[LAD] [ann] CAPS 0.4.5

[Tim Goetze]

[David Robillard]
> On 07/04/11 01:00 PM, Tim Goetze wrote:
>> The new port for the AutoWah plugin will indeed be appended to the
>> list of input ports; however, it will still precede the audio output,
>> adhering to the CAPS port order convention which puts inputs before
>> outputs.
>>   
> This will horribly break all sorts of things. Do not do this! Admittedly,
> slightly less so than rearranging control port indices would (which would
> definitely break virtually everything), but still.

I'm afraid you generously overestimate the popularity of CAPS and the 
AutoWah plugin in particular expecting this change to break "all sorts 
of things".  And you seem to underestimate the ability of your fellow 
host application designers, as we shall see in a bit.

> You should just change the ID of the plugin and this whole mess goes away. I
> can't think of any reason to keep the ID and break the plugin rather than just
> change the ID...

Adding a port doesn't break the *plugin*, it /might/ break *hosts* 
that were designed around assumptions that aren't supported by the 
interface specification.

An informal experiment shows that jack-rack 1.4.7 and ardour 2.8.11 
both do exactly the right thing when a plugin referenced by a saved 
session gains a port: they set the new port to its default value and 
happily carry on working.

(Both also cope with the removal of a port.  These are the only 
publicly available hosts I have tested.)

Following your suggestion and changing the plugin's UniqueID would 
break perfectly good saved session files in these and other properly 
designed host applications - instead of *preventing* breakage, it'd 
actually *cause* it.

If your particular LADSPA host design is incapable of handling a port 
signature change gracefully, you could fix it - an endeavour I'll be 
happy to help with, witness the discussed version symbol export - or 
you can simply choose not to upgrade your copy of CAPS.

[Paul Coccoli]
> And name it AutoFilter...like the Maxon AF-9 Auto Filter...

Yeah, with the added filter mode switch this name makes sense.  
Looking at the AF-9 it seems there's demand for a hi-pass mode as 
well, so we might as well add that too.

Cheers, Tim