uaudio patch,

[Alexander Leidinger]

Mathew Kanner <mat at cnd.mcgill.ca> wrote:

> 	I realise I'm the only one whose taken this position so I'll
> withdraw it.  But for the record, this is my reasoning, what the heck
> are you going to do with this informaiton: it doesn't help you.

If you want to go to the soundcard directly, without any conversation, you
need to know what you can use.

>  Other
> interesting but often usesless information is printed in boot_verbose.
> The listed capablities are often way beyound what our sound interface
> can offer.

Just because it can't offer it _yet_, it doesn't mean we don't teach the
interface to use it later. And parts of this improvement can be addressed
from both sides (step by step).

>  If you want to know what avaiable then connect to the
> sound device and issue an ioctl like every other app.

If I have an app which plays some audio files. And if I have the opportunity
to generate the right file with a conversation program which converts
"something" (e.g. text to speach) but doesn't knows about an output device,
and I want to generate the right output, I have to know what I can use. A
human being which just knows about tools, but not about ioctl(), I need
something which tells me what I can use. Do we have an app which does this?
Do we need such an app, or would it be convenient to just look at "cat
/dev/sndstat"?

> 	Anyway, as a general concept, I think we should start
> expanding our using sysctls.

I think it depends. For status/capabilities/static like output, we should
look at enhancing existing interfaces (if they fit into the big picture of
what we want to add), like our "sound status device".

For general "mode switching" (whatever this means) which doesn't fit into the
4Front-OSS model, sysctl looks like a nice candidate. But another nice
candidate would be a "sndctl" program which may interact with the device
over /dev/dspX.ctl orsomething like this.

Is there something specific you have in mind regarding the sysctl proposal?

Bye,
Alexander.

-- 
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BOFH excuse #152:

My pony-tail hit the on/off switch on the power strip.