the user should not be required to know anything
about application
frameworks).
Does this not contradict your argument? Without automatic connections the user now does
need to know all about the jack application framework since otherwise they cannot get a
jack application to make a sound. Maybe that is just in the details of what you are trying
to say, but either the user needs to know a lot about several different applications and
do it all for themselves, or if they know little to nothing they need to have the system
do what it can for them.
I agree that there needs to be an option to either auto-connect or not, my personal
opinion is that auto-connect should be the default since the alternative of knowing
everything puts too high a barrier to entry on Linux systems. What I mean by "knowing
everything" is that without some auto-config then a first time user needs to find out
and understand all the reasons and options that are preventing their application
generating audio. The opposing situation is that an experienced user would have to find
out the correct way to tune their environment overriding the auto-config features,
something they are going to have to do anyway. There are plenty of similar mandates from
other musical technologies, even MIDI specified that an instrument, per default, should
always come up first time in OMNI mode and accept MIDI from any channel. That way the
first time user can connect a cable and get started. Once they are happy they can bolt
down their own channels, settings, etc, that fit their developing environment.
This subject has come up at several times before and auto-connect/config are often seen as
'dumbing down'. This is generally not the case since the apps almost invariably
have enough options for people to tweak and play with so the whole installation is not any
dumber, it just has a lower barrier to entry.
All this talk about speaker combinations does not really relate to auto-connect, no? If
somebody has indeed built such a configuration and made it work then they should probably
be relied upon to prevent automatic connections and a variety of other mistakes since
otherwise, if they are not aware of how to do so, they will probably end up inflicting the
same damage on themselves, ie, they should know to look into these issues beforehand or
should not have deployed and been in charge of such an impressive installation.
Regards, Nick.
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