Title: MAT2 0.5.0
Date: 2018-10-23 17:45

There is a new minor version of MAT2, the [0.5.0](https://0xacab.org/jvoisin/mat2/tags/0.5.0),
with a major new feature, and various improvements.

# Changelog

- Video (.avi files for now) support, via FFmpeg, optionally
- Lightweight cleaning for png and tiff files
- Processing files starting with a dash is now quicker
- Metadata are now displayed sorted
- Recursive metadata support for FLAC files
- Unsupported extensions aren't displayed in `./mat2 -l` anymore
- Improve the display when no metadata are found
- Update the logo according to the[ GNOME guidelines](https://developer.gnome.org/hig/stable/icon-design.html.en), thanks to [poncho](https://0xacab.org/poncho)
- The testsuite is now runnable on the installed version of mat2
- Various internal cleanup/improvements

# Side note: How options injections are prevented

Because I spent *way* too much time thinking about how to prevent options
injection before finding the super obvious solution, here it is, just in case
someone face the same issue: don't rename the file, don't copy the file, don't
move the file, don't use decorators to do that, don't yell at Python's
exception system, don't use [tempfile](https://docs.python.org/3/library/tempfile.html),
… just prefix the name of the file with `./`, that's it.

# Propaganda

I wrote a [small article](https://linuxfr.org/news/mat2-0-4-0 ) (in French)
about *mat2* for a [mildly famous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linuxfr)
website, and the commente where overwhelmingly positive, except one person that
took offense of the address where the source code is hosted,
[0xacab](https://0xacab.org).

Since *mat2* is now [available in Debian](https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/mat2), there are now popularity stats:

[![Popcon stats](https://qa.debian.org/cgi-bin/popcon-png?packages=mat2&show_installed=on&want_legend=on&want_ticks=off&date_fmt=%25Y-%25m&beenhere=1)](https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=mat2)

# Conclusion

Despite the support for videos, this release didn't bring many massive
user-facing improvements, but I'm convinced that increasing usability and
accessibility, operating under the
[principle of least astonishment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment),
and eliminating friction points are things worth spending time on.

I'm expecting the 0.5.1 to fix video-related issues that slipped under the
radar.

As usual, help is [more than welcome](https://0xacab.org/jvoisin/mat2/issues?label_name%5B%5D=good+first+issue).