[LAD] OSC Practices

[Will Light]

It's interesting that you mention the Monome.  There has been
discussion about how the OSC stuff is structured and there are a few
efforts to improve it.  I went and dug up this thread:
http://www.vidvox.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=14786 .  It talks about
how the Monome protocol is a bit non-standard and may provide a few of
the "best practices" that you're looking for.

-w

On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 5:27 AM, Olivier Guilyardi <list at samalyse.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> a Jackbeat user is currently trying to use TouchOSC, an iPhone app, as a
> controller, and there is a need to translate in/out OSC messages.
>
> I have looked at TouchOSC messages, and the translation is nothing like
> straightforward. There is a so-called BeatMachine[1] controller in TouchOSC,
> which looks like a drum machine, but in the messages that it sends:
>
> 1. the track order is reversed, the first track being at the bootom
> 2. the indexes are one-based in TouchOSC, and zero-based in Jackbeat
> 3. the track/beat position is transmitted as a path element instead of a value
>
> The fact that some translation is needed between OSC units is quite normal to
> me, but I would like to try and follow some wide-spread practices, if any, maybe
> refactoring the Jackbeat OSC dialect, to make such translation easier.
>
> I originally looked at some Monome messages docs[2], and that's the reason for
> 2. and 3. above. The point 1. seems absolutely odd to me however.
>
> Now, there's another thing: currently Jackbeat features quite a few OSC
> methods/commands but little OSC events[3]. This forbids using search an external
> controller as some kind of UI replacement. For instance, volume sliders can be
> controlled, but no event is sent when they change. One of the reason for this
> lack is that I was unsure about the right protocol to choose..
>
> So, in TouchOSC, input and output messages seem to always be symmetrical, which
> looks like a clever and intuitive design to me. For instance, a slider both
> sends and receives messages at /1/fader1 (example). And you just can't setup a
> different prefix for in and out.
>
> Once again, this isn't the way Monome is doing it: it sends /40h/press, and
> receives at /40h/led.
>
> So I'm a bit confused. What would be ideal is to follow some kind of practices
> and/or standard, so that, in many cases, translation is only a matter of
> changing OSC prefixes. And if that's not realistic, then I would like to avoid
> some of the inconsistencies listed above with tools as TouchOSC and such.
>
> Is there any such standard or common/recommended practices?
>
> Cheers,
>
> [1] http://hexler.net/pub/touchosc/touchosc-manual-v1-1.pdf
> [2] http://docs.monome.org/doku.php?id=tech:protocol:osc
> [3] http://jackbeat.samalyse.org/wiki/BasicUsage#OSCInterface
>
> --
>  Olivier
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