[Alsaplayer-devel] 0.99.80-rc2 and future for AlsaPlayer

[Frank Baumgart]

> I want to discuss the future.
My 2 cents:

What you listed, to me, is just a "todo" list, not much of a vision for AP.

There are dozens of file based players around and this is really 
technology of 5 years ago.
It may be nice to see updates on the GTK(2) GUI but for myself, I could 
not care less.
Although I have spent much time improving AP, it was not until MadeJ's 
patches that
I have actually started the GUI interface at all, just out of curiosity. 
Again, it is 2007 now.
(talk collections/database, musicbrainz, last.fm etc.)

Strengths of AP:
- strong backend player
- stable core
- relatively efficient
- stable API support
- (few) bindings available

Weaknesses:
- limited format support
- lack of maintenance outside the core
- (few) bindings available
- not as efficient as it could be (SW mixing, SW volume, balance etc.)
  (this may affect me more than others)

My priority would be to improve format support and bindings and (if 
someone steps up) provide
patches for other frontend players if AP can provide some benefit.
Look at all the more complex frontends, most of them are based on 
backends like mplayer, xine, gstreamer or mad.
They do not reinvent the wheel.

Finally:
The suggestion about floating point conversion (that 10 people on earth 
may be able to identify in
a double-blind test) looks strange.
For the "file <filename>" instead of extension-based recognition: is 
this a real-life problem that you
are addressing? (nb. This will even be a major performance hit for my 
application)

Please, Dominique, do not misunderstand me, I am very glad that you 
stepped up and brought life
into AP again, and, in turn, new contributions/contributors.

Regards

Frank