Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] introduction & ideas
From: Paul Davis (pbd_AT_Op.Net)
Date: Sat Feb 23 2002 - 21:56:12 EET
>Are we talking about POSIX? Are we talking about the BSD stuff?
>Are we talking Sys V stuff? The SRV4 stuff? Or what? (You know
>that Linux is not Unix, don't you?)
there are not many device drivers for interesting, let alone high-end,
devices for the *BSD series of kernels. the fact is that most
development in this field (that is open-source too) is taking place
under Linux, with whatever that implies. Whether its animation, audio,
video, whatever - the major impetus within the open source world comes
from Linux. *BSD is proving its place as an excellent server/secure
OS, but it doesn't have any of the multimedia momentum that has begun
to emerge with Linux.
>And does it only have to be on these systems? (What about systems
>like AtheOS, Windows, Mac OS X, ReactOS, BeOS, etc?)
Writing multimedia apps is not a trivial affair, and even knowing
enough to write trivial programs for all these OS's is more than most
people want to deal with. To the extent that they support a POSIX-like
API (where POSIX is defined as "the subset of POSIX support by Linux"
:), they are of interest, but developing even a simple audio player
for each of those systems is a quite different task in each case (if
its going to be done properly).
In addition, I would note that Apple have done great things with
multimedia APIs, but their proprietary nature (clearly in the case of
the Sorenson codec, but also true in other ways for other
technological niches) has prevented them from gaining much of a foot
hold, at least in the open source world. This means that although we
can learn from their API design (or at the very least, see it as
confirmatory of our decisions), its rare that an application can be
written that uses the same API for MacOS <anyversion> and other OS's.
Of course, designing plugin-like systems for handling the OS API is
one way to solve this, but it can lead to other problems by creating a
certain model for program design (as some people beginning to use JACK
are realizing, and as many in the Mac world are discovering with
CoreAudio).
--p
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