[oss-devel] Possible projects for contributors : (even Windows might be possible)

[timothy at farrarfocus.com]

First off, I never heard anything about the re-open sourcing of OSS until 
just yesterday (stumbled upon it actually), so I am going to assume that a 
tremendous number of other developers have no idea as well. Perhaps a 
number of sources decided not to post the press releases (nothing on 
slashdot for instance). I have a personal interest in insuring the OSS 
v4.0 API becomes a default kernel audio interface in Linux for use in my 
own projects ( www.farrarfocus.com/atom ), so if there is anything I 
can do to help get the word out, please let me know!

--

Possibly not a priority yet, but I'd be interested in working on a 
userland port of the OSS API for Windows and possibly Mac as well.

Providing something like a oss_open(), oss_ioctl(), ... and so on 
interface which exactly matches the Posix/unix system call model of OSS 
should be possible.

While I'm not 100% up to date with Vista's audio setup, I looks as if the 
WDM Kernel Streaming (WDM/KS) driver interface from ME,2000,and XP is 
unchanged on Vista. Seems as if the new Vista WaveRT drivers are very 
similar to the WDM/KS drivers except that WaveRT works with an event 
driven user space shared data buffer, instead of the Windows IOCTLs with 
WDM-KS.

Using the WDM/KS interface from a userland API will give one application 
100% control and override all the mixing done through other layers of 
Windows audio. Ultimatly I know that some people (including myself) using 
some kind of OSS API in Windows, will need the lower latency and 
advantages of having exclusive access so this WDM/KS interface will be 
necessary. There is the question about what to do about shared access and 
the transparent mixing that OSS does. This would probably have to be done 
by accessing the higher level windows audio APIs to insure non-OSS audio 
sources are mixed in as well.

Perhaps this is more information than is needed now...

Regardless, I'm doing a WDM/KS audio interface source base for my own 
work, which I will gladly offer up to help to start any kind of Windows 
port for the OSS API.

Take care,

_
|imothy Farrar
game .......... http://www.farrarfocus.com/atom 
darkroom ...... http://www.farrarfocus.com/ffdd 
photography ... http://www.farrarfocus.com