Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] linux audio demonstrability: NOT!
From: Dave Phillips (dlphilp_AT_bright.net)
Date: to syys 30 1999 - 10:15:35 EDT
Paul Barton-Davis wrote:
> Juhana - although I understand these sentiments, I see a contradiction
> in your position. You seem to be suggesting that its unreasonable to
> expect a bunch of unpaid volunteers to write cool audio
> applications. But you also seem to suggest that you don't care if
> Creamware or Steinberg or Digidesign or whoever choose not to write
> cool audio applications for Linux.
>
> So, who *is* going to write them ?
It seems to me that you guys are already writing those programs.
I hope to see the time when people will look at the come-lately
commercial Linux soundapps and say, "Why pay that kind of money for
Steinware's Cakebase when I can get Quasiwalk for free ?".
<counter-rant>
Regarding Linux audio applications in general: Of course there are very
few that demonstrate the maturity of a Cakewalk or Cubase. CW has been
in continuous development for what, 15 years ?! Even older apps such as
Snd or the NoTAM things were not originally running under Linux, and I
don't expect them to show a perfect fit, not yet anyway. So much of the
support software (GUI toolkits, libraries and APIs, et cetera) is in
similar condition: I don't expect LessTif to be perfect yet, but dang, I
gotta love that open-source when Bill S can fix a problem with LessTif
that hung me up in Snd. Can't do that with Cool Edit and Windoze, and we
all know it.
My point is: Don't be discouraged ! We're getting there ! It took MS-DOS
MIDI software a *long* time before evolving into its present forms (for
those who are relatively new to it all, Cakewalk and Digital
Orchestrator Plus both began as DOS apps). And there were dozens of
smaller (and some not-so-small) utility apps that never made the jump
and have disappeared completely (the Bacchus editors, the great software
from Cool Shoes, lots of other freeware projects). When I started the
Linux Soundapps page it held about 40 applications: it currently lists
more than ten times that number (not all apps, to be sure, but most of
the page is indeed applications listings).
As wisdom has it, "Perseverance furthers" and "An inch of meditation, an
inch of Buddha". We *are* persevering, inch by inch, and perhaps in the
end we will wind up with the most superbly outfit platform for audio.
And we will have made it that way, not the Steinburgers or Cakewanks.
And it will be open-source and freely available, a path not bloody
likely to be chosen by those people.
</counter-rant>
But we do want those cards, don't we ? ;)
== Dave Phillips
http://www.bright.net/~dlphilp/index.html
http://sunsite.univie.ac.at/Linux-soundapp/linux_soundapps.html
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