summary of the aKademy meetings

[Matthias Kretz]

On Monday 06 September 2004 05:18, Charles Samuels wrote:
> As I figure, the only thing it solves is that it gives us a simple API. 
> The fact is that it's a bloated simple API because of the plugins.

What exactly is bloated about it? The fact that you interface and 
implementation are separate, and therefor every call to a method has to go 
through the virtual table?
Or do you mean the backend loading that happens at construction of the 
Factory?

> As amaroK insists on supporting every system out there, that doesn't
> matter. Noatun will require a specific API (probably NMM).
>
> In other words KDE will eventually require a single API, so this entire
> pluggable thing will only result in bloat.

But I don't want to force that non-Qt/KDE API on KDE developers. They should 
be able to choose what they want.

Just to get an overview what the multiple backends give us:
- Independent from the API/ABI stability of the multimedia Frameworks since 
for an incompatible version you can just add a new backend - no code using 
kdemm broken.
- Compatible to KDE 2 and 3: When KDE 4 comes out some people still might be 
using aRts apps and therefor might require the aRts backend to be used.
- Independent from the success of the multimedia Framework we chose. If we 
decide to go for gstreamer only and then MAS becomes the preferred multimedia 
system for Linux we're stuck with gstreamer - just like we have it now with 
aRts.
- I'd guess if we have to decide on the one and only framework now we'd take 
gst, but then you have those anti-glib fanatics ;-) flaming again because of 
a hard dependence of KDE against glib. (pretty much a moot point)
- KDE can fit better into different requirements/environments:
Users/Admins might want to use some special features of that one multimedia 
framework that isn't possible with another framework (yet). I'd like to give 
them the freedom to chose that framework then.

about fragmentation in the multimedia apps:
It probably cannot get worse than what we have now with apps using 
mplayer/xine/gstreamer/aRts. And it probably wouldn't if we choose one 
backend since the will always be apps using something different than the KDE 
core.

-- 
C'ya
        Matthias
________________________________________________________
Matthias Kretz (Germany)                          <><
http://Vir.homeip.net/
MatthiasKretz at gmx.net, kretz at kde.org,
Matthias.Kretz at urz.uni-heidelberg.de
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