Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932318AbWAFA3d (ORCPT ); Thu, 5 Jan 2006 19:29:33 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932321AbWAFA3c (ORCPT ); Thu, 5 Jan 2006 19:29:32 -0500 Received: from lx09-hrz.uni-duisburg.de ([134.91.4.50]:16622 "EHLO lx09-hrz.uni-duisburg.de") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932318AbWAFA3b (ORCPT ); Thu, 5 Jan 2006 19:29:31 -0500 Message-ID: <43BDB858.5060500@folkwang-hochschule.de> Date: Fri, 06 Jan 2006 01:22:48 +0100 From: Joern Nettingsmeier User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5 (X11/20051201) MIME-Version: 1.0 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 Subject: Re: [OT] ALSA userspace API complexity 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> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 3285 Lines: 68 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 >> discussions and complain they don't need all that complexity. why do >> professional audio users always have to put up with people who only >> listen to mp3s whining about a complicate API? > > Funnily enough, people who added SIGIO and epoll did not remove > select nor limited its capabilities. > > 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 removing obsolete *drivers*. that is orthogonal to the api issue. then people starting whining about bugs in the alsa oss layer, while being too lazy to file bug reports. nobody wants to "cripple" this api, saying so is just stupid FUD and rather offensive. then somebody started an api discussion, where *oss* was represented quite fairly. it does have its nice sides. but to me it looks like most of the people bashing *alsa* for its complexity have not understood the problems it tries to (and does) solve. shuffle 16 tracks of 24bit 48k audio in and out of the machine at a latency where a professional drummer will not complain, with routing options adequate for professional work, and then let's see how simple your API is. for those audio-challenged people out there: recall the tcp-offloading discussions in the networking layer. nobody wants to do it, and they can get away with it, because it does not buy you much and fucks up the api big time. in audioland, you have all kinds of funky shit going on in the hardware, and you can't say, no we don't support that, to inelegant, because then your stuff just can't compete. hardware peculiarities cannot be abstracted away without sacrificing 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 data is wrong. there have been years of development before alsa ever came near the kernel. stop bitching, read up on some stuff (for instance, find out about how different the gizmos i mentioned actually are), get your facts straight. if by then you should happen to develop a real interest in audio matters, the linux-audio-* lists welcome your questions and contributions. -- j?rn 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 - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/