[LAD] [ANN] MFP 0.04 (Music For Programmers, a graphical patching system)

[Bill Gribble]

MFP -- Music For Programmers 
Release 0.04, "More Fun Patches" 

I'm pleased to announce a new version of MFP, containing many fixes
and improvements.   It is still not at a "production" level, but is
becoming more and more usable.  Your interest and participation are
invited!    

A summary of changes is below.  Please see the GitHub issue tracker
for complete details: 

  http://github.com/bgribble/mfp 

Thanks to the great environment, continuous hacking time, and great
feedback at LAC-2013, I was able to put in a record (for me) number of
commits (50+) during the last week and make many small and
not-so-small bugfixes and improvements.  Please see http://lac.iem.at
for a video of my talk, and/or have a look at the paper and slides in
the source repository under doc/lac2013.

Changes since release v0.03.1: 
----------------------------------------

  * #31: Support exported UIs from user patches ("graph-on-parent") 

  * #64: Improved implementation of "Operate" mode, making
editing/control
    fully modal 

  * #66: Expanded information in tooltips and "badges" 

  * #87: New Dial object (round slider)

  * #85: Support audio input/output in user patches 

  * #111: Bind "app" to allow a message via to send messages to it 

  * Many other bugfixes and improvements.

About MFP:
----------------------------------------

MFP is an environment for visually composing computer programs, with
an emphasis on music and real-time audio synthesis and analysis.  It's
very much inspired by Miller Puckette's Pure Data (pd) and Max/MSP,
with a bit of LabView and TouchOSC for good measure.  It is targeted
at musicians, recording engineers, and software developers who like
the "patching" dataflow metaphor for constructing audio synthesis,
processing, and analysis networks. 

MFP is a completely new code base, written in Python and C, with a
Clutter UI.  It has been under development by a solo developer (me!),
as a spare-time project for several years. 

Compared to Pure Data, its nearest relative, MFP is superficially
pretty similar but differs in a few key ways: 

 * MFP uses Python data natively.  Any literal data entered in the 
   UI is parsed by the Python evaluator, and any Python value is a 
   legitimate "message" on the dataflow network 
 
 * MFP provides fairly raw access to Python constructs if desired.  
   For example, the built-in Python console allows live coding of
   Python functions as patch elements at runtime. 

 * Name resolution and namespacing are addressed more robustly, 
   with explicit support for lexical scoping 

 * The UI is largely keyboard-driven, with a modal input system 
   that feels a bit like vim.  The graphical presentation is a
   single-window style with layers rather than multiple windows.   

 * There is fairly deep integration of Open Sound Control (OSC), with 
   every patch element having an OSC address and the ability to learn
   any other desired address.  

The code is still in early days, but has reached a point in its
lifecycle where at least some interesting workflows are operational
and it can be used for a good number of things.  I think MFP is now
ripe for those with an experimental streak and/or development skills
to grab it, use it, and contribute to its design and development. 

The code and issue tracker are hosted on GitHub: 

    https://github.com/bgribble/mfp

You can find the LAC-2013 paper and accompanying screenshots, some
sample patches, and a few other bits of documentation in the doc
directory of the GitHub repo.  The README at the top level of the
source tree contains dependency, build, and getting-started
information.

Thanks,
Bill Gribble