On Wednesday 15 October 2003 11:51, Paul Davis wrote: > >How about docs for the mixer interfaces? or a simple HOWTO. > > the mixer interface is a problem. OSS glosses over this by hiding 90% > of the capabilities of most hardware mixers and stuffing it into an > incredibly simplified model that then prevents users from doing things > that they can do under Windows. ALSA messes it up by exporting 90% of > the capabilities of most hardware mixers into user space and leaving > the complexity for someone else to deal with :)
well, it might be nice if at least some kind of mixer docs, or mixer HOWTO existed, even if things will change in the API... > takashi and jaroslav are working on the issues. i think their approach > is correct (export the hardware capabilities, wrap them in alsa-lib to > provide a simple interface for most apps and users) but it requires > significant amounts of coding and won't emerge in a few days. > > >Alsa/Jack is wonderful, and greatly more flexible than OSS, and is what > > linux needs to move to more professional recording software, but it does > > take more lines of code than OSS to do simple things. With OSS, I can > > have the device opened and playing audio in about 5 lines of code. > > assuming that your requirements are met by OSS's incredibly simplistic > model of an audio device driver. need to control xrun detection? want > to avoid starting the device until you've got enough data ready? want > to use non-interleaved access? want to use a sample rate or sample > format not supported by OSS? well, it won't take 5 lines, or 50 lines > or 500 lines of code: you simply can't do any of this in OSS. For very small, simple players, yes, OSS does satisfy the requirements. (think embedded devices, with simple user requirements - 44100, 16bit, 2 ch.). Oss's simplicity is both a boon and it's downfall.