nautilusa and esound

[Benjamin Rich <benjamin rich gmail com>]

I was just wondering why nautilus, and indeed gnome-libs and most of
gnome seems to require esound to compile. Surely esound should be
optional? For example, in gentoo, you can add or take away optional
esound support for most packages, but with things like nautilus, it's
hard-wired in. This means, if you have GNOME, even if you remove
support for esound from all other apps, you're still forced to have it
because of gnome apps' dependence on it.

I really don't like esound, because it's such a bodgy application and
I tend to just pipe sound straight to ALSA, and let my card do the
sound mixing. Is there a reason why this app is still so essential to
nautilus and other gnome apps? Why can't they interface with ALSA
direct? esound is just so primitive and awful - why doesn't nautilus
et al use gstreamer or something more modern?

-ben