On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 1:37 PM, J. Liles <malnourite@gmail.com> wrote:

It is a flaw in the design of LV2 that custom plugin GUIs both run in the host process and have access to the DSP part of the plugin's internal state. This was deemed necessary, I believe, in order to cater to vendors of proprietary plugins,

this is false.

but the universal human trait of laziness means that it will always and constantly be used as a way to bypass any difficult aspect of GUI to DSP communication.

this is arguably true.

Without completely removing this mechanism and forcing custom plugin GUIs to run in a separate process (and therefore use a formally defined interface to the DSP component) LV2 will always be inadequate for your purposes.

forcing IPC on the GUI is (a) stupidly expensive (b) stupidly complex (c) limits host options.

LV2 has followed the same model as AudioUnit, in which there is documented emphasis on NOT using any backdoor communication techniques between the DSP and GUI, including a mention that the plugin may not even run on the same machine as the GUI, but there is no requirement that GUIs are in separate processes.

the correct solution here is the same one that apple used: provide the right, easy to use, powerful communication mechanisms between the GUI and the DSP. the facilities made possible by the AU SDK are quite remarkable for this.