Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) for mpv as well as front-ends for other programming languages than C/C++

[rubyFeedback]

Hey there mpv devs and mpv users,

I am using mpv since the ancient days; back then it was mplayer. I know, I know, mpv is not mplayer,
but the use cases are so similar that I consider mplayer to be in the mpv family, as direct ancestor.

There are, of course, various graphical user interfaces for mpv. smplayer, for instance, was a wrapper
for mplayer but lateron also added this for mpv. It's also quite nice as it is, so basically one can say
"ok, topic is closed, just use smplayer". And there are various alternatives too, such as uosc,
mpv easy player, jellyfin mpv shim and so forth. This is, however had, not exactly what I had in mind.

On windows we also have an .exe that works quite well as some kind of GUI replacement. If you compare
it to vlc, though, vlc is a bit better in this regard for a graphical user "environment". For instance, vlc
offers an integrated playlist. I'd love to have such an option for mpv via GUI on windows by default.
(On a side note: I actually prefer mpv myself, as it does not get into my way, whereas vlc gets into my
way; but still, being ABLE to have a GUI, would be neat. Some users can only work with a GUI, in
particular elderly people - I guess many of you can relate to that if you have elderly relatives who
aren't tech-savvy.)

On Linux this is not so important, as I don't use a GUI; I use various ruby-scripts to control everything
related to multimedia. That also includes playing all songs and video files from the commandline.

For instance if I do:

mpa branca

It will play the video file for the old comedy about Branca Leone. And so on and so forth, so I can tap
into my collection of songs and video files - no need for a GUI here.

Still, I'd love to use e. g. ruby-gtk3 or ruby-gtk4 (that is, GTK), and have a small wrapper over mpv. I
can simulate this, e. g. having a button that upon clicking it, simply launches mpv. Usually that then
spawns an external window. This works, but I'd love to more easily integrate that into a GTK widget
and play it there. Unfortunately I don't know C/C++ that well so this part is a bit more involved and
I haven't solved this yet.

Would it not be better if mpv as such, would also have a minimal GUI by default? And, such a GUI
to be also offered in different programming languages?

I am not saying mpv itself needs to support all programming languages, but there could be one
prototype + documentation for this, let's say in python, as that is widely used. The toolkit is not
so important as long as this is well-documented. We could learn from this and adapt to our own
use cases.

The GUI can also be written in C or C++ of course. The idea would be that it would be super-simple,
not a lot of functionality by default. One that I think would be useful is a playlist, this can be a
simple .m3u file so just a text file containing the paths to the multimedia files.

I assume that most mpv users are fine with commandline-only, and that's ok as I am also partially
in that camp; but still I think a GUI would be nice, just a wrapper-GUIL or minimalistic GUI. I am not
suggesting mpv to compete with vlc here (although I would not mind either, as long as the commandline
focus is retained), but I think being able for mpv to offer a small GUI by default would make sense,
in the main repository. Why not external repositories? In my experience, whenever you have an
external repository, this will sooner or later die. There are tons of examples for this on github. So
I think this would have to be thumbs-upped by some core devs of mpv too, otherwise fatigue and
inertia will block this eventually.

The other point of such a GUI, since I wrote well-documented, is that this is a bit of a tutorial too,
e. g. how to embed mpv programmatically in other frameworks, libraries and applications. This
should have a teaching-focus and should give people a consistent outlook what could be done.
For instance, to use some kind of mpv "backend" via the web; I'd love to have a small mpv based
"plugin" that could be used in the browser as-is, so I could put it onto a website (even if only a
local website) and play it there. I am aware that we can play most .mp4 files, but I also have
various .avi files and I'd like to have this work as well; and if it still can not work, to still have
mpv in the browser or a variant of mpv, where the default key-events could also work, if they
make sense, e. g. toggle showing subtitles and what not, supplying local subtitles too, you name
it. But there is a lack of knowledge at the least in regards to myself, and probably other people
too, so it would be nice if mpv devs could think about this in the long run, say, the next 5 to
10 years or so.

Anyway, that is basically the gist of it. It's just an idea, so open for discussion of course.

[hooke007]

Just another dup of #5500

[guidocella]

mpv already has a playlist menu.