On 03/04/2011 01:53 PM, Stefano D'Angelo wrote: > Hence, in this case, I think we should exploit the > extensibility/decentralization of LV2: those who, like me, care about > "control rate" visualization hints may want to help on web UIs, for > example, the others might do the same with native GL. > > The only thing that we all need to ensure is that things work well > together, whatever the host/plugin author choice is, also trying to > make the whole thing as painless as it can be for everybody. > > Side note: this is yet another case where we could proceed to some > structured effort coordination at this point, but my feeling is that > this won't happen and the discussion will lead nowhere in the end.
There is one thing which stays on my mind. I am familiar with developing JACK clients, not plugins. However, there has been quite a few discussions in the past where JACK was advocated as a way to create modules, DSP units dedicated to a specific task. In other terms: some kind of plugins. And what is absolutely nice about this is how it is non-intrusive. When working on a JACK client, there are only audio input and output ports, a thin transport layer, done. From these primitives, upon this bare but solid ground, a developer creativity enjoys a lot of freedom. However, there's been this critical and long-lasting session handling problem. Fortunately, this problem doesn't occur for LADSPA and LV2 plugins, since saving and restoring state is performed by the host. But, with this UI/engine separation, whenever a developer comes out with an innovative idea that he really likes, he's very likely to hit a wall because of a specific LV2 technical constraint. And at the same time it takes an incredible (if only possible) coordination effort to maintain LV2 to fulfill and *anticipate* all needs. But LV2 is extensible. So what I think is that in addition to the extensions which imply UI/engine separation (and I understand that it's important in many cases), there should be a DoWhatTheFuckYouWantInYourPlugin extension ;) With such plugins, restoring/saving state would rely on passing a blob in addition to restoring/saving the control ports values. There would be no such thing as UI/engine separation. The plugin would be self contained. And hopefully it would integrate nicely with other extensions such as midi. I think that this extension, since it would only imply simple but powerful primitives, would give a lot of freedom to developers who want that, and at the same time be rather easy to maintain. -- Olivier _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
