Re: System event sounds / audio feedback
On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:57:10 +, Bastien Nocera wrote: Rodney was working on such a spec. But I'll give you £50 if you manage to create/gather up a sound theme of quality matching the current gnome-audio sounds, and that's actually shippable without copyright problems by distributions. Somebody has just posted a new set of sounds to the ubuntu list that sound quite good quality. He seems keen to get these distributed and even create more sounds, so any lack of license should be easy to fix: http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ubuntu.devel.desktop/1239 ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: System event sounds / audio feedback
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Mark Howard wrote: On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:57:10 +, Bastien Nocera wrote: Rodney was working on such a spec. But I'll give you £50 if you manage to create/gather up a sound theme of quality matching the current gnome-audio sounds, and that's actually shippable without copyright problems by distributions. Somebody has just posted a new set of sounds to the ubuntu list that sound quite good quality. He seems keen to get these distributed and even create more sounds, so any lack of license should be easy to fix: http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ubuntu.devel.desktop/1239 These are great! Definitely good quality. I'm using them. Thanks for the link. :) Looks like there's more than a handful of these sound themes already. I'll argue we already have an informal standard: the directory layout and file names are all the same. It just needs to be expanded. Regards, - -- Stéphan -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHTZuycFUq0gzqDwQRAmKoAJ0cEok+EpJEgtbhikG0Pehfh4H21QCeN8QN w4LukCHfExPyiD4Zlf6/a10= =pJqJ -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: System event sounds / audio feedback
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Lennart Poettering wrote: This is more or less what I plan to do with libcanberra (which is still vaporware right now, though). As described in huge email about PA which I wrote on d-d-l: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2007-October/msg00136.html (Look for the part So, where do we go from here?) Ah, I followed that thread. I guess it didn't stick. Thanks. :) With the libcanberra API you propose, I think it should be possible to expand on the types of arguments the function takes without breaking ABI, right? So a very simple libcanberra could already be implemented before all the theming and localization details have been worked out. The PulseAudio API isn't hard, but hiding even that behind a single function would help introduce sounds to other desktop applications. One thing I strongly disagree with is having a human voice for certain event sounds. I personally really like the dings, blings, pops, etc. I realize it might be useful for accessibility, but I wouldn't want any of it myself. :) The problem with themeing and adding more sound events is that there are no better sounds available then what we have right now. I have never seen any free samples that are even remotely as useful as the current gnome-audio samples, and I am not even speaking of the quality the the MacOSX sounds have. And quite frankly, the gnome-audio samples are still annoying. They're hard to find. But it looks like there are already several mentioned in this thread. :) I don't find the gnome-audio samples annoying, personally. Adjusting the volume or the devices event sounds are played on is currently not possible in PA without making your hands dirty by editing configuration files. In one of the next versions I will add a flexible meta information and matching system to PA, which will allow writing volume controls that allow you to change volumes of certain subsets of audio streams at a whole. I.e. think of the current pavucontrol but with an extra track for Event Sounds. (Similar to what Vista does) Perfect. :) Thanks, - -- Stéphan -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHTZ92cFUq0gzqDwQRAsGNAJ9LswztmvET0YbajCcFx4PufbE5awCg4Y4P 4e2ZI4GJdmsNwxw0EHAlJvc= =o2iW -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: System event sounds / audio feedback
Le lundi 26 novembre 2007 à 09:10 -0500, Matthias Clasen a écrit : On Nov 25, 2007 6:54 PM, Lennart Poettering [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, 22.11.07 18:18, Stéphan Kochen ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: That's because we never had a whole slew of potential replacements. The current gnome-audio sounds suck (no offense to the original author), they sound dated, and badly finished. Compare this to the MacOS (even prior to OSX) or SGI sounds. True, there are not many. I know only of gnome-audio, Fedora's, Ubuntu's and less than a handful at gnome-look. I'm hoping PulseAudio will spur some creativity, or this is a chicken-egg problem. :) Hmm. I never hear or heard of the Ubuntu sounds. Are they any better than what we have now in gnome-audio? And are they licensed under a free license? If so, they should be merged into upstream gnome-audio, and at least be stolen for Fedora. Lennart, look here: http://packages.ubuntu.com/hardy/gnome/ubuntu-sounds May I also suggest Ia Ora sounds which were designed by our of our fellow Mandriva hackers, Helio Chissini de Castro http://svn.mandriva.com/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/soft/desktop-common-data/trunk/sounds/ Those are named ia_ora-* They are under CC BY-SA 2.5 license but this could be changed if needed. -- Frederic Crozat [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mandriva ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: System event sounds / audio feedback
