Simplifying the mixer

[Joerg Reisenweber]

Let me straighten this out a little more:
Our headphones and our speaker "path" share the same physical elements like 
amplifier and volume control. So there never will be a separate control in 
alsamixer for master level of headphone and another one for speaker (unless 
someone will hack the alsa-driver). Instead the one control changes it's 
meaning depending on another control that actually does the switching 
hp<->spk. What would you suggest for this very simple(!) case to name the 
control: "Speaker Vol", "Headphones Vol", "Speaker/Headphones",
"OUT1VOL"? The first 3 names are ambiguous or even incorrect, the 4. will give 
a clue to everyone who is trying to understand what is really going to happen 
when this control is changed.

Any higher sophisticated userland app could/should use the scenario services 
and knowledge about currently active "path" to rename "OUT1VOL" 
to "Speaker/Headphone Volume", or even provide two distinct 
controls "Headphone" AND "Speaker" and store the setting of the actually 
inactive one, while applying the other one to OUT1VOL mixer-element. So "the 
user" never gets in contact with technical names, while "low level hackers" 
aren't puzzled by wrong simple path related names. 
NB: even a cryptic technical name with register-annotation is better than a 
completely false name, especially for "the user". I doesn't provoke 
frustration of the kind "It's so simple to understand, but it just doesn't 
work"

cheers
jOERG

/jOERG
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 194 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
Url : http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/openmoko-devel/attachments/20080612/6a0f57f8/attachment.pgp