Different control points seeing different things

[DavidHB]

(13-04-2015 19:24)simoncn Wrote:  As a server author, I would naturally agree with you that the server's organizational structure for how the library should be presented and browsed should be followed faithfully by control points.

If I were a control point author, I could imagine having the view that the server should be just a database and presentation decisions should be the responsibility of the control point.

That's very fair-minded . As I am neither a server author nor a control point author, but just a user, I can just hope that UPnP turf wars will soon become a thing of the past.

What most users need is controllability (which implies a reasonable range of user options), consistency (which in the present and any likely future state of the technology means across multiple platforms and devices) and a smooth experience. The server (being common to the whole of the system) is best placed to provide the consistency, and is therefore the best place to make decisions about user options and many aspects of the user experience.

If I'm right about this, the Control Point is a function of the player(s), and the player(s) are, to a significant extent, a function of the server. It's almost a manifestation of Linn's 'source first' philosophy, translated into a slightly different context. And it implies that whatever can be done efficiently in the server should be done in the server; MinimServer demonstrates that this definitely includes indexing and the construction of the browse tree.

David