask
> for things. But, how about trying to listen to third parties? I mean,
> you are probably OK ignoring my suggestions, I am probably a mediocre
> programmer, but... do you _really_ think that you are more clever
> than ALL the programmers in this mailing list? Do you _really_ think
> that you have the correct answer and that ALL of them are plainly
> wrong? Do you _REALLY_ think that EVERYBODY is wrong *except* you in
> this issue about the user interface?

Hmm, perhaps what should be done is that someone needs to write and
maintain a patch that linux users can apply to cdrecord (since other OSs
are different and hence have no reason to use such a patch), to make it
behave in a manner which is sane on linux.  It should of course be
clearly marked as having been changed in such a way.  It should use udev
if available and HAL and whatever else is appropriate on a modern linux
system, and if on an old system it should at least not break the
interfaces that already worked on those systems in cdrecord.

cdrecord does a wonderful job writing CDs, once you get the silly
command line syntax right and figure out which device option it wants
you to tell it to access your write.  I still find the syntax of
driveropts=option=value is a bit odd, although the linux kernel does the
same thing for some kernel boot arguments as far as I recall, so who am
I to argue.

growisofs has a lovely simple interface, although it probably only has
about 1% as many options as cdrecord.  Perhaps there are just a lot
fewer weird variations on DVDs so far so less options are needed, or
perhaps there are a lot more options but they are all secret and in the
source code.  I haven't needed to use them at least.

Len Sorensen
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