ANNOUNCE: xfce4-mixer 4.9.0 released

[Guido Berhoerster]

* Sergio <sergiocmailbox-xfce at yahoo.com.br> [2012-10-26 14:43]:
> >> > - Remove UI for configuring the mixer command from the panel
> >> > plugin
> >> >   and assume xfce4-mixer, make the panel plugin context
> >> > menu entry
> >> >   for running the mixer more meaningful.
> >> 
> >> I haven't tried this new version yet.
> >> But I set mine to open pavucontrol, for instance. In my case I have more >use for it than xfce4-mixer.
> >> This feature has just been dropped?
> >
> >No, just the UI, you can configure it via xfconf now.
> >-- 
> >Guido Berhoerster
> 
> May I ask that this option be added to the 'Properties' dialogue?
> Updated today to xfce4-mixer 4.10 and no one would ever know what to do to change the default mixer app for the panel plugin.
> There isn't an xfconf channel property for that. You could answer me how to add one here but a new user would have no way to know.
> 
> Then, just for completeness' sake, if I add something else other than xfce4-mixer (like pavucontrol) then the right-click context menu would show 'Run PulseAudio Volume Control' instead of 'Run Audio Mixer', right?
> I mean that entry should read the desktop file for the defined mixer and not be hard-coded (not saying it is as I haven't obviously changed the default mixer to open yet).

Well, the problem with that is that you can't reliably determine
a desktop file corresponding to an arbitrary executable entered
into the configuration dialog. Apart from that issue, what is
the use-case for that, why would one use the xfce4-mixer
applet but not xfce4-mixer and for what kind of target audience
is that relevant?
So far seems to be an issue with systems that have pulseaudio
installed and prefer pavucontrol over xfce4-mixer because the
pulseaudio integration in gstreamer is poor. But in that case I
think that distributions shipping pulseaudio by default should
redefine XFCE_MIXER_PLUGIN_DEFAULT_COMMAND to pavucontrol in
order to provide a decent user experience out of the box rather
than forcing every user to change it in the plugin configuration
dialog. And I'd argue that if a user is technical-savvy enough to
know what pavucontrol is and why he wants it, he probably is also
capable of entering it into xfce4-settings-editor.
I agree that this should be documented and add some hints to the
README.
-- 
Guido Berhoerster