Re: Sound in Gnome 2.0

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

On Wed, Oct 31, 2001 at 08:37:24PM +0000, Pablo Baena wrote:
> Hi all. I am here again to bother with sound support in Gnome, please
> don't kill me. I missed the votation for features in Gnome 2.0, and I
> noticed afterwards that although there were requests for changing the
> sound server, the guy that put a rating to the requests didn't see much
> urgency on it.
> 
> I would like to ask you to please give it more importance to it, and do
> a votation on this as soon as posible, better before Gnome 2.0 comes
> out. I've spend some time looking at the possibilities and now I
> recognize that Gnome really needs CSL:

_Way_ too late for GNOME 2.0 now. The whole sound server issue last
raised it's head in a big way at the end of July, if memory serves.
Have a look at the discussions in the gnome-hackers archives for some of
the arguments. I believe CSL was mentioned there, as was esd, GStreamer
and one or two "they came from Outer Space" systems.

> Now that Gnome is going to break compatibility, should be the time to
> make this changes and start porting to CSL. I know I may seem like a
> back-seat coder, but as soon as there is a resolution on this I'll help
> porting applications or do documentation.

Four or five months ago when the GNOME developers were talking about
what would break and what would be in the 2.0 releases would have been
the time to make the change you proposed if everybody was convinced it
was truly better and didn't just introduce new problems in place of the
old ones. Right now, APIs for GNOME 2.0 are frozen and porting is under
way. You best target your efforts at GNOME 2.2 or beyond (2.2 may turn
out to be a fine-tuning release with extra bells and whistles, so a
major infrastructure change may not be appropriate -- but nobody really
knows yet).

I personally have no opinions about what facets of CSL are better or
worse than the existing system or its alternatives, but now is not the
time to reignite that debate. Probably the best time is just after 2.0
has been released so that we have time to think through all the
alternatives for whichever release might involve a sound system change.

Cheers,
Malcolm

-- 
Kleptomania: take something for it.