[LAD] Lv2 port replication [was Re: the role of lv2 extensions]

[David Robillard]

On Fri, 2009-08-14 at 10:06 +0100, Steve Harris wrote:
> On 14 Aug 2009, at 00:37, David Robillard wrote:
> >> I thought that the proposal for that the number of channels in each
> >> port would be 1 or N.
> >
> > Well, it could be, but that seems sure to be limiting in the  
> > future.  It
> > also seems to be not really feasible, short of being a joke useful for
> > only the most trivial of plugins:
> 
> I'm not interested in hypothetical future plugins.
>
> 1/N gives us support for multi channel compressors, limiters etc,  
> multichannel reverbs, what else is there that cares about the  
> difference between a quad channel plugin and two stereo ones?

Read: I'm not interested in anything beyond current plugins in
swh-plugins.

> A proposal where each group of ports can have it's own number of  
> channels just brings lots of modelling problems, like what does it  
> mean if you have 14 channels and 2 sidechains? It's just not useful,  
> and your argument that it's no harder is not convincing.

I gave several examples of where this is useful, and it's pretty telling
that the only other plugin API that can do this does it this way.  That
API (AU) is a dull pragmatic commercial thing, it's not like they did it
that way for fun.  It is more or less necessary to do it this way if you
want multiple channels to actually make any semantic sense anyway, "4
channels" is meaningless.

If this conversation has devolved into an argument over whether we need
straightforward functionality that I know for a fact I need in the near
future, then it has outlived its usefulness.  Unless anyone else is
planning on actually implementing this any time soon, it doesn't matter
anyway.  Don't mind me, I'll be over here doing it right.

-dr