Bug#410174: vorbis-tools: ogg123 --quiet is not entirely quiet

[jrodman at debbugs.spamportal.net]

Package: vorbis-tools
Version: 1.1.1-11
Severity: minor

*** Please type your report below this line ***

When changing tracks (ie. when moving to the next file), ogg123, or some
underlying library spews to stderr, for example:

jrodman at Skonnos:/opt/music/ripped/stream/Sting/The_Dream_of_the_Blue_Turtles >ogg123 -q *
ALSA: underrun, at least 0ms.
ALSA: underrun, at least 0ms.
ALSA: underrun, at least 0ms.
ALSA: underrun, at least 0ms.

I am unsure if this represents a flaw in ogg123's use of some API, or is
simply a useless message by some library with a flawed idea of what
"standard error" is for.  There is no problm with the operation or
output from a user-visible perspective.

VIEW:

    I do not believe it is reasonable for a library to print to stderr
    without cooperation from the linking binary for non-fatal problems,
    for precisely reasons such as this.  The program knows far more
    about how it is being invoked.  The library knows almost nothing,
    therefore it should be silent unless it is told to produce helpful
    output.

    Therefore, if this is a library bug (I cannot find this string in
    any of the below libraries), please move and upgrade to normal.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.16-jsr
Locale: LANG=en_US.iso88591, LC_CTYPE=en_US.iso88591 (charmap=ISO-8859-1)

Versions of packages vorbis-tools depends on:
ii  libao2                    0.8.6-4        Cross Platform Audio Output Librar
ii  libc6                     2.3.6.ds1-8    GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcurl3-gnutls           7.15.5-1       Multi-protocol file transfer libra
ii  libflac7                  1.1.2-5        Free Lossless Audio Codec - runtim
ii  libogg0                   1.1.3-2        Ogg Bitstream Library
ii  liboggflac3               1.1.2-5        Free Lossless Audio Codec - runtim
ii  libspeex1                 1.1.12-2       The Speex Speech Codec
ii  libvorbis0a               1.1.2.dfsg-1.2 The Vorbis General Audio Compressi
ii  libvorbisenc2             1.1.2.dfsg-1.2 The Vorbis General Audio Compressi
ii  libvorbisfile3            1.1.2.dfsg-1.2 The Vorbis General Audio Compressi

vorbis-tools recommends no packages.

-- no debconf information