GStreamer, GEP,thin libs and MAS

[Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller <Uraeus linuxrising org>]

Hi everyone,
Ok, lots of topics I feel need reponses.

First of all there has been a lot of talk about wether we should use
gst-player or monkey-media here. I think there is a couple of things we
need to be clear about and that is that our major concern should be to
make sure that things interoperates smoothly for our users. As long as
we keep sharing the same GConf keys I think we will succeed at that, no
matter if the applications use monkey-media, gst-player or access
GStreamer directly.

Also I want to you remember that what the vast majority of GNOME apps
would want from a simple API is just something to call to play simple
alarm sounds etc., in their apps. The number of applications that will
need more than that is relatively few at least compared to the other
group.

Me and Thomasvs is currently working on a revised GEP, while I don't
want to go into details as there are issues we need to get sorted out
first, the gist of it is that we will try and propose a subset of the
GStreamer API for inclusion in the GNOME development platform. Part of
this subset might very well take the form of monkey-media or gst-player.


One reason I am not to thrilled about the proposal to put GStreamer 'in
the desktop' is that I want a solution where we can easily migrate the
GNOME desktop away from ESD to a more permanent solution. Atm the most
likely candidate is the MAS mediaserver
(http://www.mediaapplicationserver.net). Getting GStreamer in as the
underlying glue for 2.2 would let both our end users and system
integrators like Sun, Mandrake and Red Hat switch to MAS at their own
discretion and would prepare the way for a official migration at GNOME
2.4 or even earlier. Of course that do depend on MAS getting some
releases out soon, but since we now have Mike Andrews of Shiman Inc. on
the list I am hoping he can help enlighten us on when they plan on doing
their first beta release. There is code available from MAS CVS today,
but I am not sure how up to date it is. 

Btw, for people on this list interested in coding on a soundserver I
would suggest taking a look at MAS. 

While I do think that MAS is probably the best option for an allround
GNOME soundserver, getting GStreamer in will also enable users with
special demands, for instance professional audio to use other
alternatives that fit their profile better, like the JACK audio server.

Or for the few people :) still running KDE, but who have GNOME
applications installed they can use the artsd soundserver even with
their GNOME apps.

Christian