aRts in trunk

[Charles Samuels]

On Fri, 29 Jul 2005, Scott Wheeler wrote:

> On Friday 29 July 2005 19:47, Charles Samuels wrote:
> 
> > I'm aware of that. What are you talking about?
> 
> You said you're still using it in truck.  Since kdemultimedia isn't anywhere 
> close to compiling with trunk I assumed were referring to last week's trunk.

Noatun has a make-it-snow branch that is intended to be part of trunk, it 
just hasn't been merged yet, because my build system is pretty 
broken right now (Debian undergoing abi changes...) and that I haven't 
been so willing to code lately, which sucks.

> 
> > And what if there is?
> >
> > Advantages to keeping it in trunk:
> > - I can easily make fixes to it if I need.
> 
> Uhm, your last commit to aRts was in March of 2002.  I hardly see this as 
> convincing.

Yes, that's because it works.

> 
> > - I can use it and it'll be easy for testers to as well
> 
> Testers for what?

Make-it-snow... when the time comes, at least.

> 
> > Disadvantages:
> > - You don't have to look at its ugly face.
> 
> It's house cleaning time.  My opinion is that if we're going to get rid of it 
> in the next few months now's as good a time as any.

Cleaning it now, and cleaning it up "in the next few months" is all the 
same thing.  If you don't want it, don't check it out, it doesn't hurt you 
at all.

> 
> > No, I think you just don't like aRts and want to see it go away, even
> > though, as I've said, we haven't decided on an alternative, because the
> > alternatives suck too.
> 
> Actually we pretty much have decided on an alternative in API terms.  See 
> Matthias's work in kdelibs/kdemm.  This came from the discussions with a 
> large group of multimedia people last year at aKademy, we talked about it at 
> LinuxTag and he's doing another talk on it at aKademy this year.  It's been 
> discussed multiple times on this list.

I'm aware of that, but it's not an option for a lot of my needs anyway, 
I've discussed that at length on this list.  You ignored my complaints 
anyway.

> 
> > Of course, it seems, you've already made up your mind, so whatever I say
> > won't matter.
> 
> If by "you" you mean "pretty much everyone in the KDE community", then yes, we 
> mostly have.  Stefan has said he won't maintain it further.  Matthias has 
> quit using it completely.  aRts is dead.

I'm still using it.  Since I am a member of the set "everyone", you just 
lied. You are so emotional about hating arts that you don't see how it 
doesn't change anything at all for you to keep it in there.

> 
> I'm actually not sure what argument you're trying to make -- it seems unclear 
> if you're trying to argue that we should continue to use aRts in KDE 4 or if 
> you're saying that we should keep it for present convenience.

You misunderstand my goals.  Noatun will support arts in KDE4, because 
arts seems(1) to work better(2) than Akode (and according to Stefan Gehn, 
gstreamer as well--although I havn't used that plugin yet).  It will be 
plugin-based. I need a place to maintain it, but more importantly, I want 
it easy for me to use, and so it has to be in svn.  Of course it something
comes along that's better, I'll use that, but for now, the future is 
unknown.

(1) Yes, Allan, I didn't report them, sorry.  It's probably more "by 
design" than a bug though.  If you want to talk about it, we can do it 
later, currently I'm busy.

(2) aRts has been FUDed heavily by KDE developers (more than anyone), 
which just sickens me.  
I've heard things about "high latency" which is totally bogus, that it's 
less stable isn't right either, on the basis that it's as stable as akode 
is, and at least in that case, it's out of process, so the user will 
hardly notice if it does crash. You're all so wanting to throw it out that 
you refuse to admit to even its most tiny advantages.  You don't even use 
it so you don't know how it is.

have a pleasant day

-Charles