[linux-audio-dev] SC3 - some help required

[stefan kersten]

On Tue, Aug 10, 2004 at 11:50:59AM +0200, Alfons Adriaensen wrote:
> Thanks for your reply, and yes, that's what I found out. 
>  
> > For more details, look at the Server and ServerOptions helpfile
> > (use C-c C-h in an Emacs SCEL buffer to access the helpfiles).
> 
> The help items in the sclang menu don't seem to work. They 
> want a directory 'SuperCollider/help', and there is no 'help'
> directory at all in what I co'd from CVS.

you need to set the elisp variable `sclang-help-directory' to
point to the rtf help files in the CVS sources, e.g.

(setq sclang-help-directory "~/src/SuperCollider3/build/Help")

you can set it either in ~/.emacs or graphically via M-x
sclang-customize

> Also "Show server panels" prints the command name in the
> minibuffer, and that's all.

the linux GUI stuff is not in CVS yet, you can get it here:

http://www.cs.tu-berlin.de/~kerstens/sc_linux.html

> Is there a list of all the available classes, their methods and
> paramters ? The only thing I found is a 5 year old PDF document
> on SC2. Most of the examples in this text do no work at all -
> probably a lot has changed between SC2 and SC3.

SC2 tutorials are fine for learning about syntax and basics,
but the interface to sound generation has changed a lot
indeed.

> It really seems SC is the tool I've been waiting for, so I will
> spend whatever time and effort required in order to learn to
> master it. But starting from the little documentation that I
> was able to find is a bit hard :-(

the help files in the distribution are actually pretty
extensive, you just have to know how to access them :)
pressing C-c C-h in an sclang-buffer in emacs lets you enter a
help topic (with tab completion) with a supplied default when
the cursor is over a documented identifier. the help topic
`Help' links to many other documents.

there are also shortcuts to dig around in the class library
(finding method implementations etc.), all of which can be
found in a little scel tutorial on the site above.

> In the longer term, I'd like to be able to write programs that
> use scsynth directly as a 'synthesizer server'. 

then the help topics `Server-Command-Reference' and
`Synth-Definition-File-Format' are your friends ...

hth,
<sk>