On Wed, 21.11.07 20:47, Stéphan Kochen ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: 1) A replacement for the libgnome could be a GTK+ module, that simply hooks signals and plays sounds. Sounds are preloaded by settings-daemon; no difference from the current situation there. The GTK+ module can use PulseAudio's GLib mainloop integration. Playing sounds from the sample cache is asynchronous. This is more or less what I plan to do with libcanberra (which is still vaporware right now, though). As described in huge email about PA which I wrote on d-d-l: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2007-October/msg00136.html (Look for the part So, where do we go from here?) 2) More events becomes a problem when thinking beyond just the fixed set for a GUI toolkit; about feedback from application specific functions. Opening a folder and browsing to a page are good examples of this. A possible solution would be to dedicate a GConf directory for sound events. Control-center iterates directory entries to find configurable sounds and their descriptions. (Short description in the listview, long in the tooltip for example.) Applications namespace their event names to avoid conflicts. 3) Theming is a matter of defining a format and implementing the configuration for it. This could be a dead simple archive containing wave or Ogg Vorbis files named after the GConf event names they play for. The problem with themeing and adding more sound events is that there are no better sounds available then what we have right now. I have never seen any free samples that are even remotely as useful as the current gnome-audio samples, and I am not even speaking of the quality the the MacOSX sounds have. And quite frankly, the gnome-audio samples are still annoying. So, making this stuff themeable, and adding a wealth of additional event sources, is kind of pointless if we don't have any good event sounds to actually play. The Bango project (http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Bango) tried to come up with a themeing spec and better sounds. But AFAIK it never yielded any useful results. With libcanberra I will make it easier to add sound event hooks to applications. However, if someone really wants to see the sound theming happen, then he probably should start with coming up with better event sounds, first. I mean, we have been shipping these audio samples for 10 years or so now -- and AFAIK noone ever contributed any new sounds. 4) This is slightly tricky. A volume can be specified when playing the sample. Along the lines of the previous solutions, this means the GTK+ module needs to access the configuration somehow to get the volume. I'm not sure if a GConf dependency in a generic GTK+ module is a good idea. PulseAudio also stores a default volume for samples in the cache, but there's nothing in the documentation on how to set this. Perhaps this is some extra work that needs to be done on the PulseAudio side. Adjusting the volume or the devices event sounds are played on is currently not possible in PA without making your hands dirty by editing configuration files. In one of the next versions I will add a flexible meta information and matching system to PA, which will allow writing volume controls that allow you to change volumes of certain subsets of audio streams at a whole. I.e. think of the current pavucontrol but with an extra track for Event Sounds. (Similar to what Vista does) Lennart -- Lennart PoetteringRed Hat, Inc. lennart [at] poettering [dot] net ICQ# 11060553 http://0pointer.net/lennart/ GnuPG 0x1A015CC4 ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: System event sounds / audio feedback
On Thu, 22.11.07 18:18, Stéphan Kochen ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: That's because we never had a whole slew of potential replacements. The current gnome-audio sounds suck (no offense to the original author), they sound dated, and badly finished. Compare this to the MacOS (even prior to OSX) or SGI sounds. True, there are not many. I know only of gnome-audio, Fedora's, Ubuntu's and less than a handful at gnome-look. I'm hoping PulseAudio will spur some creativity, or this is a chicken-egg problem. :) Hmm. I never hear or heard of the Ubuntu sounds. Are they any better than what we have now in gnome-audio? And are they licensed under a free license? If so, they should be merged into upstream gnome-audio, and at least be stolen for Fedora. Lennart -- Lennart PoetteringRed Hat, Inc. lennart [at] poettering [dot] net ICQ# 11060553 http://0pointer.net/lennart/ GnuPG 0x1A015CC4 ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: System event sounds / audio feedback
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Bastien Nocera wrote: See also: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=368304 Thanks! That's a great pointer. :) This needs application support, and widget support. I think you're going overboard with your examples though. I think you should file bugs against specific applications that you'd want to support specific sounds. Implementing those with the gnome_sound_ API (or the esd API) would be alright as a stop-gap. The examples were simply things that _should_ be possible, IMHO. Naturally, they will require application support. Using the gnome_sound_ or ESounD API really doesn't sound like a good idea. The audio feedback features in general are not that urgent; the impression I have is that most people discussing it have it on their nice to have-list (including me). So pushing a quick stop-gap solution is not necessary. That's because we never had a whole slew of potential replacements. The current gnome-audio sounds suck (no offense to the original author), they sound dated, and badly finished. Compare this to the MacOS (even prior to OSX) or SGI sounds. True, there are not many. I know only of gnome-audio, Fedora's, Ubuntu's and less than a handful at gnome-look. I'm hoping PulseAudio will spur some creativity, or this is a chicken-egg problem. :) Ubuntu's package also conflicts with gnome-audio, so it's already impossible to install them both simultaneously through apt. You can if you use PulseAudio. It's just only accessible with pavucontrol, not gnome-volume-control. Of course, but there should really be a volume slider in the sound preferences. 