On Mon, 10 Jun 2002 09:52:10 +0100 Richard Bown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Juan Linietsky wrote: > > [developers choosing JACK over ALSA audio] > > > Not to be pessimistic, but I think such thing is not going to > > happen. Also I find the whole idea redundant. If JACK is easier > > and faster to integrate then it should replace the ALSA api on > > that matter. Developers, and specialy new ones, will allways > > support the official api FIRST. > > *cough* > > Not lazy ones. No, allow me to explain better why I think supporting JACK is pointless and why I wouldnt do it. I'll give you all the reasons I can think of. 1-It's not a standard. ALSA/OSS are. If i want to write a driver, i will do for those. 2-If i need low latency, i'm perfect with SCHED_FIFO and low fragmentsize in eithe alsa/oss. 3-Device sharing is pointless for me if most other programs dont support JACK. 4-There's not really any useful reason I can think for my app sharing data with JACK apps, and i'm not going to write eveything jack-oriented for an API that's not really popular. 5-As I described in my previus mail, Most apps that i'd find cool that would support jack, just dont do. 6-If dozens of users mail me per month with problems compiling Cheesetracker because of misconfigured GTK installs, think of the hell it would be if they had to compile jack. 7-I cant use other apps transparently with JACK to alter their sound and re-route it. 8-I dislike the design, I really do. I think the functionality of audio routing must be withing alsa-lib. This makes things harder and more confusing for end users. Esound and arts are confusing enough, and adding an extra layer is worse. For these reasons, I will not support or use JACK until something like it becomes part of alsa. Why? because I think jack is a mere hack to go around alsa/linux limitations instead of contributing to them or improving them. Sorry about my "rant" on JACK, I am not a driver/alsa programmer, I am an application programmer and I want to make things easy for users and for myself. Juan Linietsky.
