Comment 1 for bug 182957

First, thanks for taking time to comment. These issues are not applicable to the pulseaudio source package but to the padevchooser source package, so I'm reassigning. Cody and I recently completely cleaned up the Applications>Sound & Video menu of the PA tools. See http://trilug.org/~crimsun/Screenshot.png for a "before" glimpse. Note that on current hardy only the device chooser (padevchooser) icon is shown now; the remaining PA tools' menu items are masked (the changelogs for padevchooser, paman, pavucontrol, and pavumeter contain the rationale).

Regarding "server," "sink," and "source" - these are the terms that GStreamer (and thus, GNOME) uses in the `gstreamer-properties` tool. Perhaps instead of "sink" we could use "playback," and instead of "source," "capture." In terms of only being able to select "default", that could be hidden via Gtk-fu. Opinions on these points?

Regarding the manager - I don't know.

Regarding the volume control - this application allows you to migrate streams across "sinks." It has been noted that the existing "volume control applet" will remain in the notification area for hardy. There are no current plans to bloat the existing volume control applet's code to handle migration.

Regarding the volume meters - I don't know.

Regarding quit - I don't know.

Regarding preferences - completely agree. This will be patched out in the next uploads.

To summarise: padevchooser wasn't designed originally as a UI-nice (GNOME HIG-compliant) app. This is a problem, but I can't fix this myself (since my preferences certainly are not representative of hardy's potential userbase). Many of the points you've raised merit extended discussion on the pulseaudio, gnome, and ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing lists. I agree that the "tech speak" is horrid and that there are unnecessary items shown in the applet. However, re-exposing the menu items reintroduces clutter, and that's bad, too.