> On Mon, 2005-07-04 at 02:32 +0200, Kjetil Svalastog Matheussen wrote: >> Lee Revell: >> >> It was in response to problems such as these that I began work on a >> >> half-kernel, half-userspace system for emulating OSS devices. It's >> been >> >> a while since I've done anything with it but if there's any interest >> in >> >> such a system I could put my code (such as it is) up for download. >> > >> > No!!! That's exactly the wrong approach, it will only encourage >> > applications to use the OSS API. Do you really still want to be using >> > the same ancient binary-only flashplayer/realplayer plugin for 5 more >> > years? >> > >> > Why don't you ask the Skype developers when they plan to support ALSA? >> > Or figure out why it crashes with aoss? >> > >> >> I strongly disagree with you about this. Ross approach sounds like whats >> needed. The OSS API is easier to understand and leads to less bugs and >> less programming time. For programs like SKYPE, mediaplayers and other >> types of non-realtime-sound applications, I really think programmers >> should go for OSS instead of accessing ALSA directly. >> And, as mentioned before, ALSA is linux only (except for alsa 0.5 which >> was partly used in older versions QNX I think). >> > > It's just as easy to read() and write() with ALSA as OSS. And if you > were designing a cross platform audio app now, OSS would also be a poor > choice, you would use PortAudio. >
Okey, sorry, I don't know that much about ALSA. But I think it would be wrong to remove the OSS API anyway. Many old programs that only use OSS will probably not be updated to use a different API, so removing it will irriate people a lot. And I don't think your argument about removing the OSS api to avoid encouraging is valid at all. If there is a nice bridge for OSS that calls alsa/dmix or jack or something, I don't see anything wrong about (certain) programs (like SKYPE, mediaplayers...) using OSS.
