Systray Audio Volume control

[shep]

I am interested in getting a systray, audio volume control for OpenBSD. Many of the panels available in OpenBSD (pypanel, tint2, fbpanel, xfce4 panel, gnome panel) have Netwm compliant systrays that will accept a number of different applications depending on the users needs. I was going to float the idea here before putting it on the mailing lists.

The main issue is that none of the available volume controls for systray's utilize the sndio sink.
Volumeicon --> alsa or oss

gvolwheel --> alsa or oss

pnmixer --> alsa or pulse audio


Of the panels in OpenBSD that include volume control , work arounds have been needed for utilization.
fbpanel volume --> alsa or oss and currently none functional in OpenBSD. The fbpanel battery applet is also broken
xfce4_mixer --> gstreamer which works through a gstreamer oss plugin
gnome volume --> now with a pulse audio dependency in OpenBSD

Sndio is well documented

It appears that the overall goal in OpenBSD is to utilize the sndio backend for audio applications. Some prominent applications, vlc and mplayer, have adapted the sndio backend.

I also found some python scripts that generate an applet that could probably be tweaked to use mixerctl outputs.

So, there are a number of options, python script, quick and dirty adaptation of the FreeBSD gvolwheel to OpenBSD oss backend or the more time consuming, and presently beyond my capablities, task of writing a sndio patch for either volumeicon/gvolwheel.

Any suggestion on how to tackle this?

[a4lm]

Looking at mixerctl.c, it should be relatively easy task.
Quick look at Volumeicon and GVolWheel gave me an impression,
that patching GVolWheel would be shorter diff.

[shep]

This does get into the idea of portability of code and the "linuxism's" that are being put into some mainstream projects.

I have the sense that many of the daemonforums and FreeBSD forum participants prefer smaller, lighter window managers.

Systray applets are attractive to me in that they are modular: don't want it, don't install it. For myself, the systray applets that i am interested in are volume control/muting for all systems and for laptops battery and network managers. I have not been able to test the tint2 battery applet in any BSD and the one in fbpanel is reported broken.

Both volumeicon and gvolwheel appeared to be modular in that alsa and oss functions appear to stand alone.

gvolwheel codes for gnome-alsamixer to be the default mixer (even in FreeBSD) but the end user can changed the default mixer in the "preferences". The mixer interface I like in my OpenBox/Tint2/Wbar desktop is aumix run interactively (aumix -I). Aumix is another app that in OpenBSD uses an OSS backend.

I do not know if it would generate any enthusiasm but coming up with a lightweight, modular BSD friendly desktop using the model of the LXDE project would be answer to individuals who are steering software development away from BSD desktops.