The interface should not be stateful under any condition.

you know, while i know why you feel this way, i recently wrote a simple
shell script app to control the volume of my latop from the media keys.

infact, it's not really that simple - it's stupid & knows too much about
the underlying hardware and is quite tied to my system.  much of this is
caused by the fact that (a) different audio drivers use different "volume"
knobs as a master[*] and (b) the volume i write isn't what i get back.
if i made it a whole lot smarter i could solve (b) but that seemed way
more work than i was willing to do.


i think robert & david are right in that having access to all relevant
info is useful.  don't forget there are a whole class of apps _already
written_ that rely on what you call broken behaviour.


.mrg.


[*] my auich-based laptop seems to work best with "inputs.dac" for the
master volume control.