Revert "Keystrokes to adjust applications volume and mute" (#16440)
Reverts PR
Reverts #16273
Issues fixed
Fixes #16409
Fixes #16402
Issues reopened
#16052
Brief reason for revert
We started with mltony creating:
#16051 Feature request: Sound split
Which was a duplicate of:
#12985 Audio settings with stereo headset (or speakers) - Send NVDA sounds on one side and the rest of Windows sounds on the other side
And then implemented by:
#16071 Sound split
mltony also created:
#16052 Feature request: add command to adjust volume of all applications except for NVDA
Which was implemented in:
#16273 Keystrokes to adjust applications volume and mute
This PR was approved and merged and was then found to cause issues:
#16402 Unmuting other apps does not work as expected
#16409 Apps mute and volume features work very unexpectedly with WASAPI disabled
Due to these issues and the considerable debate on the approach, the above PR #16273 was reverted by:
#16440
As an alternative to the revert #16440 to resolve the 2 issues (#16402, #16409) and keep #16273, mltony created:
#16404
The question now becomes, how do we proceed from here?
NV Access's position is that the sound split functionality (#16051) is a useful feature to add into core. However, due to the following reasons, we believe that further work on the volume adjustment features (#16273, #16404) to improve the UX is required on a branch (off master/alpha) before it can be added back in:
Windows sound mixer has reasonable accessibility.
Sound split on its own provides value to users.
The UX of swapping between NVDA volume control and windows volume control needs to be resolved.
The UX of resolving volume issues due to NVDA crashes needs to be resolved.
As one of the contributors on the threads said, "So now there are two mixers in the chain, one of which can be invisible, and overrides the other, or makes its settings relative instead of absolute."