Phonon - Qt or KDE?

[todd rme]

On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 8:18 PM, Trever Fischer
<tdfischer at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>
> On Mon, November 14, 2011 8:31 am, todd rme wrote:
>> 2011/11/14 Trever Fischer <tdfischer at fedoraproject.org>:
>>
>>> I would like to see Phonon be Qt. I can see a number of applications
>>> for Phonon (hint: my employer is one major instance) that don't require
>>> a full- fledged desktop framework and whatever other crazy awesome stuff
>>> the Frameworks bring.
>>
>> The whole point of frameworks is to make sure that parts of KDE like
>> phonon do NOT bring a full-fledged desktop framework.  That is why they are
>> frameworks plural, breaking up KDE into individual pieces that can be used
>> either completely independently or only relying on the mimimum other
>> frameworks absolutely needed to do their job.
>>
>> So moving to Qt or sticking with KDE will have no impact on what
>> phonon will pull in.  Phonon is and will remain independent of other parts
>> of KDE.  The point of frameworks is to make more of KDE like phonon in
>> this regard.
> Perhaps I didn't fully form my position or English is hard since thats
> pretty much what I was trying to articulate. Going back and re-reading, I
> can't really make much sense of what I put :D
>
> Trying to clarify a bit, I agree with this statement: "If it is Qt and
> happens to deliver to KDE then it would make a whole lot of sense to move
> to qtproject and continue to thrive there."
>
> The question then becomes, I suppose, who uses Phonon, why do they, and
> why don't others?
>
> Here at Quasimoto, we make vending machines with fancy interactive
> displays and stuff. We use Phonon for playing attract mode videos and
> sound effects while using QML for the main interactive UI. At the moment,
> we use QtMultimediKit for embedding videos in QML layouts but it is buggy,
> needs some hacks, and seemingly optimized only for meego/maemon. Phonon is
> used in QWidget designs. Some preliminary testing with Harald's GSOC
> project of phonon elements for QML shows some amazing performance
> increases and we'll definitely be switching to that and getting rid of
> QWidget where it makes sense once "its done" ;)
>
> Point is, Phonon makes an awesome toolkit for doing multimedia in Qt which
> surpasses anything else out there. There aren't any KDE dependencies and
> we have no reason to use any KDE bits since this is a single-user linux
> environment point-of-sale system. All we need and use is a GUI toolkit, a
> simple audio toolkit, and a couple of serial ports to drive expensive
> linear actuators and read some sensors.
>
> Again, I'd really appreciate it if some other third party who /wasn't/ a
> KDE developer came in and gave opinions about this, as unlikely as that'd
> be.

I understand that.  My point is that sticking with KDE will have no
effect on your use-case.  Sticking with KDE will not make Phonon more
dependent on KDE.  Frameworks will not make Phonon more dependent on
KDE.

The whole point of frameworks is to make KDE more modular.  In other
words, making more of KDE be like phonon is now.

For example, say you want to clients in different countries to be able
to be able to schedule specific animations to appear on specific days
using their local calendar system.  You can't do this with QDate, so
currently you need to use kdelibs as a whole to add this feature.
Once frameworks is done, you can just use this feature on its own with
using anything else from KDE, just like you currently can with Phonon.

-Todd