Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Mustajuuri -> LADSPA plugins.
From: Nick Bailey (n.bailey_AT_elec.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Thu Mar 29 2001 - 10:59:46 EEST
Paul Davis wrote:
> >The Window Manager would be very unhappy about that 8-) Really, if you run
> >raw X, you don't even get frames, minimising to icons etc etc. If you have
> >KDE, try starting a session in "safe mode" and you'll see what it's like (just
> >a raw xterm, basket-weave background, and *nothing* else -- ctrl-alt-bspace to
> >exit)
>
> Nick - this is totally unrelated to what steve was asking. he meant
> just starting a new process that connects to the *existing* X
> server. Just like starting a new xterm or xclock or xemacs or whatever.
>
Oops, sorry. Just back on line after a week away and am working through emails in
the wrong order.
> the GUI sends these to the host via a unix FIFO (read from the host's
> own GUI event loop). the host dereferences the handle value
> (originally supplied by the plugin-instance-within-the-host), and then
> it finds the port and changes the value to the one given.
>
I think this is a really great idea. we also wrote a hardware emulator for a
little microcontroller once which had a process for each peripheral chip connected
to the CPU simulator by a pipe each. There were loads of them! Each process
could write down its pipe and send the CPU simpulator a SIGUSR1. The CPU
simulator then did a select() on the pipes and called the appropriate ISR. I
thought it would be a joke, but actually the run-time overhead was miniscule.
With the host's GUI event loop doing all the hard work for you, I'd've thought
this would be a great soln.
>
> The big problem I have with the fork-your-own-process model is the
> overhead of having 32-64 processes and windows around for a situation
> with a lot of plugins. not so much processor cycles as screen
> real-estate management.
>
Could a single window host all the guis? (like the swallow does for netscape
plugins)? This is a completely half-baked comment: I've not thought about it....
Nick/
PS: Sorry for being off-hand in the last post: I'm getting >18hr turnaround from
the list at the moment. Probably all emails having to be disinfected against foot
and mouth or something. N/
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