lack of unique, innovative qualities Re: Phonon: Multimedia in KDE 4 (KDE.News)

Posted Apr 27, 2006 22:09 UTC (Thu) by hconnellan (subscriber, #231) [Link]

This will be the standard API that KDE apps will interface. Don't forget that KDE is used on a number of different environments (including natively on Windows for the next version, KDE4).

With the abstraction layer, KDE app developers will only have to code to one API and developers who port to different environments will only have to create a plugin for phonon for that environement for all the KDE apps to work. This is the only sensible way to go.

Posted Apr 28, 2006 14:21 UTC (Fri) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link]

> hat is new or unique of this new system in comparison to existing
> frameworks

very little. =) it has two important attributes: it allows any multimedia
stack to be plugged into it as a backend, preventing need to create a
whole media stack for kde and not having to pick one right now; it also
allows applications that have implemented essentially the same pattern to
share this code (amarok, juk, kaffeine, etc...)

> yet another thing to complicate the standardization of GNU/Linux on the
> desktop

quite the opposite, actually. if the linux desktop were to standardize of
FooBarMedia all kde would need to do is ensure there is a FooBarMedia
backend for Phonon. this makes kde flexible enough for whatever the
standard becomes. likewise, if no standard emerges, kde will be easily
adaptable to whatever is on a given platform simply by selecting the
appropriate Phonon backend (or writing one if it doesn't exist yet) and no
other changes in kde are necessary.

compare and contrast with what other projects are doing and how their
choices may end up impacting standardization efforts.