Brad Fuller wrote: > I'll try to bottom line my reply to you and hope I can encapsulate > Christoph's original point: > > He wants to be able to start an audio app and hear it's output. He > doesn't want to see a dialog box pop-up exclaiming that the audio device > is blocked by another app. > > This is what he (or maybe it was me) is referring to regarding creating > an audio system for users. Brad, Thanks for this nice summary / (re)starting point. At the risk of recomplicating the issue, I guess some complication is a result of the Linux multiuser and networking capabilities. I haven't used Windows beyond Win95, maybe someone can answer how Windows in the multiuser implementations handles these three situations (are there more): * If there is more than one user on a machine (each with his own "terminal" (i.e., keyboard, CRT, mouse and *sound card and speakers*), and one of those users starts an audio application, what does Windows do? (Presumably, the right thing is that Windows notes which user requests the application and routes the sound to his sound card/speakers.) * If there is more than one user on a machine (each with his own "partial terminal" (i.e., keyboard, CRT, mouse, but they *share a common sound card and speakers*), and one of those users starts an audio application, what does Windows do? (I'm not sure of the right thing here, my guess is that the default would be to route the output to a mixer driving the common audio card, with easily accessible options to do things like mute the existing sound output, or mute the new application's output, or ???) * If there is more than one user on a machine (but the user in question is logging in remotely (as via Telnet, ssh, remote X, or similar), and one of those remotely logged in users starts an audio application, what does Windows do? (I'm guessing that the right thing is to route the audio output back to the remote user (somehow) and not interfere with the audio output of the "local" computer, again with options to route the output to the sound card of the local computer.) Of course ( ;-) ) for the simplest case, (a single user on a single user machine), the sound application should be default simply route the sound to the (single) (local) sound card, mixing the output with that of any other audio applications, with options to mute either the output of the old sound application(s) or the new sound application. I guess part of my point is that the "proper" behavior needs to be agreed upon for each of these cases (and others?), before a complete resolution can be developed. Randy Kramer PS: Aside: Until recently, I was a lurker on some of the Xfree86 and (what's the new one, X.org?) mail lists, and one or both of these organizations were considering somehow dealing with audio issues similar to the above. I have no idea how far along they are with such efforts (or whether they've since decided to drop the issues.)
