Re: [OT] ALSA userspace API complexity

[Jaroslav Kysela]

On Thu, 5 Jan 2006, Heikki Orsila wrote:

> Alistair John Strachan <s0348365@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Tuesday 03 January 2006 23:10, Tomasz K?oczko wrote:
> > 2) ALSA API is to complicated: most applications opens single sound
> >    stream.
> 
> > FUD and nonsense. I've written many DSP applications and very often I can
> > recycle the same code for use in them.
> 
> I've long ago stopped using ALSA API because it is broken. But if you 
> wanted to make ALSA usable by real people you might considering adding 3 
> functions (there are ~300 already so not much loss):

This sentence makes this in my mind: real people = lazy people. The error 
codes are documented well. Also, aplay in the alsa-utils package has
good error recovery code including test pcm.c utility in alsa-lib.

> 	err = alsa_simple_pcm_open(nchannels, sampleformat, samplingrate, frames_in_period /* 0 for automated default */ );
> 	err = alsa_simple_writei(); /* handless signal brokeness automagically */
> 	alsa_simple_close();

Well, it's better to create only "fast parameter setup" and "default error 
recovery" functions.

> Basically ogg123/mpg123 like applications would only need 3 alsa calls. 
> Now everyone reimplementing their own buggy versions of simple mechanisms.

While "official" examples exists for a long time. Also, we already noted 
that we are not best documentation writers, but everytime when we ask for 
help we hear nothing from other people.

						Jaroslav

-----
Jaroslav Kysela <perex@xxxxxxx>
Linux Kernel Sound Maintainer
ALSA Project, SUSE Labs
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