From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Joern Nettingsmeier Date: Fri, 06 Jan 2006 00:22:48 +0000 Subject: Re: [OT] ALSA userspace API complexity Message-Id: <43BDB858.5060500@folkwang-hochschule.de> List-Id: References: <20050726150837.GT3160@stusta.de> <20060103193736.GG3831@stusta.de> <20060104030034.6b780485.zaitcev@redhat.com> <43BDA02F.5070103@folkwang-hochschule.de> <20060105234951.GA10167@dspnet.fr.eu.org> In-Reply-To: <20060105234951.GA10167@dspnet.fr.eu.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable To: Olivier Galibert , Joern Nettingsmeier , Tomasz K?oczko , Jaroslav Kysela , Pete Zaitcev , Alistair John Strachan , Adrian Bunk , Tomasz Torcz , Jan Engelhardt , Andi Kleen , ALSA development , James@superbug.demon.co.uk, sailer@ife.ee.ethz.ch, linux-sound@vger.kernel.org, zab@zabbo.net, kyle@parisc-linux.org, parisc-linux@lists.parisc-linux.org, jgarzik@pobox.com, Thorsten Knabe , zwane@commfireservices.com, LKML Olivier Galibert wrote: > On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 11:39:43PM +0100, Joern Nettingsmeier wrote: >> modem dialup users know better than to chime in to networking core=20 >> discussions and complain they don't need all that complexity. why do=20 >> professional audio users always have to put up with people who only=20 >> listen to mp3s whining about a complicate API? >=20 > Funnily enough, people who added SIGIO and epoll did not remove > select nor limited its capabilities. >=20 > The ALSA api has issues, whether you want to acknowledge them or not. > The OSS api has issues too, of course. But it is there to stay, and > it has advantages in some situations, like when simplicity or not > depending on a shared library matters. Ignoring it is stupid. Doing > your best to cripple it is stupid. The OSS api is an entrypoint in > the sound system as valid and important than others. agreed. nobody doubts this. a long time ago, this thread was about=20 removing obsolete *drivers*. that is orthogonal to the api issue. then people starting whining about bugs in the alsa oss layer, while=20 being too lazy to file bug reports. nobody wants to "cripple" this api,=20 saying so is just stupid FUD and rather offensive. then somebody started an api discussion, where *oss* was represented=20 quite fairly. it does have its nice sides. but to me it looks like most=20 of the people bashing *alsa* for its complexity have not understood the=20 problems it tries to (and does) solve. shuffle 16 tracks of 24bit 48k audio in and out of the machine at a=20 latency where a professional drummer will not complain, with routing=20 options adequate for professional work, and then let's see how simple=20 your API is. for those audio-challenged people out there: recall the tcp-offloading=20 discussions in the networking layer. nobody wants to do it, and they can=20 get away with it, because it does not buy you much and fucks up the api=20 big time. in audioland, you have all kinds of funky shit going on in the hardware,=20 and you can't say, no we don't support that, to inelegant, because then=20 your stuff just can't compete. hardware peculiarities cannot be abstracted away without sacrificing=20 efficiency, and this makes for a complicated api. instead people keep whining and talk about headsets not working. sheesh. tomasz, your impressive arithmetic with years is quite correct, but your=20 data is wrong. there have been years of development before alsa ever=20 came near the kernel. stop bitching, read up on some stuff (for=20 instance, find out about how different the gizmos i mentioned actually=20 are), get your facts straight. if by then you should happen to develop a=20 real interest in audio matters, the linux-audio-* lists welcome your=20 questions and contributions. --=20 j=F6rn nettingsmeier home://germany/45128 essen/lortzingstr. 11/ http://spunk.dnsalias.org phone://+49/201/491621 if you are a free (as in "free speech") software developer and you happen to be travelling near my home, drop me a line and come round for a free (as in "free beer") beer. :-D