[alsa-devel] [PATCH 2/2] ALSA: Integrate control based jack reporting with core jack reporting

[Takashi Iwai]

At Mon, 13 Feb 2012 07:44:59 -0800,
Mark Brown wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 02:56:55PM +0100, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> > Mark Brown wrote:
> 
> > > There's rather a lot of people who do embedded development and do need
> > > to look at this stuff, though.  There's a real cost to raising the bar
> > > for humans to understand things.
> 
> > Hm, I'm afraid that this is getting apart from the real worth
> > discussion.  I'm interested in whether "Line-Out" is acceptable
> > enough, or it's a matter of taste, just like Marmite is acceptable as
> > the normal English breakfasts.
> 
> Well, I dunno - you did suggest adding direction modifiers to the jack
> names which would both be a more general solution to the problem and
> clean up the naming issue.

OK, let's postpone about it.

> > with the input-jack layer.  The input-jack doesn't provide the index
> > number.  So, you can't register the same name correctly.  Thus I tried
> > to create a unique name string as input-jack id.
> 
> It's really never been the intention to have an "input-jack" layer -

I called it just to distinguish with kctl jack, not intended to stress
that it's an input layer.

> the API is there to hide all the input layer stuff it can from the
> individual audio drivers.  The only thing that leaks out is the button
> remapping which I couldn't think of anything more sensible to do with
> them.
> 
> > Now, looking back to your implementation, the kctl jack is created
> > with a name string based on the switch type, not from the name string
> > passed to snd_jack_new() itself.  Why not passing the string as is?
> 
> We can't pass it as-is since we'll need multiple controls per jack -
> literally all the systems I have available to test on would fail if they
> used the same name as they all have headset jacks.  As I said further up
> the thread my plan had been to refactor the name generation code once
> the separate kctl code is gone and they can be merged into the same
> source file which makes this a lot easier.

Makes sense.

> With these patches I'm mainly looking for a quick and simple refactoring
> to get rid of the duplication - once we've got rid of the duplicate
> driver APIs then we can refactor the internals of the implementation
> however we like but there's a pretty pressing need to fix the driver
> API and get all the drivers doing the same thing to userspace even if
> it's not ideal.

Hm, then I'd say let's hold on.  Merging this half-baked stuff is
rather confusing at this point since the use of kctl jack isn't
targeted yet for ASoC.

I believe what we need _now_ is to decide the policy (i.e. element
naming rule and TLV definitions) for kctl jacks quickly.

> > If multiple kctls are needed (e.g. for headset), you can either create
> > a new name or just create the multiple instances with the same name
> > but give extra TLVs to identify which type it is.  Or, you can create
> > an enum control so that both the input-jack and the kctl-jack
> > correspond as 1:1.
> 
> This stuff is why I've been asking you about the ABI and general
> semantics for the new controls, I was never sure what the intention was
> - when you said they were just plain booleans I just went ahead and
> created multiple controls as that seemed to be what the current idiom
> was.
> 
> I don't think an enumeration is going to scale so well given the number
> of possible combinations you can get on more complex jacks.

OK.

> > In other words, if 1:1 mapping isn't needed, we don't have to create a
> > different name string at all.  Just create "Jack Detect" controls with
> > different indices and with corresponding TLVs.  This would be enough
> > (could be even easier) for a machine parser.
> 
> That'd work I think, though I would create a new control for each
> physical jack at least just for clarity.

They are indeed individual ctl elements.  They just share the same
name and are distinguished by the index numbers.  For the parser
program, it would be even easier because it needs to look only for
elements containing the single string.  The rest is the parse of TLVs
of gathered elements, which would be needed no matter whether we have
multiple name strings or not.

> > And, it seems that there is no standard rule defined for the id string
> > of input-jack.  If 1:1 model is used, we'd need to define this rule.
> 
> The input stack doesn't have the same concept of machine parsable names
> for things that ALSA does (honestly that's pretty unique to ALSA within
> the kernel) - the names it users are all free form text intended to be
> meaningful to humans only.

Yeah, maybe.  But, if you have two headset jacks, how would you
identify with the current jack stuff...?

> > BTW, I found another issue.  With this implementation, you can't build
> > kjack ctl without input-jack.  I can work around it for HD-audio by
> > adding more ifdef, but it'd be ugly...
> 
> I really don't see this as a problem; it seems vanishingly unlikely that
> any realistic system would want to disable the input API and need
> accessory detection.  Obviously the end goal here is that you wouldn't
> be able to have HDA specific hacks in the code as everything will be
> handled by the ALSA core code...

Yeah, the more code may be moved toward the core once when we decide
the standards.

> To my mind we should just support everything and let userspace worry
> about deciding what to use, this isn't the sort of thing which should
> require a kernel rebuild to configure and it's not like there's any
> fundamental problem or massive overhead caused by having the devices
> show up.

That's one option, yes.  OTOH, people always want to diet the kernel
code.  It's a good dream that is hardly to achieve in reality (for
human beings, too), though.


So, at this point, I can list the following policies for kctl jacks:

A. all kctls have one name string with different indices.  Each jack
   is distinguished by the TLV provided to each kctl.
  
B. kctls are built with only a base name ("Headphone", "Mic") with
   different indices and TLVs.

C. kctls contain unique names ([location] base [direction] [channel])
   optionally with TLVs

It'd be clear when thinking some real cases.  Assume a headset jack
containing a headphone and a mic switch:
A: two kctls with TLV JACK_HEADSET but with TYPE_HEADPHONE and
   TYPE_MIC, respectively.
B1: two kctls with the same "Headset" name, with TLV TYPE_HEADPHONE
    and TYPE_MIC
B2: separate to a kctl with "Headphone" and a kctl with "Mic"
C1: same as B1
C2: same as B2

When an extra headphone jack is added to the above,
A: another kctl with TLV_JACK_HEADPHONE, TYPE_HEADPHONE
B1: A kctl "Headphone" with TLV TYPE_HEADPHONE
B2: A kctl "Headphone" with index 1
C1: same as B1
C2: A kctl "Rear Headphone" (and rename other "Front Headphone")

Yet more another headphone jack on left,
A: another kctl with TLV_JACK_HEADPHONE, TYPE_HEADPHONE, LOC_LEFT
B1: A kctl "Headphone" index 1 with TLV TYPE_HEADPHONE, LOC_LEFT
B2: A kctl "Headphone" index 2 with LOC_LEFT
C1: A kctl "Left Headphone" (rename other "Rear Headphone")
C2: A kctl "Left Headphone"

... or does it make things more complicated? :)


thanks,

Takashi