Pulse audio applet not needed

[FrejSoya]

Binary package hint: pulseaudio

Comments about the pulse audio applet
Trying to keep the notification area bloat down - so a bit harsh :)

First three items:
Server/Sink/Source is very tech speak.. Sink for audio?
They are enabled as sub menus but I can only select default anyway.

Manager:
What is the need for quick access to the manager? Why would I ever want to access the manager?

Volume control:
There already is a volume control "applet"

Volume Meter's:
Is quick access to a volume meter really needed?.
Maybe it should be included in the applications that need it.

Quit:
I've never seen an applet that has "quit".

Preferences)
Already located in System menu.

So maybe just remove the applet (notification area icon)? :)

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

First, thanks for taking time to comment. These issues are not applicable to the pulseaudio source package but to the padevchooser source package, so I'm reassigning. Cody and I recently completely cleaned up the Applications>Sound & Video menu of the PA tools. See http://trilug.org/~crimsun/Screenshot.png for a "before" glimpse. Note that on current hardy only the device chooser (padevchooser) icon is shown now; the remaining PA tools' menu items are masked (the changelogs for padevchooser, paman, pavucontrol, and pavumeter contain the rationale).

Regarding "server," "sink," and "source" - these are the terms that GStreamer (and thus, GNOME) uses in the `gstreamer-properties` tool. Perhaps instead of "sink" we could use "playback," and instead of "source," "capture." In terms of only being able to select "default", that could be hidden via Gtk-fu. Opinions on these points?

Regarding the manager - I don't know.

Regarding the volume control - this application allows you to migrate streams across "sinks." It has been noted that the existing "volume control applet" will remain in the notification area for hardy. There are no current plans to bloat the existing volume control applet's code to handle migration.

Regarding the volume meters - I don't know.

Regarding quit - I don't know.

Regarding preferences - completely agree. This will be patched out in the next uploads.

To summarise: padevchooser wasn't designed originally as a UI-nice (GNOME HIG-compliant) app. This is a problem, but I can't fix this myself (since my preferences certainly are not representative of hardy's potential userbase). Many of the points you've raised merit extended discussion on the pulseaudio, gnome, and ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing lists. I agree that the "tech speak" is horrid and that there are unnecessary items shown in the applet. However, re-exposing the menu items reintroduces clutter, and that's bad, too.

[FrejSoya (frej)]

Ahh now i get it :)

For some reason padevchooser was automaticly started on login -> notification area icon. Doesn't happen anymore.
Maybe padevchooser could be started if there are 2 or more audio input/output devices/chips attached? (Hal stuff?).

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Detecting whether there are multiple audio devices sounds interesting. One caveat is that we would have to work around bug 182541 for hardy. That's a bit unwieldy.

Do you have any comments on the other points?

[Dave Gilbert (ubuntu-treblig)]

IMHO padevchooser is needed; it might be the only sane way to control and watch pa for
someone not happy with commandline.

Dave

[Martin von Wittich (martin.von.wittich)]

On my Hardy, the applet was not started automatically; after I found it, I configured it to start automatically though because it's a great toy :)

Regarding "server," "sink," and "source": I wouldn't consider myself an audio expert, but I got the hang of it pretty quickly. I especially like the "Default Sink" option because it allows me to route my audio output to another computer (the one that has speakers attached to it) as soon as PulseAudio's network features are enabled on both computers.

Regarding the manager: it's not that useful. Allows you to see whether PulseAudio is running; plus, I use the sample cache as a fast test to see whether the sound works.

Regarding the volume control: another great toy. It surely looks useful, but as I'm listening only to a single music stream atm, I've got no real use for that now.

Regarding the volume meters: did I mention the toy factor? :)

Regarding quit: well, Pidgin has it too. As PulseAudio is not an applet in the sense of: you can add/remove it with a right click on the panel, but a running application like Pidgin, I like having the option to terminate it.

Regarding preferences: the applet preferences (show notifications for discovered servers/sinks/...) are not the same as the preferences in the System menu; instead, the preferences in the System menu are the same as "Configure Local Sound Server" in the applet's menu.

I agree though that this applet should not be started by default because most users wouldn't need it. It would be cool though if it could automatically appear when there are other PulseAudio servers available on the local network so I could choose which one I would want to use.

[Tony McKenzie (mckenzie-tony)]

I'm curious, under the volume control applet, when you right click>volume control, why doesn't it go to the much nicer/feature filled pulseaudio volume control rather then the default 'gnome' one. Could this be changed to default since pulse is standard across ubuntu now? Possibly just add the pulseaudio applet to the "add to panel" chooser for applets as an alternative. Thanks for reading my suggestion :)

[Endolith (endolith)]

Seems like it should be started by default, since there is no way to control these things with the regular applet.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Please note that the new volume control applet in GNOME (installable in jaunty, with further work in karmic) addresses a couple of the above use cases.