KDEs' Multimedia needs

[Neil Stevens]

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On Saturday February 22, 2003 11:18, Matthias Welwarsky wrote:
> Sorry folks, the mail went out accidentially, before it was actually
> finished,
>
> so here we go again:
> > A codec layer. We definitely need an easy to access possibility to
> > plug in codecs for alls those funky sound and video formats. I'm all
> > against burdening this tedious stuff onto application programmers.
>
> We haven't discussed video yet, but we need this too, of course. I don't
> think we need a "video server" as a standalone process, we already have
> X, but we need an easy way to blit images into the screen, ideally a
> KVideoWidget (i.e. something embeddable), using every form of hardware
> acceleration that's offered to us.

We already have KVideoWidget, that embeds a window provided from the server 
process.  Too late.

> Please, think about how Arts in KDE is different from the original idea:
> People started to mis-use arts for stuff it was never meant for. For
> example, writing playobjects that are actually mp3 or ogg decoders. And
> then there was streaming. Arts is clearly a kind of victim of one of the
> open source communities brightest habits: excessive reuse. People
> started to extend it not because it was the best choice for the given
> task, but just because it was there.

Well, the original idea of aRts really doesn't matter anymore, does it?  
What matters are two things:  How we're already using aRts, and the new 
things people need from aRts.

> So whatever comes out of this reiterating discussions, keep in mind that
> you not only have to replace Arts as a soundserver, but also Arts as the
> present KDE Multimedia framework. And this involves Codecs and Video,
> too.

Yes, and that framework is being used a lot already.  So before replacing 
it, we need to make every reasonable effort to meet people's needs with 
the existing one.

- -- 
Neil Stevens - neil at qualityassistant.com
"Distinctions by race are so evil, so arbitrary and insidious that a
state bound to defend the equal protection of the laws must not allow
them in any public sphere." -- Thurgood Marshall
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