[LAD] Non Session Management

[rosea.grammostola]

On 03/22/2012 01:33 PM, rosea.grammostola wrote:
> On 03/22/2012 12:59 PM, thijs van severen wrote:
>> 2012/3/22 rosea.grammostola <rosea.grammostola at gmail.com
>> <mailto:rosea.grammostola at gmail.com>>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I wonder what the LAD community thinks about Non Session Manager
>>
>> http://non.tuxfamily.org/nsm/__API.html
>> <http://non.tuxfamily.org/nsm/API.html>
>> http://non.tuxfamily.org/nsm
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?__v=ui-gC_ZMeGM
>> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui-gC_ZMeGM>
>> http://youtu.be/xzspJXbEoc0
>>
>> From a user POV I must say that it works very smooth at first
>> sight. It's easy to use and one of the strong points seems to be the
>> flexibility, e.g. the ability to copy and change existing sessions,
>> run multiple sessions (also via network). But I cannot comment on
>> the technical goods and bads of the API and how easy it will be to
>> implement this in a Jackaudio application. It seems to use OSC
>> messages and depends only on liblo.
>>
>> Thanks in advance,
>> \r
>>
>> MHO: having a good universal session manager would be a dream come true,
>> but so far i have not been able to find one that does what i would like
>> it to do :
>> - start a couple of apps
>> - wire them together
>> - add some more apps
>> - save everything
>> - done
>
> This is what Session managers do, NSM, JackSession and Ladish.
> Try it.
>
>>
>> for me it is rather annoying that i have to predefine a session (as is
>> the case with most session managers).
>> i just would like to open apps, use them, connect them, without having
>> to think about 'the session', let alone 'predefine' it
>> jacksession offers some of this, but not all apps support jacksession
>> non session manager has some interesting features too (like
>> over-the-network sessions)
> I don't think this is true. You can start apps just as you like and save
> the session. In NSM you do this in the GUI, but it's very easy to remove
> a client in a session or add one, so no need to predefine anything.
>
> A problem are clients without support for the session format.
> At least in NSM it's easy to start any application nevertheless (the
> author is also thinking about writing a wrapper for non supported apps).
> At least NSM acts like a script starting clients and restore the JACK
> connections (via client jackpatch). So people who prefer scripts and
> aj-snapshot, will find the same benefits in NSM if the author has added
> the wrapper (to be able to add arguments to a starting client).
>
> This is also more or less possible in JackSession, all though saving and
> quiting the session works more cumbersome in Qjackctl compared to NSM in
> my opinion. There is a possibility to start apps without JS support, but
> that's not implemented in Qjackctl yet, so atm a practical disadvantage
> of JS. There is a non official supported wrapper for JackSession though,
> js_wrap.
>
> We all know that session management is hard, but if we can live with
> more or less one standard it would be nice. JackSession seems to be an
> option, but if I understand the situation well, it seems that Paul Davis
> rather sees LV2 rise, he doesn't really believe in Session Management,
> so he is probably not very motivated to help it rise. Torben wrote
> JackSession, but he doesn't have time for Linuxaudio atm, so it might be
> fair to question the chances for survival here.
>
> I don't say that JackSession could not survive, but it needs support and
> development. If the community can agree on a format (NSM for example)
> which is supported better, then that might be a better option.

One thing to add to the discussion: To me it looks like NSM has some 
features JackSession was criticized for, quit session, lack of support 
for non-supported audio apps, multiple sessions. And it doesn't have the 
features Ladish was criticized for (need for jackdbus).


>
> Apart from the politics it's just interesting to discuss the NSM API here.
>
> Best,
> \r
>