Colin: >> Is this a reasonable way to solve the libcanberra backend problem >> (at least for now) on Solaris? Or do people think it is really >> necessary to write code that links with the GStreamer or Sun Audio >> interfaces directly? > > While I'm no expert, I'd say that "shelling out" is generally "a bad > thing"(tm) but it's possibly good enough for now seeing as the Solaris > audio backend will be rewritten over time.
I think we will likely use this plugin until we can provide something nicer. I understand there is a better GStreamer based plugin that we could build from, so we might migrate to this. Since it seems likely that Solaris will eventually migrate to using OSS, and since the OSS libcanberra plugin is under development, I think it is likely that Solaris will migrate to that in the long term. > I think the long term approach for libcanberra on Solaris should be the > same as on other platforms and that is to get Pulseaudio running and use > that as the backend. PA backend will support many more features than a > pure audio hardware backend such as positional sounds (e.g. clicking > near the left of the screen will produce a sound that comes more out the > left speakers etc.) and for sample caches for a more responsive setup. I am still unclear whether PulseAudio provides any real value on Solaris, or any distro that would be using OSSv4-based audio interfaces. The ability to provide positional sounds since like an exciting feature that warrants deeper consideration. Does this positional sounds feature work with the current libcanberra/PulseAudio code, or are you just explaining an idea? This probably isn't the right forum to discuss PulseAudio, but we could discuss further on desktop-discuss at opensolaris.org if there is an interest. > That would be my take/guess at what should be the best approach. Thanks, Brian
