Okay. I'll admit I am biased toward GNOME, but my real problem is that I didn't explain myself much, and I doubt people actually went to look at the gstreamer site. I had found it before, but forgot about.
Why I think KDE should adopt gstreamer as well. It is not a replacement for ALSA, OSS, ESD, or aRts... it's an add-on to it. My understanding of the gstreamer project is that it's Linux/UNIX's response to the Windows CODEC system. It is a single interface to output video and audio from various types of input file types. They have support for MP3s, DIVX (coming), Ogg Vorbis, DVD, AVI, MPEG, Video 4 Linux, etc. for input files. It also supports OSS, ALSA, esd, aRts, X11, aalib (gotta love it), SDL, etc. for outputs.
This is obviously not for programs that need low latency. It is for your everyday stuff. It is more than good enough for saying "you got mail," yet it would have support for lots of files types w/o specifically writing support for the new file type. This is also good for multimedia players and web browsers due to the support for lots of file types (I could see XMMS switching to this from its plugin system).
Is this the answer for recording studio programs, remakes of Rebirth (WE NEED ONE OF THESE), or people that need the audio fast, but for the typical desktop user, it will be a god send.
Only downfall I could see to the KDE crowd is the need to install GLIB. It doesn't require the full GTK+, just GLIB (linked lists and other datastructures). KDE could recommend using aRts for output and write its own input plugins for implementations that depended on a library KDE didn't need installed but KDE did install another one that implemented something simiilar.
HECK, I don't think anyone would mind KDE writing their own underlying/core part, required you use aRts for output, didn't require GLIB (though this may be difficult), but used those input plug-ins. I understand KDE and GNOME have very different things in their head, but we need to get some standards here. XDND was way overdue (though I hear it wasn't a great implementation, at least they agreed on how to do something), and the two groups need to make more decisions like these to help each other strive.
Remember everyone. I WAS a HUGE KDE fan myself for years. I had installed GNOME a couple times and hated it. I used KDE through 2.1 (I think... definitely in the 2.X). Then I discovered I had Blackbox on my machine, and it flew. I like the QT library (though I won't use it because I am now a GNOME guy). I like the layout of KDE... simple yet sophisticated. It tailors to the geek and the 'typical home user.' I just like GNOME's CORBA interface they are adding (which is where gstreamer will fit in). Something that can be so easily updated and contain potential problems is powerful (though VERY frustrating at times). I also love Ximian, who I feel keeps pushing the things that need to get done to make Linux a full fledged desktop system -- not to mention their love of all things monkey =)
I salute KDE. They did the large scale desktop environment for the masses first (CDE is NOT for the masses anymore). They are probably still doing it best (I hear lots of complaints about some of GNOME's design). The problem I see is that there's no one really pushing KDE to keep its lead (and the slow speed it had under Mandrake).
-----Original Message----- From: Christopher Morgan [mailto:chmorgan@speakeasy.net] Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2002 11:46 PM To: Joe Tennies Subject: Re: Another Potential Slave... I mean Programmer
It would be interesting to see a latency comparison between gstreamer, arts and jack. If gstreamer doesn't get very close to what jack can do then it isn't the solution for the future. We need low latency or tons of audio apps will continue to find it through direct alsa or jack interfaces. Ideally we should pick the best solution and much of it is based on the latency issue, features should come after and should be designed such that they don't increase latency by any more than they have to. It sounds a little like you want to go with a gnome solution because you use gnome. I think more work needs to be done to come up with a linux(open source or whatever as well) wide solution to the problem.
Chris
On 2 Feb 2002, Joe Tennies wrote:
On Sat, 2002-02-02 at 05:42, Hetz Ben Hamo wrote:
I'm not trying to start a Gnome/KDE flame war, but as far as I know,
esd is
unmaintained and the Gnome developpers are thinking about switching to aRtsd. Wouldn't it be more useful to write an aRts driver ?
Actually if I'm not mistaken - GNOME people are moving to gstreamer, if
I'm
not mistaken. I'm not sure since I work with KDE here...
Hetz
Actually, I just looked at gstreamer. It lies above aRts, esd, alsa, and
oss. It is a platform independent (well, not ported to everything yet, but working on it) system. I think KDE SHOULD be heading this way and am impressed that GNOME is. I think that gstreamer would be the way to go for WINE.