[KDE] Which Phonon? Phonon backend - GStreamer or Xine?

Jaroslav Reznik jreznik at redhat.com
Wed Sep 30 08:15:53 UTC 2009


On Wednesday 30 September 2009 00:11:21 Lennart Poettering wrote:
> On Tue, 29.09.09 22:46, Kevin Kofler (kevin.kofler at chello.at) wrote:
> > Lennart Poettering wrote:
> > > Uh. Nokia stands pretty firmly behind gst. As do most embedded folks.
> >
> > Behind GStreamer, sure. Behind Phonon (and thus also Phonon-GStreamer),
> > not so much. They're currently using it, but there are people working on
> > the Qt Mobility project talking about replacing Phonon with something
> > else (another abstraction layer, again around native backends (GStreamer
> > in the GNU/Linux case), I really don't see what the advantage would be
> > over Phonon).
> 
> Haha. So the major 'advantage' of Phonon that it would allow replacing
> the backends as time progresses without breaking the KDE apps using
> them now officially is proven to be bogus. The KDE/Qt folks were so
> afraid of a media engine breaking API so that they created their
> abstraction thing and now break API of that one more often then the
> media engines themselves do.

The problem is not with abstraction layer - you don't have other option than 
some layers if you want to write multiplatform application. It's just one 
level lower - not in application but in library. That means - all Qt/KDE 
applications can use multimedia without writing lot of code, buggy, not 
maintainable etc.

So where's the problem? There are two Phonons - one in Qt, one in KDE. I don't 
like this schizophrenia. This should be solved but now we have to live with 
one or another - that's why we brought this issue to the world.

But I'm happy you have joined this discussion as PA developer. How do you see 
PA support in GStreamer and Xine? Functionality, features, support - regarding 
to Fedora development as this could influence our final decision.

Another interesting thing is PA & Phonon integration work by Colin Guthrie 
(see the link in my first message). Phonon just as wrapper/thin client for PA 
with nicer Qt like API. I like this idea. 

> Do I hear an "I told you so!"?
> 
> Abstractionitis is an illness, not a remedy.
> 
> Lennart
> 

Jaroslav
-- 
Jaroslav Řezník <jreznik at redhat.com>
Associate Software Engineer - Base Operating Systems Brno

Office: +420 532 294 275
Mobile: +420 731 455 332
Red Hat, Inc.                               http://cz.redhat.com/




More information about the fedora-devel-list mailing list