Re: multimedia capplet

[Jonathan Blandford <jrb redhat com>]

Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net> writes:

> Heya,
> 
> I was cleaning up (at least trying to) the preferences in Totem and
> thought that quite a few settings should be system-wide (or at least
> desktop-wide) settings.
> 
> So, I'd have wanted to move from the Totem prefs:
> - Soundcard output type: Stereo, 4.0, 5.0, 5.1 or even AC3 passthrough
> (an int, from an enum)
> - Network speed: 56k, ISDN, Cable, bleh (see Totem's prefs for the
> complete list) (int from an enum as well), that would be used for
> Streaming protocols that support such a thing (only mms and rtsp that I
> know of)
> - Contrast/Brightness for the video (in percents)

A couple thoughts:

 * How does these fit in with the Sound, Network, and Display dialogs?
   I don't know what I'd expect in a 'Multimedia' capplet, but I don't
   know that that is it.

 * The sound settings in particular seems like they belongs in the sound
   capplet.

 * Network speed can be quite variable.  Can this be autodetected by the
   target application?  It seems especially meaningless with laptops.
   It also affects a very small number of network apps.  We'd have to
   phrase it in such a way that people aren't playing with it trying to
   make their web browser faster.

 * Perhaps d-d-l should be CC'ed here?

> It's about an hour's worth of work, just setting some GConf keys, which
> both xine-lib and GStreamer-based apps could use in the desktop.
> The main problem is where we should put this code. I'd like to see it
> added to the control-center myself as there aren't any additional deps.

If the keys are needed, we can add them to libgnome and let individual
apps configure them.  That may be a better solution.

> Any comments?

I'm not sold on a generic 'multimedia' capplet, but think the keys sound
fine.  I can be convinced on the dialog though, if you make a good
case.  Jody, do you have an opinion?

> I'd like to know if there are any more configuration options related to
> multimedia that could be added as desktop-wide?

Yeah.  Additionally, I've been hoping we can clean up the sound capplet
sometime.  It can and should be so much more than it currently is.

-Jonathan