Hi Iain, On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 4:00 AM, Iain <i...@gnome.org> wrote: > Some thoughts on sounds. > > People don't use sound effects on the desktop.
That is a nice way to start. Why don't you mute sound effects then? and why do you even asked for "one" sound later. Why do you even bother write a long mail about sounds? > One of the first things many people do is turn them off. > The only device I know where people don't turn them off is the iPod. > > We have a sound naming spec[1], yet no-one seems to care to design > sound schemes for them [2] > Because it's hard. Making a collection of sounds that are pleasant and kind of neutral (freedesktop) is hard. I don't know what sound synthesizer or application, or sound set can help you to achieve this goal. > I think the reason for this is twofold: > a) The sound naming spec specifies too many arbitrary sounds > b) The sound naming spec defines so many sounds that it is nearly > impossible to a sound designer to create meaningful sounds that > differentiate between the actions > > The sound naming spec defines 125 sounds. > That is 125 sounds for the user to learn the meaning of. > Because the sounds defined are incredibly arbitrary the sounds run the > risk of having their meaning overloaded. > For example, > We have complete-media-rip, complete-copy, complete-scan, but no > complete-print, no complete-fax. What sounds should be used for those? > Each time the sound is overloaded, it is a new meaning for the user to learn. > > With sounds like window-new, window-move-start, window-move-end, > window-minimized, window-unminimized will the computer ever be silent? > No wonder people turn the sounds off if they're going to make it sound > like there's a hyperactive child in the room screaming for attention > constantly. > [...] >From the naming spec: 'The dash "-" character is used to separate levels of specificity in sound names. For instance, we use "search-results" as the generic item for all search results, and we use "search-results-empty" for an empty search result. However, if the more specific item does not exist in the current theme, and does exist in a parent theme, the generic sound from the current theme is preferred, in order to keep consistent style. From left to right the words in a sound name become more specific. In some cases what word in a name is more specific is ambiguous. (i.e. "dialog-error" and "error-dialog" both make sense, the former would ease defining the same sound for all dialogs popping up, regardless of its context, the latter would ease defining the same sound for all errors, regardless of how it is presented to the user). In such cases it is generally preferred to put the UI element noun left -- if there is one --, however exceptions of this rule are acceptable. " So all the complete-* can be replaced by one "complete" sound. And all the sound can link to the same sound, if what you want is a single sound (although I would never do that) > > A sound effect needs to be a subtle sound. We all agree. [...] > The sound theme spec[3] defines four[see footnote 4] categories; > Alert, Notification, Support and Game. > I think these 125 sounds spread over the 4 categories can be reduced > to a single sound [5]. > How to combine all the 125 sounds defined in the naming spec into one > single sound? > > Firstly the Game category can go. Its not really sounds for games > anyway, its sounds for card games. > Games are a special case and whatever sounds the game requires should > be provided by them. > > Secondly, throughout the other 3 categories, the sounds are either > a) Very application specific (i.a. the camera sounds, the phone sounds) > b) State the obvious (i.a. lid-close and lid-open. I know I've closed > the lid, I don't need to be told about it[7]) > c) Mean that "something has happened that you did not specificially > ask to happen, and may require your attention" > > Category a, the sounds can be provided by the application as they are > ear candy. Not necessarily essential, but make the program nicer or > cuter to use. > Or in the case of the audio-channel test sounds are essential to the > running of the program, but are far too rarely used to be worthy of > making them themable. Right, but you still want a way to define the format, the location and the localization. We could ask Lennart why it's here, he added them here, and I could not find objections. It does not hurt to grow the sound naming list. What is annoying is the way application use them, or how the sounds sound. regards, -- Marc-André Lureau _______________________________________________ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
