Hi, actually, I'd like to focus on a different view than just ease of use of an API. I don't really want to see KDE exchanging Arts Hell with MAS, NMM or GStreamer Tartaros. Thus, other points like stability of the ABI, size of the development community, focus of development are more important anyway. Actually, KDE as a Desktop Environment has very little requirements regarding its multimedia framework. I'd like to explicitely exclude multimedia applications for now, those should be able to use any framework their developers think would fit. KDE should stop imposing its own framework on them, this will only cause bloat. KDE currently has some really nice features apart from its multimedia applications which need to be kept: - audible notifications (KNotify) - pre-listening of audio files, this must work across network through kioslaves, too, without having to download the file first. - static or even animated preview of video files, possibly across a network, too. - you get the tune. This is sort of a minimum requirement. We should seek to make this possible with whatever framework is available. Meaning: In KDE, we need an adaptor that implements those few, generic use cases, using either MAS, NMM or GStreamer, or . This shouldn't be too difficult. I volunteer to work on the KDE::PlayObject stuff to make it more generic and not expose details about the underlying framework any more, if someone else steps up to write drivers for MAS, NMM and GStreamer. That way, we'd loosen KDE's dependency on a particular multimedia backend and circumvent the need to do one ourselves (like we tried with arts). ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is sponsored by Shop4tech.com-Lowest price on Blank Media 100pk Sonic DVD-R 4x for only $29 -100pk Sonic DVD+R for only $33 Save 50% off Retail on Ink & Toner - Free Shipping and Free Gift. http://www.shop4tech.com/z/Inkjet_Cartridges/9_108_r285 _______________________________________________ gstreamer-devel mailing list gstreamer-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gstreamer-devel