[linux-audio-dev] LADSPA Extension for Extra GUI Data

Hello, i'm new here, i've been working on a very simple, backward-forwards compatible extension to LADSPA/DSSI to allow hosts to display more meaningful gui's with a "describe_value" function which takes the port index and a LADSPA_Data and allows the plugin to return a meaningful description. eg. for a waveform port it might return "SAW", "SIN", "SQR" etc for a cutoff filter it might return the frequency in Hz for a tuning port it might return "-4 semitones" also wanting to add a mechanism to group ports into logical sections. without changing the underlying APIs, only by adding more layers on top this way preserving backwards compatibility, the host simply dlsyms for "ladgui_descriptor" and if it's there it makes use of the extra data, otherwise it falls back to how it previously did things once the API is done i plan to make a reference gui the idea behind this is that plugins will not need any of their own gui code as a useful gui can be constructed on the fly as a part of the host or a separate process that will work for any plugin so plugin developers never need worry about constructing a gui and can instead just make nice useable algorithms and test them quickly and easily. nicknamed LADGUI for now. API so far is at http://ftsf.technetium.net.au/code/ladgui/ladgui.h what i'd like to know is, if this is a stupid idea ^_^ it seems like a good one to me, but when i joined here to post this i noticed lots of talk about LADSPA2, i've tried to read up on it but i can't seem to find much information about it, and it doesn't seem to be backwards compatible and doesn't seem to add anything to help create guis in the host? is there a page somewhere which explains it all? i'm sure there's lots of useful stuff that i'm missing, what other things would be useful in such an extension? thanks Jez Kabanov