RE: GNOME Sound Server, was Re: GNOME sounds - which component

[Cody Russell <bratsche dfw net>]

On Tue, 27 Jul 1999, Colin Davis wrote:

> I believes it solves the initial problem, but as I said,
> people are more likely to write to the ESD API to be compatible with
> both in that case. 

I think you're wrong here; I think people will recognize that the new
sound server is superior, and they'll write using its API. It can be
safely assumed that almost nobody will be using the original ESD.

> Why not create a new, from scratch server, that uses the same API as
> Esound, thus maintaining backwards, (and future) compatibility between
> it's self, and Esound. I cannot see why this would not be the perfect
> solution. Why add confusion by introduucing yet-another-api.

Because the older API may be insufficient for handling the kind of
features that are in mind. The ESD wrapper will provide backwards
compatibility to old software and will give it limited functionality (the
functionality that ESD provided), but more advanced things may not be
possible without changes to the API.

> Let me make my self very clear here. 
> 
> WHY WOULD YOU ESOUND CODE TO BE COMPATIBLE WITH ESOUND?

The wasn't very clear at all. In fact, I don't understand that at all.

> This is the best soution. Binary compatibility, with clear source.
> Everybody wins.

There are more problems with ESD than the ugliness of its source. The sane
choices are 1/ fix any sorts of problems that may exist in ESD and stick
with its API, or 2/ write a superior sound daemon from scratch and give it
a sensible API that fits it.

Cody