ALSA, OSS and the pointless of switching to Pulse

On Mon, 2006-06-26 at 17:18 +0100, Paul Sladen wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Jun 2006, Lee Revell wrote:
> > On Mon, 2006-06-26 at 13:23 +0100, Paul Sladen
wrote:
> > > Multiple-open OSS to an ALSA backend needs
writing
> > > 
> > >   ALSA: Great ultra low-level
hardware-interface. 
> > 
> > Attached is the minimal ALSA program to play back
audio.  It's 51 lines
> 
> I think you may have just proved your own point,
"QED" as they say!  
> The following is the minimum to play back audio with
OSS:
> 
>   $ cat file > /dev/dsp
> 

"cat file > /dev/dsp" does not set the sample
rate, audio format, number
of channels, etc.  It only works for 8000Hz 8 bit mono IIRC.
 To do
anything useful with OSS you need to use ioctl()s to set
these
parameters.

"cat file > /dev/dsp" is a toy, a neat trick,
but not useful for
anything serious.

A C implementation of an OSS app that does the same as the
ALSA program
I posted would be about the same length. 

> > I suspect that many of the ALSA bashers have not
even looked at it
> > lately.
> 
> It's not so much the 'bashing', each of us has our
own opinions on the
> strengths of ALSA.  Whereas the reality is that
programs out there use
> OSS;  and therefore it is our job to figure our how to
make it 'just work'.
> 
> If it does not 'just work', then it's a bug on our
part.

That's true, up to a point, but I disagree that we should
work around
every bug, prejudice, or design flaw in every application. 
Sometimes
the only answer is "fix your app".

Lee


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