http://svn.berlios.de/wsvn/genkdesvn/branches/kde-3.5/kde-base/kdelibs/files/kdelibs-knotify-noarts.patch?op=log&rev=0&sc=0&isdir=0 From the look of this URL, the above summary seems at least possible, and would seem sensible to implement.
I think this is still unsupported by upstream. I don't have the bug at hand, but IIRC there is one in which someone stated the reason why that wouldn't work that well. If you can get upstream to confirm that patch, we might consider that.
I've updated KDE 3.4 to 3.5 and decided to get rid of arts while at it. The gentoo kde guide says: "If you do not want to use aRts for your all-around multimedia, disable the arts USE flag (it is active by default)." So I've added -arts in make.conf, emerged kde-meta-3.5. Then I've login into new KDE, went into control center, system notifications and tried to set up external player for the notify sounds. But it didn't play any sound using the test button (although it did play fine from the command like). On the IRC somebody told me I need to have arts flag for kdelibs to get knotify working even with external player instead of arts (and that he discovered by running into the same problems as me). Now this is confusing... the USE flag is called "arts" but effects whole knotify. If you don't have it, you can still see the knotify dialogs, just it wont work even with external player. I would expect at least the KDE guide to mention that. As for this patch, I've heard that SUSE uses it, so it should really be possible. Now you need to emerge whole arts and then disable it, just to play sounds in knotify with external player...
We stay close to upstream, aside from security and compatibility issues, but don't include other patches. Please follow https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99246
OK. Could you then update The KDE Configuration HOWTO to say you still need USE="arts" at for kdelibs to get sound notifications via external player?
