ANNOUNCE: xfce4-mixer 4.9.0 released

[Sergio]

--- Em sex, 26/10/12, Guido Berhoerster <gber at opensuse.org> escreveu:

> De: Guido Berhoerster <gber at opensuse.org>
> Assunto: Re: ANNOUNCE: xfce4-mixer 4.9.0 released
> Para: xfce at xfce.org
> Data: Sexta-feira, 26 de Outubro de 2012, 14:10
> * 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.

True, would have to think about that.

> 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?

I would say most people.
Not because of having or not pulseaudio. It's just that xfce4-mixer is a GTK interface for alsamixer and pavucontrol does other things (like settings for each app that's using it).
So the user should, IMO, be able to bind the mixer applet to open whichever sound related app he wants.
One can open any app from the menu of-course but it's more intuitive to use the mixer for the preferred one.

> 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.

As I said they do different things (and some in common). One isn't a replacement for the other.
We can have either alsamixer or pavucontrol or both.

> 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.

As explained this is a misunderstanding.

> 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.

No, pavucontrol is a basic GUI app, not technical at all.
And only now I guess that for me to do that I must *add* (because it isn't there by default) some XFCE_MIXER_PLUGIN_DEFAULT_COMMAND property to xfce4-mixer channel:

$ xfconf-query -l -c xfce4-mixer
/sound-card
/sound-cards/PlaybackInternalAudioAnalogStereoPulseAudioMixer
/sound-cards/VIA8233AAlsamixer
/window-height
/window-width

> I agree that this should be documented and add some hints to
> the
> README.
> -- 
> Guido Berhoerster

Thank you.