Jeff Waugh wrote:
<quote who="Phil Scarratt">
If only there was a reliable patch that could be implemented temporarily.
Two comments - huge integration tasks like "fixing the FLOSS audio and media
subsystems" are not fixed with patches... and temporary fixes are often the
most permanent (cf. esd).
Two very good points. I guess I wasn't thinking that broadly. The only
problem I was thinking about was device order, everything else works
well enough to wait for "bigger-better-brighter" subsystems. But then
again, there's not that many people around the world who have 2 or more
sound cards and need the order swapped - enough to make it a problem,
but not a major one by a long shot.
<SNIP>
I'm hoping that polypaudio can solve most of the driver-to-user problems we
have right now. It's an esd-compatible sound server, but written to be very
dynamically configurable. For instance, you could simple tell polypaudio to
drive the other sound device, and the daemon would switch devices with no
interruption to the sound. Yes, it means that apps would have to use polyp,
but Lennart (polyp's maintainer) has been quite clever about dealing with
'legacy' applications and APIs. The polyp daemon implements the esd protocol
(such that apps build against libesd will talk to polyp), and there are
wrappers for apps that use oss directly. Then there are controllers within
polypaudio for all kinds of things - for instance, when your VoIP app rings,
it can turn down the volume of your music player. Lots of opportunities for
smart 'just works' features. :-)
Hmmm...sounds very good. Exactly what Ubuntu needs in my somewhat audio
biassed opinion. Looking forward to it, hopefully it delivers as promised.
Fil
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