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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Request:  Public kmix library and class
From:       Aaron Levinson <alevinsn () inetarena ! com>
Date:       1998-11-19 4:04:52
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As many of you probably already know, kmix is a great audio mixer.  It
works in many different environments, including Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD,
Solaris, SunOS, IRIX, ALSA, and probably some more.  It's easy to use, and
it works well.  KMix isn't the only piece of KDE software that implements
a mixer though, or at least some volume control.  There's kscd, kmp3,
kmidi, and probably a few more.  And they all have their own
implementation of a mixer or some sort of volume control.  Since quite a
few apps need mixer functionality, why not create a kmix static and
dynamic library and an associated class?  That way, all of these apps can
take advantage of kmix's functionality, and no time has to be spent
reinventing the wheel. 

Simply doing this could cause more developers to jump on the KDE
bandwagon.  There's lots of code out there that implements, over and over
again, mixer functionality.  It's tedious work, especially if someone has
already done it.  The problem is there is no standard, cross-platform
library for doing mixing, so people keep on doing it over from scratch. If
authors of multimedia programs knew that they wouldn't have to write their
own mixer when using KDE, they might just decide to use KDE as their
default programming environment. 

So, what needs to be done?  Well, the relevant code needs to be compiled
into a library.  I guess it should be called libkmix.  Then, it should
probably be placed in kdelibs instead of kdemultimedia.  Why?  Well, let's
take the case where someone decided that they didn't need the stuff in
kdemultimedia when they installed KDE.  They rarely play WAV's and midi
files, and if they do, they use the command-line utilities.  However, they
play mp3 files a lot, and after looking at some screenshots for kmp3, they
decide that they must have this awesome player.  Well, if kmp3 required
libkmix to run, then they would be out of luck if it were part of
kdemultimedia.  If it were part of kdelibs, it would have already been
installed.  In addition, putting multimedia functionality in kdelibs is
not unprecedented.  mediatool is one of the libraries in kdelibs. 

Does this sound good?

Aaron Levinson
Caitiff on #kde

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