Bug#548611: gnash: please add a configuration setting for initial volume level

[Francesco Poli]

On Tue, 31 Aug 2010 05:52:11 +0200 Gabriele Giacone wrote:

> On 08/29/2010 06:01 PM, Francesco Poli wrote:
> > Now I am back with a decent Internet link and could retry to reproduce
> > the problem.
> 
> First of all, please install latest version 0.8.8-2 in unstable.

Thanks for following up to my reply.

I've just installed gnash from unstable.
My volume still starts at maximum value... but see below.

> 
> >> please let us reproduce it, what site?
> > 
> > YouTube, for instance.
> 
> At youtube.com, you might encounter cookies-related issues:
> 
> http://www.gnashdev.org/?q=node/77
> 
> At the moment, we didn't understand yet what browsers are affected,
> what not, what conditions. What acts as workaround in all cases seems to
> be removing+blocking cookies from youtube.com.

Hence, I should block Flash cookies, shouldn't I?

Well, sorry for not telling explicitly before (it didn't come up to me
that my problem had to do with cookies!), but I am convinced I am
already blocking Flash cookies!

After installing mozilla-plugin-gnash, I edited /etc/gnashrc by
uncommenting the following line:

  set SOLSafeDir /dev/null

The reason is that I kind of hate cookies, in general.
I always refuse them, even in web browsing, unless they are strictly
needed for specific tasks (for instance, for a limited number of
websites which require authentication).
As a consequence, I saw that option and thought "I don't want Flash
cookies, let's disable them!".

[...]
> > The fact is that I am using an auto-starting jackd daemon, with alsa
> > back-end.
> > Now, as far as know, gnash relies on gstreamer, and thus cannot
> > directly connect to a jackd daemon: can you confirm that?
> 
> I tried your configuration with few changes and now my system uses jackd
> too but I only have good news: it works fine! :)

Thanks a lot for trying to reproduce my setup so closely: believe me,
it's really appreciated!   :-)

[...]
> >> I think your issue may depend on the player which plays videos.
> > 
> > What do you mean by "the player which plays videos"?
> > The one implemented in flash and executed by gnash?
> 
> Exactly. Gnash can't modify or start with a configurable volume level
> whereas .swf applications it plays can do it.
> And this is what I found out:
> under ~/.gnash/SharedObjects, gnash stores .swf applications and related
> data.

Since I block cookies, I have no ~/.gnash directory at all (no one
created it!).
That seems to be the reason why my volume settings are lost each time
I start to watch a new video!

Anyway, I think the lack of a default value (which means that gnash has
to rely on cookies for such settings) is a suboptimal situation.

As I requested in this very wishlist bug, I would like to have some
configuration option to set the default initial volume and then leave
to cookies other possible adjustments (for people who like accepting
cookies), but still providing a sensible and configurable default (for
people who do *not* like cookies).

> For example:
> 
> SharedObjects/s.ytimg.com/yt/swf/watch-vfl186120.swf
> 	local copy of youtube movie player
> SharedObjects/s.ytimg.com/soundData.sol
> 	volume settings we was looking for
> 
> So when you modify volume level, gnash stores it in that file.
> I confirm that at the first access, volume is at maximum level but when
> you lower it, your action is saved.
> s.ytimg.com is one of the youtube servers and I don't know how many they
> are so there might be more than one "first access".

This is another reason for having a good configurable default volume
value. Having to adjust the volume for more than one "first access" is
really surprising!

> 
> And how to made initial maximum level lower?
> Play with levels, IMHO the answer is there.

Which levels? The alsamixer ones?

They are fine for all the other applications I use, why should I mess
up with them just to adapt to gnash?!?


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..................................................... Francesco Poli .
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