Re: [linux-audio-dev] XAP spec - early scribbles

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Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] XAP spec - early scribbles
From: David Olofson (david_AT_olofson.net)
Date: Sun Mar 02 2003 - 00:09:19 EET


On Saturday 01 March 2003 21.15, Simon Jenkins wrote:
[...]
> In terms of its inputs and outputs a subgraph is indistinguishable
> from a real plugin. All thats needed is a very thin code wrapper
> around the administration of the subgraph: A virtual plugin which,
> when you instantiate it, would instantiate all of the real plugins
> that made up the subgraph. Which, when you connected to or from it,
> would cause the connection to actually be made to the appropriate
> real plugin within the subgraph. Which, when you removed it, would
> cause the removal of all the real plugins within the subgraph.

Yes - but I think this is a host implementation (and standard file
format) matter.

> I'm not up-to-date enough with the XAP spec to know how
> much hassle this would all be, but its all *administrative*
> hassle and doesn't affect the runtime API in any way: The
> virtual plugin never appears in the actual processing graph,
> and the real plugins are perfectly ordinary plugins, connected
> into a perfectly ordinary graph, sorted and called (independently
> of each other) just like any other plugin in the graph.

Right, this sounds reasonable.

However, I think you're forgetting what got us started on this:
Plugins that are split up in order to deal with inserts and similar
things. Virtual plugins are orthogonal to inserts! You *still* don't
have anywhere to connect the inserts; that's a separate issue.
Virtual plugins are just a way of describing the relations between
plugins in a set.

You could have "normal" ins and outs for them, but that would look as
if the inserts create loops when connected, which is not the case.
The alternative would be a specific "insert plugin" UI that makes
this less confusing to users. Any other ideas?

I don't think this is as easy as it might seem at first, but it
definitely sounds worth doing - and it's all on the
host/metadata/file format side, and has no run-time impact.

//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate

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