Tried Pulse Audio Again--No Good For A11y

[Janina Sajka]

I've been meaning to comment on your multi-seat setup ...

Nils Philippsen writes:
> On Tue, 2008-09-16 at 17:28 -0400, Janina Sajka wrote:
> > Matthias Clasen writes:
> > > On Tue, 2008-09-16 at 14:34 -0400, Janina Sajka wrote:
> [...]
> > > 
> > > > 5.)	While I paplay, I try to go Ctrl-Alt-F1. While I'm not prevented
> > > > from doing so, paplay believes it should pause playing while I'm away
> > > > from the gui tty. Now, who's the genius that figured out this "feature?"
> > > 
> > > Insults won't help your cause. 
> > Well, my apologies if this offends you. Is it supposed to work that way,
> > though? Is there actually a use case for that behavior? Or is this just
> > some incidental artifact?
> 
> There is a use case for this, namely if you have several "seats" with
> different logged in users: in this case one probably only wants the
> sounds of the "active session" being played and others muted. Just in
> case you ask, we're using that setup at home, my wife and I are logged
> in all the time an switch between users via the applet or
> <Ctrl><Alt>F7/F9.
> 
I don't believe it necessarily follows that technology should enforce
who does, and who does not have audio in this circumstance.

Consider an office environment--perhaps it's similar to what you and
your wife have. There are several desks with chairs. Perhaps these are
in an open room. Perhaps there are dividers between the desks to provide
a small measure of privacy.

Each desk in this scenario is undoubtedly equipped with a telephone. No
one would think that the occupant of Desk B should be denied telephone
calls just because the occupant of Desk A is on the phone. Technology is
not required to enforce appropriate social behavior in this
circumstance. The humans who work in this environment have learned
appropriate behaviors in the past century.

Why is the computer desktop so different? What compells us to require
that technology enforce no audio for B while A is provided audio?
Perhaps the users want to listen to voice mail attachments received via
email. Even four or five feet separation is sufficient to do so. We
don't need technology to do for us such things as we humans clearly know
how to negotiate for ourselves.

Indeed, it seems to me precluding multiseat audio is one way of saying
that Fedora does not support telephone answering environments--airline
reservations, bank customer support, etc., etc.

What am I missing here?

Janina