On Fri, 17.04.09 19:22, Callum Lerwick (seg(a)haxxed.com) wrote:
On Wed, 2009-04-15 at 18:26 +0200, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> Lennart Poettering wrote:
> > JACK should not be used by anything by default, with the exception of
> > audio production software.
>
> The problem there is: where does "desktop software" stop and "audio
> production software" start? For example, Audacity (which thankfully
> supports PulseAudio these days, and BTW it also supports JACK) is used by
> many users who are not audio professionals, yet it is arguably also "audio
> production software" (though I guess real professionals will find it too
> newbieish ;-) ). It's set up for PulseAudio by default (and before that it
> was trying to use OSS by default - yuck!). A tool like qsynth is also an
> interesting example: that's a frontend for a MIDI software synthesizer. It
> can be used to just play MIDIs or it can be used for audio production.
> Right now its Fedora package is set up for JACK by default, though it can
> be set to use ALSA (and then works just fine with the PulseAudio ALSA
> plugin). What should those tools do? Try to autodetect what server is
> running? As long as we have mutually exclusive sound servers, there will
> probably always be tools which do the wrong thing by default. :-(
If the user hasn't set a preference, such as on the first run, use Jack
if it's running, otherwise fall back on Pulse, otherwise fall back on
ALSA. Easy. There should be a simple obvious UI (Not hidden in the !@#
$ing preferences) that clearly indicates the current output and allows
you to dynamically change the output if it chooses wrong, with a sticky
preference for the next time.
It's not that easy. There's autospawning of both PA and Jack. Hence
checking 'if it is running' doesn't really work.
Lennart
--
Lennart Poettering Red Hat, Inc.
lennart [at] poettering [dot] net ICQ# 11060553
http://0pointer.net/lennart/ GnuPG 0x1A015CC4