[LAD] LADI

[Thorsten Wilms]

On Mon, 2009-12-21 at 23:33 -0600, Gabriel M. Beddingfield wrote:

> Also, with respect to saving and restoring sessions, 
> suppose this work-flow:
> 
>    1. Save a session (#1) with Ardour as a part of it.
>       Instead of transferring GB of data to the
>       session-data-dir, it stores a handle[1] to the
>       data (i.e. a URI tracing back to a save state).
> 
>    2. When session #1 is reloaded, Ardour loads the
>       handle to the original project's save state.
> 
>    3. User forces an export to the session-data-dir.
>       This means that Ardour must transfer all the
>       gigabytes of data necc. to recreate the session.
> 
>    4. User opens session #1 from an exported archive.
>       Ardour finds heavy data in the session-data-dir,
>       and uses it (rather than, say, importing the
>       data to  some other location).
> 
>    5. User does a "save as" on the current session,
>       thus saving Session #2.  Ardour saves a handle to
>       a save-state from Session #1 (and Session #1's
>       session-data-dir).
> 
>    6. User deletes Session #1.  They now
>       have also corrupted Session #2.

If you work with a session-managed Ardour, why not store audio files
within the session-data-dir? Otherwise I see no reason _not_ to use the
same exact Ardour session directories as now, keeping everything
external and just needing one link to it.

There is no "Save As" in Ardour. If there was, it would create a new
session directory, including an "audiofiles" dir with hardlinks to the
required audio files (symlinks if they are on another drive, though).
No problem with deleting the other hardlinks, the symlink case remains
ugly.


I've long been thinking that the "handling heavy audio files" problem
should be tackled together with the "using any media files within some
kind of document or session" problem, combined with the
linking-vs-embedding issue.

Locally, you would never embed files, but always use handles of a kind
that withstand renaming and moving of the files. Sending/transfering a
document/session elsewhere would trigger bundling of all required files.
Ideally, this would even include plugins. Think system-level dependency
tracking and resolution.

Well, seeing how difficult to impossible it is for people here to find
consensus, I guess I shouldn't hope for LADers to team up with projects
like Inkscape, Scribus and Lumiera :)


-- 
Thorsten Wilms

thorwil's design for free software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com/