[LAU] OSC howto

[Bill Gribble]

On Fri, 2013-02-08 at 06:46 +1100, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
> > It was quite a nice feeling to click "Learn", wiggle a fader on my
> > iphone TouchOSC app, and watch the fader in my Linux app start to move!
> >
> 
> How does one achieve that set of steps with Linux software? Is there a
> generic OSC control app for Linux that will communicate with any OSC
> enabled app?

Liblo comes with "oscsend", a command line tool to send an OSC message
to a specified listener.  That's good for testing.  Also "oscdump", a
server that just echoes incoming OSC requests to stdout.  A very useful
pair. 

The way I implemented learning is to add a default handler to my created
OSC server, take the next incoming message, pick the "path" out of it,
and then add a handler for THAT in place of the default.  It's possible
to get in a race if you are trying to learn with lots of OSC data flying
around but that's the user's issue :) 

I think OSC was designed with the idea that the servers would define the
"name space" of paths and you would build a client map to send controls
to the proper destination.  It looks more like it's really working the
other direction, where the clients/controllers define the paths they are
going to send, and the server is responsible for learning the mappings.

Thanks,
Bill Gribble