[linux-audio-user] chuck - what's the catch

[Ge Wang]

Hi Atte and all!

> Now, yesterday I found out about chuck. Seems very interresting, 
> nicely documented and I was able to build it and run examples in 
> minutes. So what's the catch? Why do we hardly ever hear anything 
> about chuck here? Anyone here uses it? How does it compare to the rest 
> (esp textdriven) "synths"?

chuck is still quite young and is moving full speed ahead in 
development (in # of new features and new bugs).  Only recently did 
chuck become more jack-friendly.

some (anti-)salient points (you probably already come across these):

- high degree of control over time and concurrency
   - time == sound
   - no fixed control -> time is completely determined by programmer
   - concurrency and timing are sample-synchronous
   - straightforward to read and write
   - deterministic
- currently not very optimized - throughput is potentially worse 
compared to other systems
(it is also possible to use in non real time mode with --silent flag)
- more ugen's and class library needed
(due to the control over low-level timing, many DSP algorithms can be 
programmed directly in the language without externals, at least that is 
the idea)

We are not sure how many folks here use chuck.  There seem to be a 
growing number of people firing up chuck on various platforms, but one 
of the main hurdles is not the language itself, but the command line 
interface required (for now) to operate chuck.  However, this obviously 
shouldn't be a problem for linux users...

Graphical + gui editors and environments are in the works and due out 
this winter.

Best,
Ge!