Re: Sound

[Gleef <gleef capital net>]

On Fri, 14 Aug 1998, Scott Goehring wrote:
> 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.)

These sound good, but what kind of events would end up with sound, anyway.
The way I see it, if you are thinking about Windows style sounds for
windows opening or closing, menus, etc, at least 2/3 of the sounds are for
events that GNOME has nothing to do with.  They are handled by the window
manager, with no mechanism for GNOME to insert a sound.

Also, applications that use sound as a matter of operation (sound
editors, players, web browsers, etc), can't follow most of these items.

-Gleef