On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 8:55 PM, Dylan McCall <dylanmcc...@gmail.com> wrote: > Curious why Fedora manages to actually make some useful system sounds > while Ubuntu continues to be oddly mute, I looked at the version number > for sound-theme-freedesktop. It is (*gasp*) now at 0.7 upstream, while > the one packaged in Ubuntu is 0.4. In fairness, it looks like 0.4 was > released on August 23, with 0.5 tailing it on August 26. It just so > happens that one tiny 3 day amendment alone would have made a huge > difference.
I can't say any thing about the official sound theme, but I'm the one who did the initial packaging for sound-theme-freedesktop in Ubuntu. You need to remember that Feature Freeze for Karmic was August 27th. While things can get updated after FF, no one cared enough to file the exception request. For that matter no one file a bug about the new release either, and unfortunately upstream changed where it hosts the tarball breaking the watch file. So I didn't even notice that there had been a new release until just before the final release. Getting 0.7 into Lucid is on my todo, but as I'm a bit busy right now it's not very high. There's a 0.7 package about to enter Debian (it's sitting in the new queue), that will need to get merged with our current package. For some reason they rename the package freedesktop-sound-theme, which is a bit annoying as it will need a Conflicts/Replaces to upgrade properly, a delta we'll have to carry for awhile, so no direct syncs. If anyone feels like trying their out their packaging skills, I'd be happy to review/sponsor an upload. > I grabbed the upstream version from git, installed it and was overjoyed > by my desktop now making useful sounds from time to time (instead of > just an obnoxious desktop-login noise). For example, the volume applet > makes a cute little pop now when I adjust the volume. (Although, oddly, > the keyboard-driven volume control via gnome-settings-daemon doesn't > make that sound even though it did in Fedora. I guess that's a patch > waiting for GNOME 2.30). > > However, the Ubuntu sound theme, which remains the default, is thus far > very empty and doesn't inherit from the FreeDesktop one. I think this > could be improved in a huge way! > > There are a lot of things which can be done here, and all the sounds > (even the Freedesktop ones which I like) could use a bit of touching up. > For example, many of them are just loud pops where something simpler and > more relevant could fit and the button sounds don't sound anything like > buttons. (Not that I use them anyway, but for those who wish to know > when they click buttons I am sure more pleasant sounds would be > appreciated). Oh, and I swear the instant messaging login and logout > sounds are reminiscent of MSN Messenger, although I may be mistaken as I > haven't used that in 5 years... > > Basically, I haven't seen much interest in the sound effects thing in > Ubuntu, which is a shame because we now have a really good thing (the > Freedesktop sound themes spec) to make them happen. I'm not proposing a > desktop that doubles as a musical instrument, but this stuff allows > aural notifications to be way more helpful and possibly less obtrusive > as they produce less confusion for the end user. > > Perhaps this would be a good thing to have in mind for Lucid, now that > the visual icons have been given so much love :) Again, can't say anything about the default stuff, but if anyone wants to work on a freedesktop compliant sound theme I'd help out on the packaging end. I know there was a theme floating around that some one in the community made (was it Mads maybe?), but it was right when things switched to the new spec and no one made it compliant. It might make a good starting point. - Andrew -- ubuntu-art mailing list ubuntu-art@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art