1) A replacement for the libgnome could be a GTK+ module, that simply hooks signals and plays sounds. Sounds are preloaded by settings-daemon; no difference from the current situation there. That's some great info from that bug. But how much sound handling should belong in GTK+? My concern was about introducing a sound library dependency in GTK+ itself. I'm also not familiar enough with GTK+ internals and philosophy to write up a proposal right now. This sounds like overkill to me, compared to other system sound APIs available. Which other APIs? Looking at the link provided in the bug about Mac OS X's API, it seems just as limiting as GNOME is now. Windows, on the other hand, allows applications to register new events for it's sound preferences UI and theming. Storing these in GConf seems like a great way to get descriptive labels in the preferences UI and on-the-fly configurability. The main idea I have for an API is that applications only need to call a function with an event name parameter (matching the GConf entry and sample cache name), and a library will take care of everything. But applications do need to provide the GConf schema. Rodney was working on such a spec. But I'll give you £50 if you manage to create/gather up a sound theme of quality matching the current gnome-audio sounds, and that's actually shippable without copyright problems by distributions. Is that a bounty? Seems like a great way to involve more artists, no? :) PulseAudio should give you a separate track for the ESD connected applications. It's probably a matter of tagging those. Lennart would know better. Good, I'll have to talk to him about it. I believe in PulseAudio all-the-way, though. :) Thanks, - -- Stéphan -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHRbnwcFUq0gzqDwQRAkidAJ9/dRUyuNFiFGOZKAeLdyJqSscTxACeLlmQ 9j8brUtR28pgORlHQFmRvh4= =oN0y -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: System event sounds / audio feedback
On Thu, 2007-11-22 at 18:18 +0100, Stéphan Kochen wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Bastien Nocera wrote: snip Using the gnome_sound_ or ESounD API really doesn't sound like a good idea. The audio feedback features in general are not that urgent; the impression I have is that most people discussing it have it on their nice to have-list (including me). So pushing a quick stop-gap solution is not necessary. Which is why I said stop-gap :) That's because we never had a whole slew of potential replacements. The current gnome-audio sounds suck (no offense to the original author), they sound dated, and badly finished. Compare this to the MacOS (even prior to OSX) or SGI sounds. True, there are not many. I know only of gnome-audio, Fedora's, Ubuntu's and less than a handful at gnome-look. I'm hoping PulseAudio will spur some creativity, or this is a chicken-egg problem. :) Fedora's is the same as the upstream gnome-audio. Ubuntu's package also conflicts with gnome-audio, so it's already impossible to install them both simultaneously through apt. That's because it completely replaces it, and there's no theme support. Unless we have a good core set of sounds, theme support makes no sense. You can if you use PulseAudio. It's just only accessible with pavucontrol, not gnome-volume-control. Of course, but there should really be a volume slider in the sound preferences. It's a bug. Pulseaudio doesn't know whether a particular connection is used for sound events, or for movies or music. 1) A replacement for the libgnome could be a GTK+ module, that simply hooks signals and plays sounds. Sounds are preloaded by settings-daemon; no difference from the current situation there. That's some great info from that bug. But how much sound handling should belong in GTK+? My concern was about introducing a sound library dependency in GTK+ itself. I'm also not familiar enough with GTK+ internals and philosophy to write up a proposal right now. We never talked about adding sound handling, but you need triggers, otherwise the module that actually does the sound won't know when to push a specific sound. This sounds like overkill to me, compared to other system sound APIs available. Which other APIs? Looking at the link provided in the bug about Mac OS X's API, it seems just as limiting as GNOME is now. Windows, on the other hand, allows applications to register new events for it's sound preferences UI and theming. Storing these in GConf seems like a great way to get descriptive labels in the preferences UI and on-the-fly configurability. It's also a good way to ensure you never have a theme that matches the whole range. Your nice jungle sound theme will be interrupted by a loud car crash sound left-over from another theme when some app crashes. You don't need a different sound for a standard error popup in different apps (_standard_ I'm not talking about a CD burn failing, or out-of-battery errors). Limiting the number of sounds in the default