Re: ALSA (was: Re: Gnome-Media 2.2.0 "No War On Iraq" released)

[iain <iain prettypeople org>]

lør, 2003-01-25 kl. 20:57 skrev George Farris:
> I see you feel quite strongly about this:-)  Do you know what the ALSA
> and kernel people are saying?  It's my understanding that ALSA will be
> the default for the new 2.6 kernel.  Surely Linus and ALan Cox, at a
> minimum, would have some serious criticism if things are that bad.  I'm
> surprised to say the least.

I think we're talking about different things here.

I think the alsa kernel drivers are nice, I use them on my machines, and
I have done since 1998 with very few problems (once isapnp stuff worked)

I think the alsa userspace library is one of the most overly complicated
libraries I've ever seen.

The documentation is shite. Half of the functions aren't even listed in
the documentation, its a terrible layout of documentation (a common
complaint I have with all doxygen docs), there's no tutorials or
explaination of any of the structures/the mass of functions. There are
some tutorials but they are all about the PCM interface which a mixer
doesn't need - one of them even ends with "How do I avoid all this? Use
JACK instead cos it does it all for you", there's a ton of "Well, this
isn't actually supported anymore" with no indication of what you're
supposed to use instead.

I think the ALSA drivers are nice, they work.

As to, the I haven't had time
a) The feature freeze date was 3 months ago
b) I tried to do it once, and had no frigging clue what I was supposed
to do - see problem with documentation
c) I have a life
d) I don't need it, because it all works fine with OSS emulation for me.

So don't get all pissy because I don't want to spend time implementing
your favourite feature on my spare time. If you want to pay me I accept
cheques, guitar effects, or Fender Jaguar guitars (sixties models only)
and we can see if we can come to some sort of arrangement. 

iain