Subject: Re: [linux-audio-user] Documentation: (was: recording multiple input audio streams )
From: cliffw_AT_easystreet.com
Date: Wed Jun 25 2003 - 08:49:43 EEST
Small subject alteration.
Paul Perkins said:
> Well, the WIKI page on ALSA config files at
>
> http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=.asoundrc
>
> has evolved to where it is beginning to sound useful. But it doesn't take you
> all that far, and it needs explanations of basic terms like "pcm" (in its
> peculiar ALSA meaning), "slave", and "plugin". The "detailed" material on
> plugins it references
> (http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa-lib/pcm_plugins.html) is just a
> list of plugin names and plugin argument names, padded with some boiler-plate
> text that rarely adds anything that isn't implicit in the names.
>
I have to say, this has been an issue for me also. Things have improved muchly
in the last year, but there still is a way to go. There's a lot of translation
needed between Those-Who-Read-The-Source and Those-Who-But-Point-n-Click.
I'd like to contribute to the documentation.
One thing i've been bothered by. (Maybe this doesn't bother LISP hackers, i
dunno)
Not enough example .asoundrc files. The few I find are always useful to me,
but i can't find very many. Maybe people don't want to pollute the list, maybe
everybody
else is smarter than me, who knows.
I'll make an offer: Mail me (cliffw_AT_easystreet.com) your .asoundrc file + name
of hardware.
If you have a quick example of What It Does For You, email me that too.
I'll attempt to boil off the excess and add something useful to the wiki.
cliffw
> I don't measure the power of a computer or of software by what it can do. I
> measure power by how much faster or better I can do what I want to do with
> the computer or software, than without it. Including the learning time. By
> this definition, good documentation makes software more powerful, and
> documentation that requires a lot of hunting around and trial-and-error to
> make sense of, makes software less powerful.
>
> As for how far I am willing to go, that depends on what I expect to find when
> I get there. I'm a pretty good C and Python programmer with a smattering of
> C++ and Java, I'll edit fstab, modules.conf, XF86Config, and so on with vi
> when I have to (but these days count it as a bug in the distribution when I
> do have to). I use Linux for pretty much all my computer activities these
> days, except music recording / synthesizing / effects / mixing. I'd like to
> use Linux for that as well, but it just doesn't seem to be ready yet. When
> Ardour is stable it might be time for me to make another attempt to switch
> over (from the evil empire os). Music is enough of a challenge for me, I
> don't need to be on the software bleeding edge at the same time.
>
> On Sunday 22 June 2003 11:55 pm, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
> > Paul Perkins wrote:
> > > On Friday 20 June 2003 01:30 pm, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
> > >>Paul Perkins wrote:
> > >>>... and I'm still waiting for the day when someone explains ALSA
> > >>>configuration files
> > >>>in a way that I can understand....
> > > What don't I understand? I would like to see each concept that the ALSA
> > > configuration file language is intended to be able to express, and then
> > > the syntax used to express that concept. Then some examples with clear
> > > explanations of why each thing in the config file was put there. As in a
> > > good programming language tutorial. What I've seen instead is a lot of
> > > chunks of strange-looking syntax "explained" by saying "try stuffing this
> > > in <some file somewhere>, and good luck." Which leaves me blundering
> > > around in the dark, hoping to get lucky :-).
> ...
> > "Don't bend the
> > spoon... Let the spoon bend you..."
>
> Maybe if I had any idea what you mean by "let the spoon bend you" I would also
> find the ALSA documentation crystal clear ;-).
>
> Paul Perkins
> sigmotto: Liberty is theft.
>
>
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Wed Jun 25 2003 - 09:04:04 EEST