Re: Planned "Sound Settings" improvements

[David Henningsson <david henningsson canonical com>]

2011-10-23 02:45, Matthias Clasen skrev:
> On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 6:46 AM, David Henningsson
> <david henningsson canonical com>  wrote:
>
> > To give you some background, I've been working on PulseAudio patches for
> > jack detection the last few months. Upstreaming of these patches are in
> > progress and will be a part of PulseAudio 2.0. These patches also make
> > PulseAudio expose more information, that makes it possible for us to make
> > the Sound Settings UI more user friendly.
> >
> > The main point of the redesign is to remove the hardware tab, and have input
> > and output tabs incorporate the information currently on the hardware tab.
> > There should be one row for every combination of Port/Connector and Card,
> > rather than today's practice of one row for every card and a combobox for
> > "Connector". The point is that since the average user would think of
> > "Headphones" and "Speakers" rather than "Internal Audio Analog Stereo", we
> > should present Headphones/Speakers/etc to the user as the first thing he/she
> > sees.
> Getting rid of the hardware tab would certainly be a welcome
> improvement. I was not at all happy when it was introduced. But my
> understanding was that it was necessary because of limitations in
> either hw or alsa. Have these been overcome, or how will pulseaudio 2
> work around them ?

Having a hardware tab might be more closely to how PulseAudio exposes 
things today, but it is probably not optimal from a user friendly 
perspective.

PulseAudio 2.0 will expose ports of inactive profiles (this is currently 
work in progress). This is the key point that makes it more possible to 
expose ports/connectors as the primary thing the user sees.

// David