Re: [LAD] State of Plugin API's

On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 12:14 PM, David Robillard <dave(a)drobilla.net> wrote: specifically *not* the entire extension ecosystem. subsets of the ecosystem that can be named, referenced, referred to, *developed against* by plugin/host authors, with some expectations. when you give examples from the web, i think there is an interesting lesson there. people with an interest in extending "html" in some way (e.g. embedded svg, theora, whatever) know what the path is: develop the technology/specs/etc, get some initial implementations, push toward w3c ... adoption by w3c (if you're lucky). a similar path exists for LV2 except for the last part. you can argue that its the cart before the horse - develop the stuff first, then lets argue about how its to be part of a named "ensemble" or "standard" or whatever. but i would contend that part of the reason for a reluctance to develop (which you pointedly referenced) is the lack of any clue what happens *after* that. you know, its great that LV2 lets anyone and their mom define a cool new way to do ramped plugin parameter control. but so what? how is that of any interest to someone who wants to figure out, not just a technical solution to the issue, but an accepted, in-use engineering solution? if the pathway to the second part isn't clear, the first part is less likely to get done. with LADSPA, it was very easy to motivate discussions about design changes - there was one header, and it got into the header, or it didn't. its similarly easy, when necessary, to do the same for JACK - once again, there is one header, one API and something is either in or out, or modified. LV2's glorious anarchy means that there is no social necessity for any convergent effort at all. people can do whatever the hell they want (good!) and nobody else need care (bad!). ok, so people don't agree yet on how to do plugin API feature X ... then we need a mechanism that does more to force us to actually come up with solutions. LV2 doesn't do anything to force this, possibly by design. its no suprise, therefore, that people who might feel a pressing need for this or that don't do anything about it, because its not actually clear to them that it will be a "solution" at all.