[linux-audio-user] png graphics library for sound apps

[Rick Taylor]

On Mon, 2003-01-27 at 18:07, iriXx wrote:
> Rick Taylor wrote:
> 
> >  What about iconic/language type stuff like live uses?
> > 
> >  ...more of an audio alphabet than fancy graphics. You could get some
> > standardization going and make things easier and a little more object
> > oriented.
> > 
> >  If you get that in place then folk can start messing with the symbols.
> 
> hmm... im not entirely sure i understand what you're getting at....
> 
> i've used Live... do you mean their use of abstracted, symbol-like icons 
> intsead of realistic looking knobs?...

 Sort of... I'm thinking along slightly different lines though.

 {I've actually been giving this a good deal of thought over the past
hour or so.} 

 If you were to define some sort of grid or matrix in xml so as to
provide folk with a lot of empty spaces to fill with plugins {engines,
sounds and so forth} and then go back and define a symbol for each of
those spaces {function, sound, type of connection} giving some thought
to syntax and function within the matrix {possibly extending this into
other dimensions at some point} you'd have the beginnings of a sort of
universal {electronic} musical language/application.

 Keeping things simple and iconic would allow you to redefine and extend
things {you might take a look at this:

http://www.gnu.org/software/octal/ox_api_main/index.html The guy that
put this page up originally mentioned something to the effect that
electronic music required a new language...what we have now not being
altogether suited {as well as being a bit limiting} ...to illustrating
electronic musical concepts {We need to be able to represent them quite
differently... a stream of characters {a custom font} or flowcharted or
placed on a 3 dimensional grid, etc...}

 It would be much easier for folk to simply build grid elements so you
could extend or modify or replace specific parts and functions of the
grid than to remake the entire thing every time one wanted to create a
new application. {form being massively tied to function here} All you'd
need to do would be string together different elements of it. Arts and
Octal and Gnome-Think and pd and buzz, etc already have a sort of
framework in place for organizing information this way... I think what
we need is an object catalog... a language. It needs to be universal and
standardized. Symbols need to be defined for specific modules so as to
make things easly understandable. It's a higher level method of
organizing high level concepts.

 I think it probaby needs to be moved into the third and possibly 4th
dimension as well. Otherwise it's going to get to be really difficult to
keep the relationships between functions clear.

 So.. yeah... abstracted and symbol-like is more appropriate. 3
dimensional with some means of representing placement in time are
probably good too.