Proposal for KDE media interface

[Morten Hustveit]

Today I wrote a sample interface for handling media files (audio and video, 
not MIDI) in KDE.  It features raw read and write access, as well as 
playback.  It's intended to have multiple backends, specifically for 
OSS/Free, ALSA and aRts, but more may be added.

Having a full media implementation in kdelibs removes the requirement that 
users must run a sound server.  Also, for users wanting to run a sound 
server, it ensures that they can run the server of their choice -- not 
necessarily the one KDE developers prefers.  When the sound server becomes 
deprecated, it does not require a change in the API to use a new one.

When a user is not running a sound server, the kernel driver decides whether 
or not multiple processes can access the sound device simultaneously.

I have already implemented a similar system in a game engine, so writing the 
implementation for this one should be mostly copying and pasting.  If I get 
support on this, I will write the mentioned backends, a Control Center 
module, as well as the mandatory libxine, libmad and libvorbis plugins.

The interface is documented at 
<http://www.ping.uio.no/~mortehu/kmedia/annotated.html>.  I'll delay 
implementation until you people tell me what's wrong with the interface.