[gst-devel] gconf stuff

[Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller]

On Mon, 2002-05-06 at 13:38, Baker, Steve wrote:
> Thomas pointed:
> > Here's a few points that represent my view on it :
> > 
> > a) gconf should be used to store gstreamer-related defaults for every 
> > gnome app that uses GStreamer.  For example, rhythmbox (actually 
> > monkey-sound) has it's own key for the default audiosink, and 
> > IMO this 
> > should be a global gstreamer key - you'd want the same 
> > audiosink across 
> > all apps.
> 
> I've been thinking about default audiosink. Considering recent Gnome rants
> about the evils of giving users too many options, would it be possible to
> write an audiosink which JustWorks by trying all the options until a working
> audio sink is found.
> 
> It could do something like:
> - attempt to create alsasink
> - attampt to create osssink
> - attempt to create esoundsink, massink, etc
> 
> I have no idea if this is really feasable or if it would sometimes give the
> wrong result.  Each sink would need to do checks on creation (which don't
> block) to confirm whether the sink method is usable.
> 
> The resulting sink name could be cached in a gconf key.  Then this would
> mean one less potentially confusing capplet dialog that users have to grok.
> 
> feasible?

I have been thinking a lot on this too, since Seth Nickels (GNOME UI
hacker) was very insistent that if we should do something to give people
a working solution out of the box. Problem of course is what to actually
give people. For instance on a ordinary linux system, outputing to oss,
alsa and one and more soundservers are probably possible. But to
increase the chance of actually picking the one the user want (even if
he/she don't really know themselves what they want) we probably need to
cross check against something. For instance if we find that artsd is a
possible output AND KDE is running then artsd is probably want the user
want, and not direct output to oss or alsa. On the other hand there are
probably KDE user who don't want to use artsd but output directly to oss
or alsa to get less lag on their music playback.

So while I agree that long term at least we should try to have a system
that makes an intelligent guessimate on what the users want, due to
situations like the one illustrated above I guess a capplet would be a
good idea so that when people need/want to change it they don't have to
start mucking with gconf-edit (which I think will be a rather high
threshold for many).

Christian