RFC - a casual sound API on fd.o?

[Stefan.Kost at nokia.com]

hi,

<snip> 
>I see three kinds of audio events, in my small view of the world:
>1) notifications (reactions to user input or other events)
>2) sound tracks from games or websites
>3) complex audio output stemming from multimedia players 
>(sometimes requiring video synchronisation)
>
Thats a good classification!

>#1 is definitely libnotify's job. #3 is definitely not and 
>also definitely not your job either. So we end up with #2: do 
>we need an extra library/framework/API for doing that or can 
>we simply fold back the necessary features into something close?
>
Yes libnotify should be the gateway to receive notification events. But can't it use the sound api marc-andre proposes to delegate the playback. This way it does not need to worry about the sounds backend to use.
>
>Sorry to say, but it seems to me that you're reinventing the 
>wheel here. 
>Notification and PortMusic (as well as Phonon, but that's not
>cross-desktop) are very close to your goal already.
>
>One more thing: have you verified if there is a demand for 
>this kind of API on a cross-desktop basis? I know you're 
>worried about the state of the GNOME API (you said so), but if 
>this is restricted to GNOME, it might be better to fix there.
>
I think there is. Phonon seems to target something from class 2 and a bit of class 3, but its KDE centric (which is okay). So it can help apps, that just look for a simple audio api.

>--
>  Thiago Macieira  -  thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org
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Stefan