On Sun, Dec 12, 2004 at 10:34:21PM +0200, Jukka Marin wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 12, 2004 at 01:05:40PM -0600, David Young wrote:
> > On Sun, Dec 12, 2004 at 11:11:23AM +0200, Jukka Marin wrote:
> > > On Sat, Dec 11, 2004 at 04:45:42PM -0600, David Young wrote:
>
> I'm glad to hear that you know every single application there is.

You know I said no such thing.

It's a fact that volume up/down buttons are a commonplace user interface.
I am surprised if you haven't seen it.

> > It doesn't matter.  The important thing is that it makes the choice with
> > knowledge of the hardware capabilities.
> 
> The problem is that I believe the operating system and drivers exist to
> "hide" the hardware details behind the API so that the applications can
> run with many kinds of hardware unchanged and unaware of the limitations
> that can be hidden.  Obviously, you do not like this idea.

We are 95% agreed.  The 5% where we disagree is whether or not the
volume resolution is a limitation that can be hidden.  If you hide that
information, you don't make the application's job any easier, and you
foreclose certain possibilities.

> I'm not sure if 0...255 is a good range.. to humans, 0...100% might be
> easier, but that would lose some accuracy.  A logarithmic scale would
> be nice, but I guess it would upset the applications, which expect to
> see a linear mapping between the values supplied to API and the actual
> hardware registers.

Jukka, you seem to be willing to foreclose all kinds of application
opportunities (volume++/--, using the full resolution of the h/w volume
control) in order to have a "uniform" interface that hides the h/w volume
resolution.  The interface I propose does not complicate application
programming, and it does not conceal differences in hardware capabilities
that *make a difference* to applications.

> I wonder why the BSD folks are so hostile to all "new" ideas.  On the
> other hand, I begin to understand why ever other guy is working on his
> own copy of a BSD operating system.

Why *are* you are not hostile to my "new" API idea? :-)

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoung@ojctech.com      Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933