20 Apr
2004
20 Apr
'04
1:43 p.m.
Paul Davis:
Torben Hohn and I are pleased to release an initial version of libfst,
a small GPL'ed C library that provides support for using win32/x86 VST
plugins (FX and VST/i) within native Linux applications, with the
assistance of the Wine project's libwine.
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We expect there will be several minor problems with this
initial release. Please help us fix them!
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How is this different from VSTserver?
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This work differs from Kjetil Mattheusen's VSTserver because the
plugin is loaded into the address space of the program using the
library, not into a server. As a result, it is a more appropriate
solution for audio applications that might support many VST plugins,
where the context switches required in the VSTserver case do not scale
well. The downside, of course, is that a misbehaving plugin will crash
the host application, which VSTserver avoids.
Another small point, I might add, is that the API against vstserver
is far far simpler, at least for adding native plugin-gfx support. But
regarding the performance and simplicity for the user, this solution is of
course better.
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