13 Aug
2004
13 Aug
'04
10:53 p.m.
On Friday 13 August 2004 01:54 pm, Pete Bessman wrote:
At Fri, 13 Aug 2004 15:16:30 +0100,
tim hall wrote:
Oh, is _that_ what the "demos" link is? Thats what I thought at first,
but it didn't seem like it when I started poking around.
Last Friday 13 August 2004 00:55, Pete Bessman
was like:
YES!
Hell, ask any developer here that question and you'll get the same
answer. Docs are always appreciated. However, as I said before,
Specimen is getting a complete UI overhaul, so any docs you write now
probably won't be relevant in a month or so.
I am *not* trying to look a gift horse in the mouth here, but if you
*really* want to help I think I have a better idea.
Make some music (real music, finished stuff), and write docs on what
you had to do to make this music. Start from the beginning:
--What distro did you install, and on what hardware?
--What configuration steps did you need to perform?
--What applications did you use, and how did you install and configure
them?
--How did you use all these pieces to make music?
If there are any docs out there like this, I'm not aware of them.
They would be an *immense* contribution, both by showing potential
users how they can make music with Linux, and by showing developers
the strengths and weaknesses of the scene as it currently is.
Speaking for myself, the first thing I look for when checking out
music apps is music created with said apps. What does it sound like?
The linux-sound.org music page has only 24 entries, and I'm NOT
FLINGING MUD HERE (my own stuff sucks), but we're certainly not giving
any indication of the utility of our software with them. This is
because we have two many hackers and not enough UNIT-Es. However, I am but one dude. Post 1.0, I can help
out more generally,
but at the moment I am focused on Specimen, and every minute I
contribute to another project is a minute I'm not contributing to my
own. I don't say this to be competitive, simply to reinforce the fact
that improving our abysmal doc situation isn't something you can
really expect most developers to help with; at least not so long as
their own app is still critically incomplete.
Do you want some help writing the docs then?
I firmly believe that the biggest, most valuable contribution anybody
not currently wrapped up in a project can make to Linux audio is
making music with this stuff, and writing a few example docs to get
new users up to speed rapidly. If you, or anyone, or better yet,
*everyone* did this, our scene would be a magnificently better place.
Y'know what? All it would take would be for one demo recorded someplace
to generate a contract and people would be clamoring for linux audio. We have
adequate tools with which to do it now, but IMO if that happened today LA
would be a flash in the pan, done in 6 months, "whatever happened to?"
scenario because it's so unlike what I can go buy in Sam Ash.
- BUT- it's also highly unlikely to happen just now because it'd take a person
who's brilliant enough to be able to work this stuff with the compositional,
production and performance skills to make a hit _and_ the luck to be in the
right place at the right time. That's starting to match the number of
conditions you need to buy to believe UFO's are driven by little green men
from Mars.
Anyway.. there's much to do, so I have to get back to it