On Sat, Mar 01, 2003 at 08:15:42PM +0000, Simon Jenkins wrote: > David Olofson wrote: > > >On Saturday 01 March 2003 17.12, Simon Jenkins wrote: > >[...] > > > > > >>>then these components must be built of other components... > >>>i dont see a reason why one wants a big complex component > >>>if it could be built from smaller components... > >>>(other than performace) > >>> > >>> > >>Absolutely they must be built out of other components. The question > >>is: who does the building? I'm saying that the plugin designer > >>should be able to present a complex "plugin" which is actually a > >>ready-connected graph of simpler components. The alternative is for > >>the plugin designer to present a "bag of bits" for the user to > >>connect together. > >> > >> > > > >If we do this on the right level, we can have both. We definitely > >should have a standard graph description (and preset) file format > >anyway, and all we need is a way for plugin authors to provide useful > >subgraphs with their plugins. > > > I'm thinking that if its done on the right level we can have both very > nearly for free... and only incur whatever administrative overhead > there might be when the additional functionality is actually used. > > > In terms of its inputs and outputs a subgraph is indistinguishable from > a real plugin. All thats needed is a very thin code wrapper around > the administration of the subgraph: A virtual plugin which, when > you instantiate it, would instantiate all of the real plugins that > made up the subgraph. Which, when you connected to or from it, > would cause the connection to actually be made to the appropriate > real plugin within the subgraph. Which, when you removed it, would > cause the removal of all the real plugins within the subgraph. > > I'm not up-to-date enough with the XAP spec to know how > much hassle this would all be, but its all *administrative* > hassle and doesn't affect the runtime API in any way: The > virtual plugin never appears in the actual processing graph, > and the real plugins are perfectly ordinary plugins, connected > into a perfectly ordinary graph, sorted and called (independently > of each other) just like any other plugin in the graph.
exactly... in galan a plugin is called generator... the subsheets are handled on the component level. i found this to be more elegant then implementing a generator which in fact is many generators. > > Simon Jenkins > (Bristol, UK) > > -- torben Hohn http://galan.sourceforge.net -- The graphical Audio language
