18 Mar
2003
18 Mar
'03
3:44 p.m.
problem of the hosts not completly implementing
everything that is
supported by ladspa (until recently, i didn't know about this rdf
thingy, for instance.)
that isn't actually part of LADSPA. its an example of the extreme ease
of adding wrappers and new layers to LADSPA precisely because it
represents the lowest common denominator for an audio plugin API.
On the other hand, i think it's not realy the
question what api we use
for modules. (well, a common api wouldn't hurt ;-) )
As i said, i think the real difficult problem would be defining that
comon model. Maybe what jack does is closer to it.
there actually isn't really any commonality between what, say, pd
versus beast do. or between jMax and gAlan. the similarity exists only
on an abstract conceptual plane, which is where algorithms
live. however software isn't abstract - its always instantiated. the
problem here, i think, is that we look at different systems, note
their abstract conceptual similarities and wonder why they need to
both exist when they appear so similar. yet they are not similar as
software, only as ideas. and its the software that is being worked on
- the ideas were worked out years ago - and its the software that is
where the fun is.
But from the users point of view, things look
different. Just look at
this kde<->gnome situation. I'm seeing myself as a rather a user than a
developer when it comes to desktop envirements, and i definitly would
like a _realy_ integrated desktop. I don't know much about the issues
they have there, nore do i care that much.
i've said many times before: i don't believe that "the desktop" is
something that developers of "music" apps should concern themselves
with. "the desktop" is neither the source nor sink for almost any of
the data that we manipulate, and the UI/HCI abstractions and models
that we use are often very different (for good reasons) from those
used by apps that deal primarily with data lacking any temporal
dimension.
i think we should focus on writing good applications that are
independent of what a "desktop" does.
And if you think of it, the situation with all those
modular synth apps
the situation is no different to the one in the h/w world. i don't
hear anyone suggesting that doepfer should quit because moog is making
modular stuff again, or even that they should work together. there are
probably at least a half-dozen companies doing this today - should
they all sit down and work out how to make their stuff interoperable
beyond a 12V/octave standard?