The new Sound applet

Adam Williamson awilliam at redhat.com
Tue Aug 4 07:25:49 UTC 2009


On Mon, 2009-08-03 at 12:56 -0600, Michal Jaegermann wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 03, 2009 at 11:44:48AM -0400, Gerald Henriksen wrote:
> > On Sun, 02 Aug 2009 22:27:36 -0700, you wrote:
> > 
> > >At first impression, I like the new preferences>sound
> > >control.  Unfortunately it still can't select the CD audio
> > >input on an ALC889A codec.   This is on a Gigabyte ga-ep45-ud3p
> > >motherboard and Core Duo 8500.
> > 
> > See the "New Mixer Handling in PA 0.9.16/F12" thread on fedora-devel
> > list for why the CD audio input is deliberately not available.
> 
> I bothered to read through all this.  As far as I can understand
> what is is said there if your audio setup falls within rather narrow
> confines of what Lennart Poettering thinks that it should look like
> then there are chances that it will work (although it may eat
> excessive amounts of CPU in the process).  

You are being excessively unfair and conflating entirely separate issues
there. Any case where 'excessive amounts of CPU' are used is either a
bug or the fact that PA plays it safe when it comes to resampling
strategies. The other issues are areas where it is vital to present an
interface that's simplified in _some_ way in order to have some
semblance of usability, and Lennart has explained at length why some
options exposed by current designs for mixer GUIs are obsolete for the
vast majority of users, and should not be exposed by the stock GUIs,
being reserved instead for advanced applications for the use of the
small minority who actually need them.

> Otherwise you are SOL and
> you will see NOTABUG or WONTFIX if you will attempt to file any bug
> reports.  Dissenting opinions are not and will be not tolerated and
> are mostly dismissed with "ad hominem" attacks.

This is, again, putting the most negative possible construction on
things. Any application maintainer will close a bug report requesting a
feature or design change that he does not consider to be right for the
application as NOTABUG or WONTFIX. These are the correct and appropriate
resolutions for such a case. Ad hominem attacks were not in short supply
from either side during that little flame war, and by implying they were
only being used on one side you entirely distort the matter.

> Also if you happen not to be on the "right" mailing list or do not
> have NOW a suitable hardware/software setup where you can test
> development PA then (from a message by LP opening "New Mixer
> Handling..." thread)
> <quote>
> If you don't raise your voice now that some output port is not
> properly detected or audio is too faint then later on you won't have
> any right to complain.
> </quote>
> 
> Nice!  Expect "an audio lottery" in the future.

This is more borne out of frustration at the fact that people frequently
complain about changes far too late for changes easily to be made. I
agree it could have been better phrased, but the intention is not as
exclusionary as it may perhaps seem. The point is that it becomes a lot
harder to change things in Fedora 12 once, say, we're past beta freeze,
or - even more so - once the release is done. The changes in F12 that
allow input selection in g-v-c are already too complex to backport to
F11 updates, for instance.

-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net




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