kmix PulseAudio support

[Christian Esken]

Am Donnerstag, 7. Januar 2010 00:29:17 schrieb Colin Guthrie:
> 'Twas brillig, and Christian Esken at 06/01/10 19:09 did gyre and gimble:
> > Am Mittwoch, 6. Januar 2010 13:16:53 schrieb Alexis Ménard:
> >> On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 12:56 PM, Helio Chissini de Castro
> >> <helio at kde.org>
> >
> > wrote:
> >>> On Wednesday 06 January 2010 09:40:10 Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> >>>> 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.
> >
> > Phonon integration is the way to go. Apps or App categories should show
> > as controls.
> 
> Well I currently show one category - the "Events" one. This is done also
> in gnome and as event sounds are short lived it can be tricky to catch
> them individually so they are hidden and only the common slider is
> shown. I'll probably get round to showing other categories too, but this

A control that only appears for a short time would confuse me.


> one keeps things the same with pavucontrol and gnome-volume-control.
> 
> > BTW: How does one activate the Phonone backend? I have never seen it in
> > action.
> 
> There is no dedicated backend, but both the xine and gstreamer backends

Looks like I misunderstood. I thought it would be a Phonon Backend in KMix. 

> > No, it doesn't happen for ALSA. Nor for OSS. Why should it?
> >
> > Anyhow, this is a showstopper.
> 
> Actually I think it does show up for alsa (I saw it happen before with
> pristine kmix). That said the dialog in question I now realise is
> related to the notification daemon impementation I was running. My

So we can summarize:
- Notification: Yes (If you "unplug" the card with the current global master)
- Dialog: No


> >>>>> 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.
> >
> > That is not good. Pulseaudio has always been a mess to me, usually it
> > would not work at all, haning applications (not only KMix).
> 
> I'm confused, so you'd prefer I didn't provide ways for users to disable
> the PA integration?

Sorry to be unclear. I meant: Do not activate Pulse support by default. Let 
the user make an active choice to do so.

> 
> >>>> Thanks for keeping sanity for those whose setups don't work with
> >>>>  pulseaudio.
> >
> > Like me. Don't activate PulseAudio by default. IMO that beast is a mess.
> 
> Again I'm confused. I don't "activate" anything. If the system is
> configured to use PA then I'll use it. This is surely the correct approach?

It could be correct - depending on what you mean with "configured".  Is it 
enough that PA is installed? Or does a PA process have to be started? Or some 
Backend configured to use PA?

I can only tell what I experienced: As long as PA was installed, sooner or 
later some smart program (not necessarily a KDE or Phonon program) would try 
to use it and I got problems. 


> 
> >>> sprint multimedia will be a ground zero point to new mixer interface
> >>> and
> >
> > What exactly do you mean with "new"?!?
> >
> > You guys get me quite confused in this mail thread. Please do not say "it
> > is bad" or "lets change things" without indicating what you mean.
> 
> Having not jumped into the Kmix code before, I can say that the mixers
> and such it exposes are very restrictive. The channels and mappings are
> fixed and nailed down to pre-defined concepts rather than giving a

I don't understand: Fixed channels? Are you talking about layout?
And what are mappings?


> flexible structure onto which I can build. It was quite hard to shoe

Hmm, sounds interesting. Can't make it out still. Do you have an example of 
such a flexible application?


> horn my needs into the existing UI code. I think if kmix can be

Perhaps it would have been easier if you had access to the UML class diagram. 
OK, I haven't published it and it is not yet updated to the KDE4 version. ;)

> plasmaficated that bits of it (e.g. your favourite device or app) can be
> embedded where you need it and volume levels etc can be put inside
> applications really easily etc. 

Do you have any good examples where other apps use embedded plasma bits 
(except for the desktop?).

I haven't understand why everybody is so keen to limit themselves to the 
limited set of plasma widgets.

> But that said I probably don't have the
> insight needed here to comment in more depth.

And I am not into Plasma, but you can't do a full app with it, can you?!?

  Christian