[pulseaudio-discuss] Is running as user smart or dumb?

[Bill Cox]

Since I didn't get much response with my more polite e-mail, here's
what I really think, given my current ignorance about pulseaudio...

PulseAudio is cool, but I fear it's over-engineered by some Ph.D's
with too much elegance in their solution, and not enough real world
experience.  Run as user?  Really?

If you think you've got a good reason to do this, is it more important
than sacraficing accessibility for the blind?  The worst disaster for
accessibility for the blind and visually impaired has been adoption of
PulseAduio by the major distros.  I'm personally spending insane hours
trying to fix this mess, and frankly I could use some direction.
We've got Orca mostly working now, but the other essential app -
speakup - is still in limbo.

Now the blind community has no pull.  We can't tell Ubuntu to run
PulseAudio as a normal deamon.  As a result, our computers come up
talking but then can't talk once the user logs into gnome.  This is
because speakup launches a process that starts pulseaudio as the gdm
user, and since that process continues forever, the gdm copy of
pulseaudio never dies, and the user's gnome session gets no access to
the sound card, and Orca wont talk.

I just need a solution.  I'm frankly hoping to get more response to
this more emotional e-mail than my previous polite one.  I promise to
be nice once I'm convinced we're not actually letting a bunch of
inexperienced coders undermine the Linux sound system, which is likely
to happen once I'm no longer ignorant of what the heck this user-land
stuff is all about, and when I learn how to write code that gives the
blind speach on their Ctrl+Alt+F1 consoles from boot, as well as after
they login.

You know what it's like trying to help a blind user through e-mail to
figure out what to do when the computer just stops talking?  Ever try
to explain to a user over the phone how to use a graphical
application?  It's much worse than that.  The sound system needs to
work at boot, when we log in, and in fact all the time.  Is that too
much to ask?  That's what I require from Ubunut/Lucid.  I'm willing to
write the code to make it happen.  Can anyone please advise me on what
code needs to be written to get speakup and Orca to both work with
pulseaudio, from boot, after logging into gnome, and on the console
windows?

Bill