Subject: [linux-audio-dev] openTL specs
From: Paul Barton-Davis (pbd_AT_Op.Net)
Date: Tue Oct 24 2000 - 18:27:18 EEST
I went and read the specs for openTL, which is an EDL "file format".
Pretty sad. The biggest problem is that they have hard-coded the terms
"HFS", "FAT-16" and "FAT-32" into the spec as possible "volume
types". So much for using this on Linux, at least as-is. yeah, OK, so
we can use HFS partitions, and FAT16, but who wants to ? Actually,
thats a good question. I never bothered to check if the FAT filesystem
code is better than ext2 for streaming audio :)
The rest of it seems to be inspired by a wierd combination of Fortran
and XML. Instead of "Event", we have to write EVNT, etc. There is
little support for anything but the most basic event types; anything
else have to be done by just referring to a data file where the data
can be found. non-linear gain changes have to be done this way, or
using step-wise listings of the gain values.
They have the nerve to use Bison as their parser, but they put the
whole thing under an NDA! "Please read and respect these licenses"
they note of the GPL. I will check with the FSF whether their use of
Bison in this way is legal. It seems pretty dubious to me.
It seems much more sensible to me to use their spec for inspiration,
but come up with one in XML, which could be parsed by almost anything,
without Bison getting into the loop. From what I could tell of their
NDA, there is no way that an open source project could use their
work. I am going to write and ask anyway.
--p
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Tue Oct 24 2000 - 19:19:39 EEST