Pop-quiz, young grasshopper… your program is about to embark on an 11-hour exodus into the land of the the eternal progress bar, but the path the user’s given you to save the result to is “invalid”. More specifically, it is actually valid, but contains directories that don’t yet exist, and for reasons beyond mortal comprehension your program cannot handle this. Do you:
- Pop up a dialog warning that you cannot create directories, so the user must do so manually or choose another path.
- Fail inexplicably.
- Continue on without any indication of failure, for 11 hours, and then pop up a dialog.
- Continue on without any indication of failure, for 11 hours, and then still claim no error.
- As for d) above, but also delete all temp files which might be salvageable.
So, anyone want to hazard a guess as to what Handbrake decides to do?
This is the first program I’ve ever encountered which wouldn’t create directories in a path. Given it comes from Linux-land, I’m completely unable to understand how this has happened.
I mean, why would I want the results of an 11 hour encoding? I just like the sound of the DVD drive scratching all night; it helps me sleep. Yeah, that’s it.
Grrr. Computers are most definitely not stupid, but sometimes their programmers definitely are.
(to be fair, myself included, at times, although I’ve never done anything nearly this bad)
