[LAD] "bleeding edge html5" has interesting Audio APIs

[David Robillard]

On Mon, 2011-11-21 at 10:26 +0000, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 02:40:11AM +0100, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
>  
> > Stability of a functioning build environment does have it's merits.
> 
> Sure. But I don't see it happen - ever. Because it essentially 
> means to stop innovation. Building 'the perfect world' once and
> for all has been a dream during all of human history and has
> always failed.
> 
> Some considerations:
> 
> * Why is the dream of having a stable and universally available
> browser/JS environment any more realistic than the failed Java
> one ? What makes you (I don't mean PS personally) so sure it
> won't fail in the same way ?

Naturally it's not perfect, but the billions of web pages out there that
already exist, and continually multiply, forces them to be somewhat
stable.  It's certainly not the case that a well written standards
conformant page is going to not work in a browser in 5 years.

One things for sure, it's more stable than the next best thing.  The
numbers absolutely dwarf any other "platform" by several orders of
magnitude.

The dream of having a stable build environment is realistic because you
don't need a stable build environment at all :)

> * As long as the economic system is based on competition people
> will try and get an advantage by being different and using 
> proprietary extensions. This game is not going to be played 
> just by competing on manufacturing costs of pods and pads.
> 'Collaborative innovation' is IMHO just another dream.
> 
> * The web has evolved into a giant advertising machine and, as
> we know it, depends for its existence on the money made in this
> way. The means of delivery of these ads and for obtaining the
> required information for it to be targeted, is the browser. 
> This makes the browser, and any services it may provide to act
> as an application environment, almost by definition something
> that will always be designed to control and monitor the user,
> in other words, something that basically works against the
> user's interests. I wouldn't call that the ideal application
> environment.

None of this hand-waving nonsense applies to what you personally do as a
developer.  The idea that you would be forced to somehow use proprietary
extensions from the evil capitalists to force marketing down people's
throats when using the browser as a platform and not even involving
servers at all (let along other people's) is absurd.

> * If these sorts of dreams come true, or if we really believe
> in them, there is no point in developing Linux any more. Just
> forget about it, buy the latest toys, and be happy.

Non sequitur.

Anyway, as you said above, building the perfect world is impossible,
right?  This applies to Linux too.  Should we all just give up and go
home, then?

> * Given the previous, maybe we should start a new mailing list,
> 'browser-audio-dev' or something similar. The subject is OT on
> this one.

A discussion about technologies to use for writing audio UIs is
obviously not OT, particularly when tablet UIs are a hot topic in music
tech these days, and rightly so.

Deranged paranoid rants about capitalism or whatever are pretty OT,
though...

-dr