GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 139588
In Alsa tab, binary value options appear as a slider and cannot be changed.
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
Options for my sound card, C-Media PCI CMI8738-MC6 [Alsa Mixer], such as 4 speaker mode, 3D mode, etc, appear as slider bars when in gnome-alsa-mixer they are check-boxes. Also here they cannot be set, but in gnome-alsa-mixer they can be set. Here is an example image: http://amdg.no-ip.org/~scott/screenshots/alsamixer.png
Yeah, I know, it needs some prettification.
Those aren't binary values, they're switches. I asked on the alsa-devel mailinglist, this is the reply: == At Sat, 08 May 2004 20:32:04 +0200, Ronald S. Bultje wrote: > > Hi, > > I'm working on properifying the ALSA support in GNOME Volume Control. > When opening a sound mixer, I noticed that several elements will be both > a capture and a playback element. Also, there is separate functions for > setting the playback and the capture volume. How are those functions of > the element related? If I set the playback volume, does this affect the > capture volume on a hardware level? And what is the playback or capture > part of this element supposed to visualize/abstractize? the playback and the capture are independent. they shouldn't affect with eath other, and that's why there are different functions :) basically, you should provide separated volume bars and toggle switches for both playback and capture if two of them are provided. > Also, I see several non-volume elements (switches? Things such as > External Amplifier Power Down or 3D - switch). What are those? What do > they do, what's their function, what do they visualize/abstractize on > the hardware level? each meaning depends strongly on the chip/driver. > I'm asking all this to get an idea of how to picture those in GNOME > Volume Control (for the first question: each function of the element as > a separate track? Or all functions together as one track?; for the > second question: as a checkbox? something else? omit completely?). remember that the ALSA mixer interface doesn't provide the well-abstracted mixer stuffs (yet). they are almost as hardware provides. obviously we need another higher level abstraction. IMO, there is no general design of the mixer, except for the very basic elements like Master, PCM, etc. look at Windows mixers - they all look differently. hence, providing the mixer structure with an external db (e.g. via XML) according to the driver/chip would be the best solution if you write a "generic" mixer app. == I don't want to go that far. If the kernel doesn't provide a sane abstraction, then sod it. The mixer interface should still provide the switches better than now (probably as selection menus), and the volume control should - at least in the default view - just not display them. It could when GConf tells it to be in 'expert mode' or so. Anyway, this requires interface changes (probably ABI incompatible) and it requires application changes as well.
*** Bug 142240 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This is fixed now if you use a recent gnome-media and gst-plugins.
I am using gnome-media-2.8.0 and gst-plugins-0.8.4. The options are just no longer present now. They are still present and work in kmix (the kde mixer). I would not consider this fixed.
Here are some screenshots: http://amdg.no-ip.org/~scott/screenshots/Screenshot-Volume%20Control.png http://amdg.no-ip.org/~scott/screenshots/Screenshot-KMix.png