Re: Debian policy on multimedia ?
On Monday 09 January 2006 13:12, Geiger Guenter was like:
> On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 08:46:54AM +0900, Junichi Uekawa wrote:
> > Thus a Debian-local patch will be required in cases like LADSPA where
> > their specification requires an environmental variable is set.
>
> Hi,
>
> I do not know of a policy for multimedia, but setting one up seems to make
> sense. The first thing would be to identify the points that need to
> be documented, the LADSPA policy is surely a part of it.
>
> > This kind of thing will surely need some kind of policy document
> > specific to multimedia stuff, at least.
> >
> > I'm not sure if MIDI related stuff are mature enough for this, but I
> > think there needs to be some kind of usable sane default for
> > MIDI/virtual keyboards setup, or I seem to be setting it up for every
> > app.
I don't quite understand what you mean by MIDI related stuff not being mature
enough, but I assume you speak from a position of better understanding of the
issues than I do. Certainly many musicians would consider a functioning MIDI
keyboard and connections to be as basic as having a functioning text
keyboard. One of the most FAQs that I encounter is "I can't get my MIDI to
work". I don't really understand why this can't be made to work out of the
box in most cases.
> It would be great if everything had a good default. Do you think this
> can be achieved easily ? If it has to be done by patching every application
> it might be too error-prone and would take long for implementation. I don't
> know if LASH would be a better solution, but then LASH needs the
> applications to be LASH aware too - sounds like quite a bit of work.
Persuading all the multimedia upstream and maintainers to implement LASH would
be a lot of work and would take time. Like a year or two, even Jackd support
is still not universally implemented. However, I think it is a good idea to
work towards it. If we're talking about making Debian policy we're in for a
long haul anyway. ;)
> In general, more than a policy it would be nice to have a writeup on
> how it could work, some kind of guidelines at the beginning, which can
> eventually become policy.
Yes, I think an initial brainstorming session would give us some clear talking
points, which could then be circulated to interested parties.
There is probably only a small percentage of people using Debian for
"professional" multimedia. We probably need to sell the idea of having a good
multimedia infrastructure to the desktop users. Many of my non-musician
friends even balk at configuring ALSA, mention Jackd, LADSPA and LASH and
you've lost them completely. The argument being that if it all worked out of
the box and was supported by all relevant applications, then it would
encourage ordinary users to dabble with some of this incredible software.
A proper Debian multimedia policy is well overdue, so I think we should pursue
it. I'd be interested in hearing reservations from anyone for whom audio /
video is not a priority.
> Cheers,
>
> Guenter
>
> > regards,
> > junichi
> > --
> > dancer@{debian.org,netfort.gr.jp} Debian Project
--
cheers,
tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk/tim
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