[MPlayer-dev-eng] [patch] prefer ALSA over OSS

[Vladimir Mosgalin]

Hi Attila Kinali!

 On 2007.05.04 at 13:57:57 +0200, Attila Kinali wrote next:

> Please tell me one reason why anyone want to use gnome-vfs
> in a normal unixish application? 

So you can open file over network directly from file->open dialog. Most
application don't have such dialogs, therefore they don't need
things like gnome-vfs. However, some do.

For console application, there was very nice solution called avfs; could
be used for easily accessing archives and ssh/ftp/http resources from
any application. Unfortunately, it's dead. It could be reimplemented on
top of fuse, but this was never done.

> The gnome-vfs API is IMHO so much overcomplicated that noone
> in his right mind would want to touch it (unless there is a
> very special requirement which 99.999% of the applications
> do not have).

Sure, I don't suggest anyone to use it. I just meant that some vfs
wrapper solutions are useful even for regular input/output.
Clearly some api which looks very much like original posix api should be
used, maybe even 99% compatible one. But it would work faster and better
if implemented as LD_PRELOADed library or regular library comparing to
what fuse offers. And that fuse exists because no one thought about and
on one needed vfs in userspace when unix was created; otherwise, there
would be no need for fuse now. And there is no reason to repeat this
history with audio - library aproach already works better. 

-- 

Vladimir