API, while keeping the ability of apps overriding it means that most applications developer will use the stock items. Providing an interface to allow users to change the default is a good idea though (as opposed to each application providing that interface). The main idea I have for an API is that applications only need to call a function with an event name parameter (matching the GConf entry and sample cache name), and a library will take care of everything. But applications do need to provide the GConf schema. Not all GTK+ apps use GConf. See any xfce app, or the GIMP. But you're getting ahead of yourself, thinking of implementation details (because it doesn't really matter whether that data is in GConf or a flat .ini style file). Rodney was working on such a spec. But I'll give you £50 if you manage to create/gather up a sound theme of quality matching the current gnome-audio sounds, and that's actually shippable without copyright problems by distributions. Is that a bounty? Seems like a great way to involve more artists, no? :) I'm still waiting :) PulseAudio should give you a separate track for the ESD connected applications. It's probably a matter of tagging those. Lennart would know better. Good, I'll have to talk to him about it. I believe in PulseAudio all-the-way, though. :) Again, it doesn't matter whether it uses the ESD compat API, or PulseAudio. PA needs a way to tag those streams as special. Cheers ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: System event sounds / audio feedback
On Nov 21, 2007 2:47 PM, Stéphan Kochen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: With that out of the way, I'd be very happy to hear about any other problems you are seeing (hearing), and comments on the solutions above. (GTK+ modules are a specific area I'm not familiar with. If there's anything special I need to know about how they are loaded, or limitations regarding functionality and library dependencies, do tell!) Lennart has some fairly detailed ideas for how to revamp the event sound system in GNOME. He talked a bit about that last Guadec. Lennart, do you have a writeup of your plans in that area that you could point to ? Matthias ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: System event sounds / audio feedback
On Wed, 2007-11-21 at 20:47 +0100, Stéphan Kochen wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi all, With the recent release of PulseAudio 0.9.7, and discussions surrounding audio in GNOME, I thought I'd try and see if I could get some movement in the system event sounds area as well. The event sounds in GNOME, that have been in the gnome-audio package for ages now, are simply awesome. During my first days exploring Linux, I always had them enabled. As Linux became more and more my primary desktop environment, the clicking, crackling, latency and locking problems that ESounD produced led me to disable them for a long time. But now we have PulseAudio! Hooray! :D And things are good... well, a lot better... but: 1) Only libgnome-based applications seem to work? Besides non-GTK+ applications, another example close to GNOME is gcalctool. Libgnome also seems to be on the fast track towards deprecation. (?) See also: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=368304 2) The number of configurable events is very limited. What about opening a folder, closing a window, switching tabs, browsing to a page, libnotify notifications, ...? This needs application support, and widget support. I think you're going overboard with your examples though. I think you should file bugs against specific applications that you'd want to support specific sounds. Implementing those with the gnome_sound_ API (or the esd API) would be alright as a stop-gap. 3) The event sounds are not bulk configurable, like a GTK+ theme for example. That's because we never had a whole slew of potential replacements. The current gnome-audio sounds suck (no offense to the original author), they sound dated, and badly finished. Compare this to the MacOS (even prior to OSX) or SGI sounds. 4) I cannot control the volume of system events. You can if you use PulseAudio. It's just only accessible with pavucontrol, not gnome-volume-control. snip 1) A replacement for the libgnome could be a GTK+ module, that simply hooks signals and plays sounds. Sounds are preloaded by settings-daemon; no difference from the current situation there. See bug above. snip 2) More events becomes a problem when thinking beyond just the fixed set for a GUI toolkit; about feedback from application specific functions. Opening a folder and browsing to a page are good examples of this. A possible solution would be to dedicate a GConf directory for sound events. Control-center iterates directory entries to find configurable sounds and their descriptions. (Short description in the listview, long in the tooltip for example.) Applications namespace their event names to avoid conflicts. This sounds like overkill to me, compared to other system sound APIs available. 3) Theming is a matter of defining a format and implementing the configuration for it. This could be a dead simple archive containing wave or Ogg Vorbis files named after the GConf event names they play for. Rodney was working on such a spec. But I'll give you £50 if you manage to create/gather up a sound theme of quality matching the current gnome-audio sounds, and that's actually shippable without copyright problems by distributions. 4) This is slightly tricky. snip PulseAudio should give you a separate track for the ESD connected applications. It's probably a matter of tagging those. Lennart would know better. Cheers ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
