kmix PulseAudio support

[Sebastian Kügler]

On Wednesday 06 January 2010 11:24:04 Colin Guthrie wrote:
> After improving Phonon integration I've been digging through the kmix
> code to try and add proper PulseAudio support.
> 
> I now have a set of patches that add this support and can commit it to
> trunk anytime people approve. I'm not 100% sure of trunk status due to
> 4.4 being ready soon.
> 
> So can I commit?

We're in feature freeze, since somewhen in November. That means no new features, no 
new strings for 4.4.x. Translation updates and bugfixes are OK to go into the (soon-
to-be-created) 4.4 branch, anything else has to wait until trunk reopens for 
development again (which should also be shortly). You'll hear about it if you read 
this list.

> I have two remaining issues that I do not think are show stoppers:
>  1. Everytime a new device shows up a new Global Shortcut dialog
> appears. I don't think this is any different to ALSA but.... as I now
> have per-app volume control, this dialog is also shown everytime a new
> application plays sound. It only happens once, but it could still be
> considered annoying by some.
>  2. If there are no capture streams running at startup the tab for that
> will never be displayed - likewise if the stream restore module in PA is
> not loaded the "Playback Streams" tab will never be displayed.
> 
> I'll work on the latter issue for sure.

How do we get the first one fixed, then? :)

> Obviously if PA is not running, this whole patchset should amount to a
> NOOP. Also even if PA is running you can export
> KMIX_PULSEAUDIO_DISABLE=1 to disable the integration.

Thanks for keeping sanity for those whose setups don't work with pulseaudio.

> I'll write a more detailed blog post shortly (wish screenies, so you can
> ask about features there!). It should appear on planetkde.
> 
> There are various things that could be more efficient (e.g. redraw
> current redraws all tabs, not just the one that has changed when a new
> application appears or disappears)
> 
> 
> Now, I know Helio was quite keen to squeeze this into the 4.4 release.
> I've just put it into Mandriva Cooker package for somewhat wider testing
> but it seems fine so far.
> 
> My main concern with squeezing it in is that there are some i18n changes
> (about 5 or 6 strings).

As explained above, it's way too late for such an intrusive change at this point as 
we won't get enough testing to make sure it's good enough to be shipped with a stable 
KDE, especially not given that there are known bugs. It'll have to wait for being 
released with KDE SC 4.5.

> Anyway, that's the crux of it all.
> 
> Take care

Cheers!
-- 
sebas

http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org | GPG Key ID: 9119 0EF9