1 Mar
2003
1 Mar
'03
6:17 p.m.
On Saturday 01 March 2003 21.15, Simon Jenkins wrote:
[...]
In terms of its inputs and outputs a subgraph is
indistinguishable
from a real plugin. All thats needed is a very thin code wrapper
around the administration of the subgraph: A virtual plugin which,
when you instantiate it, would instantiate all of the real plugins
that made up the subgraph. Which, when you connected to or from it,
would cause the connection to actually be made to the appropriate
real plugin within the subgraph. Which, when you removed it, would
cause the removal of all the real plugins within the subgraph.
Yes - but I think this is a host implementation (and standard file
format) matter.
I'm not up-to-date enough with the XAP spec to
know how
much hassle this would all be, but its all *administrative*
hassle and doesn't affect the runtime API in any way: The
virtual plugin never appears in the actual processing graph,
and the real plugins are perfectly ordinary plugins, connected
into a perfectly ordinary graph, sorted and called (independently
of each other) just like any other plugin in the graph.
Right, this sounds reasonable.
However, I think you're forgetting what got us started on this:
Plugins that are split up in order to deal with inserts and similar
things. Virtual plugins are orthogonal to inserts! You *still* don't
have anywhere to connect the inserts; that's a separate issue.
Virtual plugins are just a way of describing the relations between
plugins in a set.
You could have "normal" ins and outs for them, but that would look as
if the inserts create loops when connected, which is not the case.
The alternative would be a specific "insert plugin" UI that makes
this less confusing to users. Any other ideas?
I don't think this is as easy as it might seem at first, but it
definitely sounds worth doing - and it's all on the
host/metadata/file format side, and has no run-time impact.
//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate
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