Hi Maurizio Really interesting news- Im going to check it out- Iv always kept an eye on jmax and really glad to see it coming back !
On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 9:11 PM, Maurizio De Cecco <[email protected]>wrote: > Hallo, > > my name is Maurizio De Cecco, and i am the maintainer and developper of the > jMax Phoenix project, > a kind of cousin of Puredata. Having release a new beta for jMax (on Linux > and Mac OS X), and after > discussing with Miller Puckette, i think the members of this list may be > interested in knowing more > about the project, and may be take a look. > > A bit of history: i worked in Ircam in the 90s, where i was lucky enough to > work with Miller Puckette > on Max/ISPW and following versions; i then worked on jMax, that was > intended to be a 'next generation' > Max for the Ircam projects; jMax was used in a few large productions; i > left in 99 for pursing other > interest (Linux Mandrake, at that time :), and forgot for a while about > jMax. > > In the meanwhile, jMax was put under a GPL licence, and after a couple of > years Ircam stopped its development > (don't ask me why, i wasn't there). > > In 2008 i was getting severely bored: server side Java, quality indicators > and software engineering was my daily bread, and no code to write; so, to > keep my developer mind healthy, i took up the development > of jMax, starting from the last release i worked on. > > Given the fact that jMax slept a few years, it cannot compete with puredata > in terms of available libraries, > patches, and in general maturity of the solution. > > But it have its own peculiarity, a number of different ideas, and having a > code base but no users (yet, i hope:) > allows some bold design decision to be taken; think of jMax Phoenix as a > kind of research project in same family where Puredata is. > > Describing the differences between jMax and Puredata would be long, because > it would need to go back > to the original developments; to be very synthetic i would resume in the > following: > > 1) Architecture: the jMax user interface run on a different process, and it > written in Java. > > 2) APIs are completely different, but see below. > > 3) The Object Set is reduced to the old ISPW object set; jMax can also > transparently include LADSPA plugins as objects; finally, i developped > compatibility layer (to be completed) that allows to recompile simple pd > objects for jMax, and possibly to load pd abstractions. > > 4) User Interface: there is a lot of work going on in the UI, that allows, > between other, the used of a single window IDE style interface. > > 5) Packaging and configuration: jMax Phoenix support the packaging > of complex libraries and applications in a single file, and even > automatically grab libraries from the internet. > > 6) The language: jMax support the use of expressions in object definition, > like in | int ( 10 + $foo) | so that objects in abstractions can be > parametrised with respect to the arguments. > > 7) Hopefully in between 6 month and a year: an optimising dsp compiler > and engine able to run a patch in parallel on multiple core (where multiple > means around 8). > > For anybody more interested, the project site is > http://www.jmax-phoenix.org/, and the > binaries and sources can be loaded from the project sourceforge site, > http://sourceforge.net/projects/jmax-phoenix/ > > For your information, i include at the end of the mail the formal announce > of the 0.6 beta release; it does not mention the Max OS X version, that was > not ready at the time. > > Maurizio > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > After many month of development, we are proud to announce the version 0.6 > beta of jMax Phoenix. > > The major highlights for this version are: > - A first version of the puredata source compatibility kit, including the > build system and a full example of recompiled object library. > - A large set of usability bug fixed; all the bugs preventing a smooth > work flow have been fixed. > - Error handling improvements: most of the bugs and configuration errors > now results in error messages, and not unexplained freezes. > - A set of examples and tutorials has been recovered from old ISPW > archives; they are not updated to include all the major jMax > functionalities, but it is better than nothing. > > Full release notes are available in the release notes section of the projet > site. > > This release has been tested on Ubuntu and Ubuntu Studio 10.04, Debian 5, > Fedora 13 and Mandriva Spring 2010; check the installation > instruction on the projet site for specific caveats for Debian and Fedora. > > The Puredata compatibility sub-project has been *very* time consuming; in > order to better manage my scarce time resources, > we need some user feedback (and possibly help) to be able to evaluate the > actual interest of pursuing this development direction. > > For more information and download and installation instructions go to > http://www.jmax-phoenix.org/. > > For contacting the project team: [email protected] > > The jMax Phoenix team > > __________ > Maurizio De Cecco - > Music: http://www.myspace.com/mauriziodececco > Blog: http://maurizio.dececco.name/ > Software: http://www.jmax-phoenix.org/ > > > _______________________________________________ > [email protected] mailing list > UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> > http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list >
_______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
