[pulseaudio-discuss] Accessing audio as root

Sat Jan 2 07:44:39 PST 2010

Hi, Colin.  I agree with 100% or your message.  The blind are about
the worst adopters of new technology you'll run across.  In fact, the
only reason you're hearing from me is that Ubuntu has made it more or
less a bug to remove PA.  Otherwise, I'd join the rest of the blind/VI
community of embracing what worked in the past for as long as
possible.  If I were fully blind, rather than just a bit visually
impaired, you wouldn't even hear from me, other than perhaps some of
my usual grumpy ranting.  As it is, I can still work quite well on
fixing systems without speech, and with PA becoming standard, I'm
highly motivated to get it working well for the blind.  Especially
before my vision fades much further.

So, for me the "right" behaviour is not simply the old behaviour.  In
this case, I think that the "right" behaviour is some solution that
maintains the security of PA, while not burdening the various "global"
sound sources with details of working with d-bus, or CK.  I'd like to
make it a simple one-line option set in pulse-simple to enable a sound
driver as "global", control security with group and user access, and
bury the complexity under the hood, so the client wont have to deal
with it.  If you think it's hard to get upstream devs to adopt PA
support, wait until you try to get blind upstream devs to change their
code!  Actually, they're typically very apriciative of any help they
can get, but the #1 rule is you can't break what works.  I put out a
simple request last week, "Can I join the speakup dev team for a
while"....  the silence was deafening.  I think whatever solution we
come up with needs to simplify their life as much as possible.  By the
way, I am a fan of pulse-simple.  It's as easy an interface as I've
seen, while still exposing important buffering parameters.  It's
working well with Orca.  I looked at the implementation code in pulse
and pulse-core.  It's good code.  It's clear that the author had some
skill.

Bill

On Sat, Jan 2, 2010 at 9:25 AM, Colin Guthrie <gmane at colin.guthr.ie> wrote:
> 'Twas brillig, and Bill Cox at 02/01/10 04:29 did gyre and gimble:
>> On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 11:14 AM, Colin Guthrie <gmane at colin.guthr.ie> wrote:
>>> 'Twas brillig, and Markus Rechberger at 24/12/09 14:02 did gyre and gimble:
>>>> I think it's pretty clear what the problem is.
>>>> PA does not support multiple users on one system..
>>>> I told you if you intend to replace the existing audio system and
>>>> build up compatibility layers
>>>> add try to do it right.
>>>
>>> But for you "right" === "the exact same way it used to work".
>>
>> Hi, Colin.  I think it is important to understand where people like
>> Markus come from.  I suspect he's completely blind.  "Right" for him
>> means his system talks to him at boot, in both speakup and Orca and
>> probably a few other apps.
>
> He's not blind as far as I know, but one think he definitely doesn't
> like is change or changes to things that used to work in his sphere of
> interest. In this case I he was talking about doing things "right" but
> what he actually wanted was to do things the way it has been done in the
> past to the exclusion of all other things. I was merely making the
> observation that just because something worked in one way at one point
> in time that it does not make it inherently "right". I did not deal with
> the opposite case.... (e.g. just because something is different it's not
> automatically wrong - of course it *could* be wrong, but it's not implied).
>
>> "Wrong" is when the sound system stops speakup or Orca from talking.
>
> Yes I agree in principle - the system should have the necessary
> infrastructure in place to make this all work, but that's not to say
> that keeping things modeled on the old behaviour is "right".
>
>
>> It's the ultimate show-stopper bug for
>> the blind.  Losing sound for a blind person is about as scary as a
>> hard-disk crash - maybe worse!  A blind person often has to track down
>> a sighted person with the skills to repair his software in person.
>> This can be a lot harder than installing a new hard drive and OS.
>
> Yes, I appreciate this and certainly do not disagree.
>
>> I want to help constructively.  I want to track down the problem and
>> suggest a patch.  Any guidance as to the approach to take would be
>> very welcome - I really don't know the PulseAudio system well enough
>> to determine the best approach.  Eventually, I'll just pick one and do
>> it, but it's worth begging for advice if I can get it!
>
> Indeed and having these discussions and getting input from people here
> is certainly the right start to this approach. I can tell from your
> messages and general approach that you are very open to suggestions.
>
> It's sad that the current state of affairs is one in which certain
> subsystems are not working too well, but it's one of the natural parts
> of FOSS development. Even if before PA had landed in distros we have
> reached out to every corner of development and said "there is a change
> coming, please be ready", we'd still be in the same position as we are
> now. Developers always need a stick rather than a carrot when dealing
> with separate parts of a shared infrastructure. It's the reason KDE 4
> was released when it was - there was massive outcry by users saying "it
> isn't ready" etc regardless of numerous warnings from developers that
> 4.0 was more of a developer release designed to encourage various app
> developers to step up their porting efforts (i.e. the stick rather than
> the carrot). Other software projects have had the same issue too, and
> while it's not ideal, the disparate nature of FOSS work means that the
> coordination is generally not possible to get things all nicely working
> before adoption - the audience is simply not big enough. So sometimes
> things suck, but then they get better. Hopefully you're one of the
> people who will help this particular sucky thing get better :)
>
> Take care
>
> 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/]
>
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