Re: [LAD] State of Plugin API's

On Sat, 2009-10-31 at 15:32 -0400, Paul Davis wrote: Fine and good. Except that's not what's usually said, and that's not what was initially said here. LV2 is, apparently, a "catastrophic failure". When it's not that, it's usually FUD or misinformation about the extension idea itself. Excuses and whining, not arguments and solutions. I agree there is a difference, and more of the latter would be nice. This is true, but inherent. You get one, and only one of the following: - LV2 as it is currently, and the ability to solve this problem (and the eventual outcome that they all get solved) and increase the power of the whole thing - Nothing at all You are free to use GMPI if the latter option sounds appealing :) There is nothing magical about API defined in an extension as opposed to "LV2". If LV2 was a monolithic specification - well, it wouldn't actually exist in any finished or usable state at all, but let's make that huge leap and pretend it is - then this same situation would exist. Feature foo needs to be implemented by a host regardless. The difference is, with a monolithic specification feature foo not being implemented by the host means that host doesn't support anything LV2, at all, whatsoever, end of story. This is clearly inferior. It requires interactions, but I don't really agree it requires anything new at all, certainly not in this community. Libraries or plugins, their interfaces, and the programs that implement/use them always co-evolve. Of course they do, they either co-evolve or do not evolve whatsoever and die. It's no different than if it was all crammed into one kitchen sink specification, then everything still needs to co-evolve in the same way except the barriers to doing so are MUCH greater, to the point of basically preventing any evolution whatsoever (a textbook outcome of bad, non-modular design). Some people get this, but others just point at the whole thing and whine, and do nothing. The reasons are purely psychological, not technical - they don't want to help, and blaming others and the technology is easier. It is a childish attitude bred by people being accustomed to gigantic soulless corporations telling them what to do, in my opinion. It has no place here. In the vast majority of cases, an extension not being supported means the plugin will work fine but that functionality isn't present in the host. For example, a command line host may not support GUIs, so the GUI doesn't work. I don't think this is really all that complicated for a user to understand, or a problem: a program simply doesn't support GUIs. It's not like a user has to sit down and enumerate and cross reference these things or something. It has been designed to gracefully degrade for exactly this reason. Maybe. If he didn't get all trolley and call the whole thing a catastrophic failure then maybe I would have focused on that part ;) Arguments about this at a high level are almost entirely pointless anyway: developers who are actually going to solve the problems will show up and do so. The kind of people who whine on mailing lists about it or make up sociological arguments for the lack of this and that aren't the sort of people who are actually about do it anyway, so who cares what they think? What could actually be done to magically make people show up who will do this work? Nothing. A developer who is interested in making e.g. ramped control ports will show up, or they won't. The whole thing simply has to grow, which is the only realistic way to solve a problem like this anyway. How about this: just pretend LV2 IS a monolithic specification! Therefore, it does not exist in a finished state yet (just as it wouldn't), and there is no such thing as LV2. There is no technological difference between this and reality. If you want to define "the LV2 specification" in your mind as some bloated and completely arbitrary kitchen sink of features, feel free to do so and consider the entire thing unfinished and not worthy of implementation at all. Call extensions "working groups" or whatever to satisfy your bureaucratic leanings. Is this stupid? Sure it is. But that's basically my point :) Obviously I agree things need to be done, but whining about the entire thing at the meta level is not what needs to be done. Extensions are (well, should be) tidy little bits of well-defined functionality. When there is a hole, as you said, you make one, you implement it, and the problem is solved. As people scratch those itches, all the problems will be solved. Itch scratching solves problems, FUD and whining doesn't. Itch scratching is pretty much the ONLY thing that solves problems around here anyway. LV2 is simply optimized to exploit this fact of reality as efficiently as possible, and it's worked pretty well so far. There is no committee to point fingers at, because you can implement whatever you like. The only place to point that finger is at yourself. This way, things get designed and implemented by people who actually give a damn about those things. The end result is quality software. Calling the whole thing a catastrophic failure is, frankly, complete and utter bullshit, and spreading that kind of opinion only HURTS progress. Someone may skim through the list, see that, and decide that LV2 is a failure and thus not worth investing in or implementing, which is completely untrue (and happens). I call it FUD for a reason, it damages LV2 in exactly the same way a certain notorious company damages others with FUD. People not actively helping doesn't really irk me so much - but people doing this certainly does. LV2 is no failure, but keep sabotaging it in that way and maybe it will be. Pointing out that the community engineering aspect is a failure and then doing precisely the thing that damages it the most is a teeny bit hypocritical, isn't it? There is no inherent problem with LV2, there are only jobs to do - and they will get done, eventually. Most likely by people who spend more time typing into their text editors than their email clients. End of story. -dr