GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 644537
Corresponding volume sliders should be made insensitive when muted
Last modified: 2011-09-07 17:22:12 UTC
I've seen this a couple of times when pulseaudio decides to mute a device (for whatever reason, a system crash being one of them): even though you'd expect users to clearly see that obnoxious "[X] Mute" checkbox there, most of us only gaze at the big volume slider widget and wonder why there's no sound. I'm thinking it may be more logical for the corresponding volume slider widget to be set "insensitive" when a particular device is muted, and to make it sensitive again when the user unmutes it.
(In reply to comment #0) > I've seen this a couple of times when pulseaudio decides to mute a device (for > whatever reason, a system crash being one of them): even though you'd expect > users to clearly see that obnoxious "[X] Mute" checkbox there, most of us only > gaze at the big volume slider widget and wonder why there's no sound. > > I'm thinking it may be more logical for the corresponding volume slider widget > to be set "insensitive" when a particular device is muted, and to make it > sensitive again when the user unmutes it. That would make it impossible to reduce the volume without unmuting the stream. I don't think that the UI should be designed to work-around bugs in PulseAudio...
Hmm. But I'm pretty sure that this is probably a *feature* of pulseaudio rather than a bug. But put it this way: how often do you "mute first" and then lower the volume, instead of just lowering the volume?
(In reply to comment #2) > Hmm. But I'm pretty sure that this is probably a *feature* of pulseaudio rather > than a bug. That's not really the point under discussion though. > But put it this way: how often do you "mute first" and then lower the volume, > instead of just lowering the volume? You probably don't, unless you muted a previous instance of that application (say, Flash, or Totem), in which case the above is certainly useful.
I don't particularly like the idea of setting volume while on mute. We like instant apply controls because there is a direct mapping between the control and its effect. There is a slight diconnect between behaviors of volume controls and indicators in 3.0 right now: - OSD shows a volume meter when you mute along with the icon, - Shell's panel menu updates the slider to value 0 when on mute, while updating the icon - System Settings panel controls mute with a checkbox, keeping previous volume level on the scale. I favor the shell's menu behavior — to most of the people we tested this for Novell Linux Desktop back in the day, muting = setting volume to 0. If you have a keyboard mute button, it is perfectly fine to toggle the volume level back. Honestly, not being able able to see/set the volume level back to its original level is not as important as some believe. The disconnect between a scale showing a value that doesn't match reality is worse. I would not show the scale in the OSD when you toggle mute on. I would apply the shell's volume menu behavior to the system settings panel - if you toggle mute, the slider goes to 0. If you unmute with the checkbox, it restores the previous value. If you touch the scale, it unmutes/unchecks.
Pushed this for gnome-settings-daemon: commit 7492d534e67ac70305566b398b4fd76745f21c31 Author: Bastien Nocera <hadess@hadess.net> Date: Wed Sep 7 18:18:24 2011 +0100 media-keys: Don't show a level when muted As discussed in: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=644537#c4
And this in gnome-3-2 and master. commit 8c32c01c4d94eb88733545ba1c10eb7284340cf5 Author: Bastien Nocera <hadess@hadess.net> Date: Wed Sep 7 18:16:15 2011 +0100 sound: Put the level bar at 0 when muting https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=644537