RE: [Patch for Windows implementation of play-sound]

[bkey1@tampabay.rr.com]

> In addition to finding another way around the WINVER problem,
> I think you should just define HAVE_SOUND instead of
> introducing a new conditional USE_W32SOUND.

I believe I have resolved the problems I was having earlier
that caused me to redefine WINVER and _WIN32_WINNT
to 0x0501 in nmake.defs.  Last night I worked on
generating a new patch that corrects some mistakes I
made in my initial patch (such as unintended changes).
In this new patch, I did not redefine WINVER and
_WIN32_WINNT.  When I applied this patch to the latest
CVS sources that I downloaded last night, I did not get the
compilation errors I was getting previously when compiling
with MSVC 6.0.  I will make this new patch available as soon
as I have tested it with MinGW, which I will do tonight.

I considered using HAVE_SOUND instead of
USE_W32SOUND.  However, I wanted to ensure that
sound.c and w32sound.c could not inadvertently be
compiled at the same time.  sound.c is only compiled when
HAVE_SOUND is defined due to the following:
  #if defined HAVE_SOUND
  // contents of file here
  #endif /* HAVE_SOUND */
w32sound.c is only compiled if USE_W32SOUND is
defined and HAVE_SOUND is not defined due to the
following:
  #if !defined(HAVE_SOUND) && defined(USE_W32SOUND)
  // contents of file here
  #endif  /* #if !defined(HAVE_SOUND) && defined(USE_W32SOUND) */  
I could, however, change my code so that HAVE_SOUND is used instead.

> 
> I am also concerned about the following line:
> 
> +  sprintf(sz_cmd_buf,"open \"%s\" alias SulliTech_PlaySound_Device 
wait",psz_file);
> 
> What is the significance of SulliTech?
> 
> It seems to me that is either specific to your hardware,
> or you have copied the code from somewhere, which
> could expose the FSF to legal risk if we install it.

As for the significance of SulliTech, at this point there is none.
SulliTech is the name of a concept I have for a company I have
considered starting, but have never gotten around to.  It is short 
for "Sullivan Technologies."  Sullivan is the last name of my wife,
Anne E Sullivan.

I can assure you that I did not copy any code from somewhere.  I
figured out how to write this code by examining the exported functions
of a command line media player WAV.EXE by Dave Navarro (see 
http://www.cmdtools.com/) and looking them up in the MSDN Library.
When I initially wrote this code, it was part of a simple command
line program I wrote that implemented the same functionality as WAV.EXE
but fixed what is to me a very annoying bug, it did not support UNIX
style paths (paths that use the / character as a path separator).
I decided to do this after Dave Navarro chose not to fix this bug
when I reported it to him.

Initially I had some idea of possibly selling this command line
utility as a share ware product released by SulliTech.  But, when
I noticed that this code could be used to improve GNU Emacs by
providing a feature in Windows that was available in Linux, I
decided to make the code open source instead.  When I made that
decision, I forgot to remove the references to SulliTech.  I will
do so tonight.

I hope this explanation eases your concern about any possible
copyright issues with this code.