Calum:
I wanted to discuss the spec for the "Sound & Video" section. As you
highlight, this section is bewildering in its duplicated choices.
Here's my perspective on what we should be doing and details about
the programs.
1) We probably don't need to include Java Media Player in the menu
anymore. I believe that realplay does everything that JMP can
do and more.
2) We probably do not want to ship vu-meter at all. Note that this
volume meter only works with esd, and aside from desktop sounds
all GNOME media programs use gstreamer talking directly to the
sunaudio device rather than esd. So this vumeter isn't really
very useful.
3) I think Real Media allows users to play CD's. Therefore, we
probably don't want gnome-cd in the menu. It isn't a very
good CD player anyway. If we ever get sound-juicer working
(we first need to get libparanoia working on Solaris), then
we could include sound-juicer since it is a good CD ripping
tool (something Real does not do). So sound-juicer is probably
OK listed as TBD.
4) It's annoying that we include Audio Control and "Volume Control".
We probably need to evaluate these two from a functionality
and accessibility perspective and figure out which one to
ship. sdtaudiocontrol uses Java and gnome-volume-control uses
GTK+ so they both should be accessible.
5) We probably do want to include totem just because some users
may want to download Fluendo DVD, MPEG4, WindowsMedia, etc.
plugins and this tool therefore will allow people to play
some media types unsupported by Real.
6) We may want to consider including Jamboree. It is a program
that lets you manage playlists of audiofiles, much like
iTunes does. Jamboree does not interact with the CD player,
but for usrs who have a hard drive full of sound files,
Jamboree makes it possible to jukebox your audio. I added
Jamboree to the extra-specs so you can build it and see how
it works. Let me know if you think this should be added.
One hassle is that Jamboree uses the gdmb (GNU Database)
interfaces and we'll probably have to hack Jamboree to use
Berkely DB instead if we want to ship this. That shouldn't
be too much work, though.
7) We should not ship gnome-sound-recorder unless we get around
to writing a GStreamer 0.10 SunAudio record plugin. There
currently is no record plugin for Solaris, so you can't
record anyway. We can add this back (since it is the only
program that allows you to record audio) if we do this.
So I propose this menu should just have:
Either Audio Control or Volume Control
CD Database
Real Player 10
Sound Juicer (TBD)
Jamboree (TBD)
Totem Movie Player
Hope this helps...
Brian
