Sound

[Scott Goehring <scott poverty bloomington in us>]

On sound, here are my suggestions:

1. No application shall play continuous sounds other than a game or
   other application specifically designed for that purpose.

2. The use of sound is completely optional.  No application (other
   than an application whose specific purpose requires it) shall
   require the availability of sound-generation facilities.  All
   applications shall gracefully degrade in an environment where
   sound-generation facilities are absent or disabled.

3. Overly long sound effects shall not be installed by default.  An
   effect is overly long if it is more than two seconds in length for
   routine system events, more than five seconds in length for
   exceptional non-error conditions, or more than ten seconds in
   length for error conditions.

4. The user shall be able to substitute eir own sound for any
   default sound, or disable the sound associated with any given
   event.

5. Applications may offer the user the opportunity to associate a
   sound with an event without providing a default sound for that
   event.

(4 and 5 should probably be implemented through a library of some
sort.)