Re: Polypaudio for Gnome 2.10, the next steps

[Mike Hearn <mike navi cx>]

On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 17:31:30 -0500, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> This is passing the buck a bit but I'd like to hear from some of the
> teams that would be using this - Helix, GStreamer, Rhythmbox, Sound
> Juicer, whoever.

A slightly lame question from me, but is there general consensus amongst
multimedia developers (I'm not one) that the desktop-level sound server is
architecturally the right way to go? 

I've been suggesting that this is a problem better solved lower in the
OS layer-cake for a while but never really got any feedback on that, so
I'm guessing it's either a bad idea or nobody really cares either way. 

Here is a basic form of my original proposal:

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2004-October/msg01520.html

Clearly there's an issue of actual existence of code here. Lennart has
gone to amazing lengths to not only write Polypaudio (which seems like a
very competent sound server from a features POV) but fix all the issues
raised here by others. So, Polypaudio actually exists whereas the plumbing
for the proposal outlined above doesn't, though it'd not be hard to write.

Still, I'd quite like somebody to smack me down and explain why a sound
server is really the best way forward :) So far the best reasoning I've
seen is that X11 sync stuff, which I know nothing about. Apparently not
many other people do either given that Lennart has been unable to find
prior art.

Might as well get this one out of the way: I don't really consider
portability a valid reason for using a sound server here. Some problems
are just best solved outside the desktop level, eg there's no such thing
as a GNOME filing system or video driver framework because that problem is
outside the projects domain. I can't shake the feeling sound server type
functionality is similar.

Anyway. Anybody willing to show me the error of my ways?

thanks -mike