Re: [linux-audio-dev] CSL-0.1.2 Release

[Paul Davis <pbd Op Net>]

In message <20010607002228 10931 space twc de>you write:
>CSL-0.1.2 - the Common Sound Layer - has been released.
>
>The scope of CSL can roughly be summarized as:
>  Helping all applications out there that currently contain a
>  variety of platform specific notoriously non-portable audio code.
>
>On the one hand, CSL provides sufficient abstraction of platform specific
>details, where we took extreme care to maintain full-fledged access to
					^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>the features offered by the APIs being wrapped, such as:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I consider this to be a serious design error.

Every (commercial) player in the computer audio world has apparently
learnt the following lessons about audio APIs:

    * use a single common audio data format
    * use a callback model
    * remove almost all hardware related concepts from the API

Wrapping a Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) like OSS or ALSA in what
is really just another HAL with the same semantics but different
function names doesn't move us forward. Instead, it just provides
developers with yet another choice to make, and continues to force
them to work with details of audio that they should not have to care
about.

The "LAAGA" API that we've been discussing on LAD is precisely about
moving above and beyond all this stupid hardware/device/parameter
stuff and enabling developers to focus on functionality in a way that
is totally different and vastly more functional than the kind of
low-level audio i/o API offered by CSL as well as the APIs it wraps.

--p