Re: GNOME Sound Server, was Re: GNOME sounds - which component

[Colin Davis <cdavis thepentagon com>]

  Would it not be possible to create a new sound server, but use the
Esound API, thus a wrapper is not needed, and people will coninue to
write to Esound, instead of having to choose.
  If this is not done, I fear people will just continue writing to
Esound, as that will work with this proposed server, and maintain
compatibility with Esound. 

Again, you said that the Esound code is poor. Is there anything that is
so terrible wrong it cannot be overlooked about it's API?

"Mark R. Bowyer" wrote:
> 
> >From: sopwith@redhat.com (Elliot Lee)
> >On 23 Jul 1999 05:26:24 -0400, Mark R. Bowyer <Moredhel@earthling.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> :
> >>There's a *lot* of code about that already supports ESound.  You want all
> >>those projects to recode?
> >
> >They will be given the option of not doing so. We will support the esound
> >API with a wrapper.
> 
> A wrapper would certainly help a lot =O)
> 
> >>What's so bad about version 0.28 of Esound that can't be fixed by version 1.0?
> >>If you want to code, why can't you just submit patches?
> >
> >I and various other GNOME hackers been maintaining esound, since the
> >"maintainer" last was seen committing on February 20, 1999 and is now
> >totally unreachable.
> 
> This I wasn't aware of, though I'd been following the ChangeLog and had noticed
> very little activity.  I paid particular attention as I was waiting for the
> -Endian problems to be fixed again, as I use all this on Solaris/SPARC, too.
> 
> >I agree with your sentiment of reusing existing functionality, but in this
> >case the sentiment is misguided. I daresay you haven't actually looked at
> >the libesd API or the esound code...
> 
> I have actually, in trying to figure out the aforementioned -endian problems
> that made it fail consistently on SPARC with 16-bit WAVs (as used by Gnome and
> Enlightenment, unfortunately).  The fact that I could make neither head nor tail
> of the code sufficiently to fix it myself I suppose I should have taken as a
> sign ;O)
> 
> >Hope this explains it,
> 
> Does indeed.  The inclusion of a wrapper, and the building of a good API with
> complete inter-host sound and streaming is much needed.  Please make sure you
> keep to one of the main plus-points of esound though - keep it completely
> compatible with other Unixen too?  This sort of functionality is needed on
> Solaris and it's ilk too, and it would be a shame to have them all end up
> incompatible, when X has done so much to keep them all together =OZ  Maybe take
> a look at the Java Sound APIs while you work on this? ;O)