better ALSA card name

[David Zeuthen]

On Wed, 2007-01-31 at 22:55 +0100, Davide Ferrari wrote:

> I attach here to ask a question about soundcards and HAl. Is there a
> way to define the default soundcard when there are more than just one?
> and more specifically, is there a way to define that all usb sound
> cards, when plugged in, should be the the default playback device, for
> example?
> Think about USB headset, they are very common nowadays and usually
> when a user plug an headset in is because he's willing to use it now

HAL is only a mechanism / index for looking up devices - whether
something is default is defined in some policy manager running above hal
or in the desktop session. The question about "what is default" is
blurry too - for example in GNOME there's a capplet where you can select
default sound card for 

 1. Normal playback
 2. Conferencing software
 3. Movie / Entertainment

and e.g. Ekiga would use the default in 2., Totem would use the default
in 3. and system sounds would use the default in 1. At least that's the
way I remember it.

     David

>