summary of the aKademy meetings

[Scott Wheeler]

On Monday 06 September 2004 5:01, Charles Samuels wrote:
> On Sunday 2004 September 05 07:20 pm, Scott Wheeler wrote:
> > *) We'll have a simple, abstract player interface that can handle audio or
> > video and is not tied to a specific backend.  This interface will support
> > most of the common cases that application developers need.
> 
> Why? I would like a rationale.
> 
> This doesn't seem like it solves any problem other than our indecision and 
> giving some of us warm fuzzy feelings.

Well, the short version was below.  We need a simple playback API anyway.  I 
think that much is clear.  Pretty much everbody agreed that there should be a 
simple playback API to offer to application developers that don't care about 
much more than "play this".

Originally I didn't care much about making it plugable and just wanted to pick 
a default, but (a) it's really not hard to make it plugable and (b) it 
insulates us a bit from API changes.

And really -- I think aside from Noatun (amaroK has its own backend layer that 
will likely stay) it covers pretty much every app in CVS since amaroK and 
Noatun are the only two things that do anything special with the sound.  So, 
yeah, it actually does solve most of the problems.

I'd still like to have a recommended low level API for people that need such 
because I'd like to have that offered as part of our "platform", but I was in 
the minority on that.

-Scott