Hi,
> 1. You don't need GNOME or KDE support to develop audio
> applications any more than you need their support for
> accessing files, the network, the display or whatever. So
> they should remain neutral on this matter.
I absolutely agree. But why did they start to use
arts/esound/gstreamer? Because they wanted to ensure that
multiple applications can play sounds at the same time. What
chance did they have to use a commonly accepted soundserver?
None. There was no soundserver and no softwaremixing, and
less people had (and still have) an audio card with
hardwaremixing.
> 2. Any application that can run only under a particular
> window manager or that depends on facilities from a
> particular desktop is IMHO just broken. The choice of
> window manager / desktop belongs to the user, not the
> developer.
Yep.
> > (I think both GNOME & KDE are considering switching audio
> > APIs at the moment, so now is a good time for the
> > linux-audio community to get involved.)
>
> If everybody would just use ALSA for general use, and JACK
> for serious music / sound applications, that would be fine.
> The last thing we need is one more 'sound server / daemon'.
> (*)
Agreed. arts isn't maintained anymore, so KDE is looking for a
replacement (like gstreamer). Because there's no common
soundserver for all applications, they will need to make a
decicion. Which audio subsystem should they support? ALSA
direct access is no choice because it blocks the device. DMIX
is a choice, but what if I want to use JACK simultaneously
without using DMIX? JACK could become a common audio server
but still it isn't. Any recommendation which audio system a
programmer should use?
> (*)<rantmode>
>
> A few days ago I kicked up Rosegarden again to see if it
> could be useful for the project I was starting. It wasn't
> so I terminated it, only to find out later that there were
> still a number of KDE applications running, including a
> sound daemon, blocking access to all others. Grrr.
Welcome in the Linux audio world ;-) .
BTW: Arts has a timeout mode so it'll free the device as soon
it isn't needed for more than the entered time.
Thanks & best regards
ce
Received on Fri Jun 17 20:15:10 2005
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Fri Jun 17 2005 - 20:15:11 EEST