Hello, Well, everything below makes good sense, and I'm excited to try out Lieven's programme and see what starting point and new ideas it might give. One thing I am wondering is what application or DSSI plugin would make an ideal test-case. We would need something reasonably, but still with a large enough number and variety of parameters to give an idea of real-world needs and possible issues. How complex is xsynth in terms of controls? Cheers, S.M. On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 01:04:26AM +0200, Julien Claassen wrote: > Hello everyone! > So I took the old thoughts file, thought some more, rearranged it > and came up with this. Note: All lines, that start with a '#' are > for later, perhaps MUCH later! this is just to organise thoughts and > map the basic structure, the basic requirements. > As said before: L3et's start small. But as I added: Let's have a > road in mind, so we don't end up with something nice for the one > task at hand, which alas has to be completely rewritten for the next > steps. It's much work, very tedious in the long run and likely to > not get done. :-) > Proposal for a CLI client based on automated interface generation > > Protocols/mechanisms for communication > * OSC > #* MIDI > #* serial network protocol > > Suggested output modes > * ncurses - full-screen (main) > #* commandline - shell-like > > The Tree of user elements > * Interface is based on a tree of arbitrary branches (i.e. not binary tree0 > * The tree must be searchable (text-search for node-names) > * Each leaf marks a command/parameter of the communication-server (i.e. one OSC path, one MIDI controller, one network command) > * A leaf must hold a number of values of arbitrary type (predetermined by initialisation, because an OSC path can have more than one value attached) > * Each node must have a name > * Each leaf must hold the command/data to be sent to the server > * Must a each leaf hold a function to send the command to the server or can it be generalised and stored somewhere global to one interface instance? > > Other things about the interface > * A listener interface/ADT (listening to the server, updating the tree, if necessary, initialise values) > * Tree building functions/interface (to construct the tree from supplied commands/paths) > * A UI interface/ADT (how to interact with the user, ncurses/shell, input, data representation) > * A data-node interface/ADT (what to be kept in the tree-nodes) > > Interface generation (tree-population) > * Generate and fill the tree manually for a specific purpose first! > #* Use OSC use Namespace exploration, signature and return type discovery and documentation features > #* But allow for a description file (RDF?) > #* A description file might > # # map commands to appropriate paths > # # provide documentation, signatures, return types, units, names for sub-parameters/options (i.e. OSC path parameters, options to a network command...) > # # give command(s) to query current values from the server > # # tell the means of communication (i.e. OSC, MIDI, UDP,...) > #* A descriptive file should override info gathered by standard querying > > Ideas for the ncurses interface; > * Display lists of nodes on one level underneath each other > * Have expand/collapse mechanisms (like in aptitude, mail-clients...) > * Always use/move the hard-cursor (nNO soft-cursor!) > #* Go to shell-interface by pressing colon ':' > > #Ideas for the shell-interface: > #* Encourrage programmers to create consistent command sets > #* Use esacpe (ESC) to switch to ncurses mode > #* Allow for aliases/short-forms? > > Practical issues > * Question: What to use for the variable lists in tree-nodes? (list, vector...)? > * For OSC use liblo (already used in many linux-audio apps) > * For trees look at STL and Boost > * Try to use as few Linux-specific extensions as possible (if so note it!) > > The last comment regarding c++ and other library extensions, which > are only available on Linux. If one undertakes such a thing and is > set on it, one should try to make the system available to as many > people as possible, so it gets accepted. > What do you think? Additions? Baisc disputes? Obvious falsehoods > or items of importance missed? > Best wishes > Julien > > -------- > Music was my first love and it will be my last (John Miles) > > ======== FIND MY WEB-PROJECT AT: ======== > http://ltsb.sourceforge.net > the Linux TextBased Studio guide > ======= AND MY PERSONAL PAGES AT: ======= > http://www.juliencoder.de > _______________________________________________ > Linux-audio-user mailing list > Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user -- _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
