[asterisk-dev] AST_FRAME_DIGITAL

[Klaus Darilion]

Tilghman Lesher schrieb:
> On Thursday 13 September 2007 04:52:20 Klaus Darilion wrote:
>> Russell Bryant schrieb:
>>> Klaus Darilion wrote:
>>>> Thus, why do we have a AST_FRAME_IMAGE? Why is IMAGE not treated as
>>>> VOICE? Obviously because Asterisk would transcode and the image is
>>>> broken - the same reason why I like AST_FRAME_DIGITAL.
>>> I don't think that comparing IMAGE to DIGITAL is a valid comparison.  I
>>> can look at the image in an IMAGE frame.  I can listen to the audio in a
>>> VOICE frame. But what about DIGITAL?  How is Asterisk supposed to
>>> interpret a DIGITAL frame?
>> That's the whole point - it should not interpret it at all.
> 
> In that case, you should not queue the frame to Asterisk.  Period.  If you are
> telling me that Asterisk should not know anything about the contents, then
> it will not handle that frame for any reason whatsoever.
> 
> I don't think, however, that that is what you want.  You want, essentially,
> Asterisk to become a carrier of proprietary information that it just blindly
> passes on to whatever is on the other side.  That does not jibe with the
> model of ANY of the existing channel drivers in Asterisk today.  EVERYTHING
> must know _what_ it is that it is carrying, in order to properly queue it to
> the other side.  We don't support unknown codecs, we don't support unknown
> video types, and we certainly do not support "here's this packet of unknown
> information, just pass it blindly".
> 
> Asterisk is an intelligent application, and you're trying to treat it like a
> dumb pipe.

I know Asterisk is an intelligent application - but it should be so 
intelligent to know that digital data should not be transcoded.

I do not understand why you resist to make Asterisk useful to more 
scenarios. Currently Asterisk does not correctly bridge digital ISDN 
calls and I want to fix - but you tell me that Asterisk can't do that 
because it is to intelligent?


To me that sounds like "please do not make Asterisk useful in other 
scenarios too..."

regards
klaus