kmix-improvements - status

[Christian Esken]

Am 24.04.2013 16:25, schrieb Daniel Faust:
> Hi Trever,
>
> thanks for your reply.
>
>>> The last commit is over 2 months old, though. So my question would be,
>>> what
>>> are your current priorities and what are your ambitions towards a
>>> re-write?
>>> Is it a matter of your free time? And would you welcome some help?
>> I see that there are actually more people who would like to contribute to
>> kmix, but it looks like it's mostly about MPRIS2 and SoundMenu and the
>> kmix
>> master branch.
>> Thats mostly the GSOC project.
> And I guess that this work goes to the master branch, right?

As far as I understood, yes.
> As I mentioned in my first message, I initially just wanted to fix a layout bug
> in kmix. I like a clean UI and instead of waiting for someone to write the
> software I want, I thought I would offer my help. That's all.
>
>
> As I said, I put some thought into how I would design a mixer UI, so I'll just
> attach some mock-ups. It's basically a combination of the old kmix,
> pavucontrol and the new windows mixer.
> The mock-ups require some phantasy - it's build with the Qt Designer and
> edited with gimp.
>
> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29089012/kmix-mockups-5.tar.gz

Hello Daniel,

thanks for your input. I just took a look at it. Sorry for not answering 
earlier, but after the 4.10 release I needed to push back everything 
KMix related for an extended period. But I am back now. Please note that 
below I am talking of KMix trunk only.

>
> Some explanations:
> The idea is to show the device with it's master volume slider together with
> the streams.

I implemented something comparable for the Tray Popup in KDE 4.10. So 
you can be sure to have my sympathy. The question is whether you are 
able to identify which master volume belongs to which stream(s). 
Actually we currently only have Streams in Pulseaudio and MPRIS2. The 
latter does not have the notion of a Master control, but it may be 
possible with PA.

> The master channel shows a gimped volume slider that monitors the current
> volume.
I also had this idea, but implementing such a Slider that is also 
compatible with all Widget and Plasma Styles and Accessibility was a too 
big hurdle for me. If you have experience in doing sophisticated GUI 
widgets you are invited.

> And I think the horizontal line that shows the maximum volume is very helpful
> to understand how the volume adjustment works, Microsoft did a good job at
> this in their mixer.

You cannot do that with most backends, especially when we talk about 
surround (5.1 or so). PA might have the necessary abstraction level, but 
ALSA, OSSv3 (quite likely also OSSv4) and Solaris do not.

> So please tell me what you think and if you can use some help.

Help is always welcome. There is definitely space to add support for 
Backend specific options, like I did with Media Controls (for MPRIS2 
only). Just keep in mind that KMix is not a Pulsaudio-only Mixer. Doing 
Multi-OS/Multi-Backend is a magnitude more complex - but otherwise it 
wouldn't be a challenge, right. :-)

  Greetings,
       Christian