[pulseaudio-discuss] pulseaudio device chooser: wish

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Charlie at 11/04/09 23:46 did gyre and gimble:
> Oh My God! I did not even see that tiny little drop down arrow!!! Must 
> be the theme I am using! O.K. how about that Make Default option then?

Please note that padevchooser is obsolete and no longer developed. It's 
generally not the correct app to use.

The reason? Well, padevchooser uses the X11 properties to change the 
current device. This method trumps the built in routing that pulse will 
do automatically and requires that the application is stopped/started 
for the change to take effect - e.g. it's not "live".

The correct tool for the job is pavucontrol. Without it, many of the 
benefits of pulseaudio cannot be realised.

I've actually tinkered with the UI in pavucontrol to give a very obvious 
drop down combo for picking the device. I find it's much more intuitive 
than the little arrow. Hopefully Lennart agrees and will merge that 
branch in at some point.

As for the "Make Default" option, that is there in pavucontrol currently 
(again hidden behind the little drop down menu which I've also made more 
obvious in my branch). That said, it's not a "default" in the sense you 
are thinking. It's more of a fallback. Pulse will remember applications 
and which device they were last played on. And will try and restore the 
stream to that device if possible. So even if you change the "default" 
in pavucontrol, an application may still want to use the old device (as 
it's remembered from last time). You can just move the stream once in 
this case and it will be remembered from then on.

We're currently discussing in another thread the possibility of a real 
"active" default.

Also the quick access icon support via padevchooser etc. functionality 
will be replaced in a "notifications" module I'm working on for pulse.

Col

-- 

Colin Guthrie
gmane(at)colin.guthr.ie
http://colin.guthr.ie/

Day Job:
   Tribalogic Limited [http://www.tribalogic.net/]
Open Source:
   Mandriva Linux Contributor [http://www.mandriva.com/]
   PulseAudio Hacker [http://www.pulseaudio.org/]
   Trac Hacker [http://trac.edgewall.org/]