ASS is a competitor of SRT, it really makes no sense to have USE=srt enable support for it...
I think it is upstream mplayer that includes a single flag for building (or not building) subtitle support, but perhaps the useflag could have been better named to be more general. I'll let mplayer ebuild maintainers debate this with you :)
No, --disable-ass is a pretty specific option...
I am all for renaming the srt useflag to ass, that will make much more sense to people looking at upstream documentation or support. But it's up to Steve.
(In reply to comment #3) > I am all for renaming the srt useflag to ass, that will make much more sense to > people looking at upstream documentation or support. But it's up to Steve. > Agreed. Fixed in mplayer-1.0_rc2_p28058
Should I open a seperate bug for tracking brakages due to this, or reopen this as a tracker?
So this USE flag has been noticed and getting commentary in the chat already. Is there any reason not to use SSA? The description for the use flag is "Internal SRT/SSA/ASS (SubRip / SubStation Alpha) subtitle support" - it seems SSA could describe the SubRip / SubStation Alpha section (but what do I know). They call it ass, childish users see that as something else.
Who are we to withhold so-called childish users their laughs? Either way, the upstream option is --{dis,en}able-ass, so for clarity we are following that naming. Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubStation_Alpha#Advanced_SubStation_Alpha