Re: More fun with sound (was GNOME CVS: libgnome martin)

[Joe Shaw <joe ximian com>]

On 12 Aug 2001 12:00:48 -0700, George wrote:
> Exactly.  So if I use esd in the panel, then people using apps that don't use
> esd are screwed.  If I use some other daemon ... same thing.  Not even if
> most things update, then the panel may still use esd.
> 
> That is CRAP!!!!
> 
> Let's judge these things from the view of the USER, not of the application
> developper.  The user is going to be pissed since things related to sound are
> going to suck a lot more in gnome2, just because we think the API is not
> "nice" or "perfect".

Yep. Some application developers will implement sounds in their programs
with or without a GNOME-level policy for it. I -definitely- don't want
to have to deal with turning sounds on or off per-application when I
should be able to do it by clicking a checkbox in the Control Center.

Part of the reason behind the (old) gnome-libs stuff is enforcing policy
on all applications in such a way to create an integrated, consistent
environment for the user. Windows can do this at the system level, but
we need libgnome for it. Managing sound falls squarely under the policy
heading to me.

> If the old api is left in place, most apps will use it cuz they don't care
> about any low level support for playing boings and bangs and swoosh sounds,
> and the user will still be able to configure sound nicely in one place.

Agreed. I would be okay with an API that was basically:

void gnome_sound_enable(gboolean enable);
gboolean gnome_sound_is_enabled(void);
void gnome_sound_play_file(const char *url);

... pretty simple, and easy to adapt for later.

> Anyway, desktop kinds of sounds shouldn't be played directly by apps, but by
> the desktop libs, this is what libgnome is for anyway.  
> And the user, theme or whatever configures that sounds gets it right.  And
> that's what currently happens, and that's what we're gonna lose apparently.

Agreed.

Joe