[alsa-devel] alsactl adds volume controls?

[Colin Guthrie]

Hi all,

I'm just re-kickstarting this thread after discussing this issue with
David on IRC.

'Twas brillig, and Jaroslav Kysela at 02/09/10 18:28 did gyre and gimble:
> On Thu, 2 Sep 2010, Clemens Ladisch wrote:
> 
>> Jaroslav Kysela wrote:
>>> On Thu, 2 Sep 2010, Clemens Ladisch wrote:
>>>> What is the reason for alsactl not trying to restore inactive controls?
>>>
>>> Most (maybe all - need to check drivers) of inactive control values are
>>> reset to the original value when they're going to the active state.
>>
>> (There are both kinds of inactive controls.)
>>
>> It wouldn't hurt to restore controls that will be reset later.
>>
>>> Maybe we need to add another flag - inactive but persistent.
>>
>> This is more or less implied by the current documentation:
>> /* control does actually nothing, but may be updated */
>>
>> I'd rather add a flag for controls that will be reset by the driver,
>> because this is an action that is done in addition to the 'normal'
>> control behaviour.
>>
>> One could also say that inactive controls that will be reset have a
>> value only as long as they are active, i.e., while inactive, there is
>> no current value.  In other words, while inactive, they should be
>> neither readable nor writable.  (Hmm, one could make them just readonly
> 
> Another good idea.

Ultimately there are a lot of ideas here on how to solve this, but I'd
also like to see something quite practical (new APIs etc. can be useful
but I'm still not quite understanding things as they work currently, so
perhaps my naive summary can provide some insight by being so out of
touch! (I live in hope!)).