Add a mechanism to the client API code, which allows the player core to
query whether a client API event is needed at all. Use it for the cache
update.
In this case, this is probably a pure microoptimization; but the
mechanism will be useful for other things too.
Internally, there are two mechanisms which can trigger property
notification as used with "observed" properties in the client API.
The first mechanism associates events with a group of properties that
are potentially changed by a certain event. mp_event_property_change[]
declares these associations, and maps each event to a set of strings.
When an event happens, the set of strings is matched against the list of
observed properties of each client. Make this more efficient by
comparing bitsets of events instead. This way, only a bit-wise "and" is
needed for each observed property. Even better, we can completely skip
clients which have no observed properties that match.
The second mechanism just updates individual properties explicitly by
name. Optimize this by using the property index instead. It would be
nice if we could reuse the first mechanism for the second one, but
there are too many properties to fit into a 64 bit mask.
(Though the limit on 64 events might get us into trouble later...)
While I'm not very fond of "const", it's important for declarations
(it decides whether a symbol is emitted in a read-only or read/write
section). Fix all these cases, so we have writeable global data only
when we really need.
This turned out ridiculously complex. I think it will have to be
simplified some day. Main reason for the complexity are:
- filtering properties by forcing clients to observe individual
properties explicitly
(to avoid spamming clients with changes they don't want)
- optional retrieval of property value with the notification
(the basic idea was that this is more user friendly)
- allowing to the client to specify a format in which the value
should be retrieved
(because if a property changes its type, the client API couldn't
convert it properly, and compatibility would break)
I don't know yet which of these are important, and everything could
change. In particular, the interface and semantics should be adjusted
to reduce the implementation complexity.
While I consider the API complete, there could (and probably will) be
bugs left. Also while the implementation is complete, it's inefficient.
The complexity of the property matching is O(a*b*c) with a clients,
b observed properties, and c properties changing at once. I threw away
an earlier implementation using bitmasks, because it was too unwieldy.
Add a client API, which is intended to be a stable API to get some rough
control over the player. Basically, it reflects what can be done with
input.conf commands or the old slavemode. It will replace the old
slavemode (and enable the implementation of a new slave protocol).
wm4