Re: [linux-audio-dev] Project: modular synth editor

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Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Project: modular synth editor
From: Frank Barknecht (fbar_AT_footils.org)
Date: Tue Jan 13 2004 - 22:53:39 EET


Hallo,
Dave Griffiths hat gesagt: // Dave Griffiths wrote:

> On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 18:09:56 +0100, Frank Barknecht wrote
> > Pd will probably not stay with tk, and some of its ugliness is rooted
> > in cross-platform thoughts (like using the Courier font everywhere).
>
> I actually quite like the PD interface, especially after a bit of work, like
> your pattern seqencer.

;)

But this will (hopefully) not break with a future toolkit switch. This
pattern sequencer and the other RRADical patches I work on use a Pd
feature, that a lot of, probably most, other graphical softsynths miss:
the ability to create abstraction on higher levels. For example in
Reaktor: once you've built a GUI, you're basically done and set. You
cannot reuse this GUI *inside* another GUI and use that combined GUI
inside another one.

Or compared to programming languages: It's like as if you're allowed
to write functions, but those must not call other functions. Like a
a precompiler macro: This is useful in many situations, but not
powerful enough for more complex ones.

In Pd and some other synths - like Torben's Galan - one patch can
swallow another patch, adapt it in various ways and create a new level
of abstraction. On this level then the same can start again. This is
the most powerful feature in Pd, I think, but also difficult to
understand fully in all its implications.

Anyway: A modular synth, which does not have this feature is missing
something very important IMO. In the end, designing a modular synth is
designing a programming language, and thus all the theory and
knowledge that was developed in language design has to be considered
as well.

Supercollider (and of course Lisp based softsynths) knows this very
well, and even includes things like inheritance (which I truly miss in
Pd.)

(I almost don't know SSM, so I cannot say anything about it in all
this regards.)

> One thing I'd really really want is a patch layout tool for complex graphs
> like maya's (whcih uses this: http://www.tomsawyer.com/gallery/gallery.html)
> There are a few GPL equivelents, but nothing that can do this AFAIK.

This is cool. It looks a bit like a very cool game I once ported
to Linux: http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/windows/noiz2sa_e.html
(it only required some Makefile fiddling.)

ciao

-- 
 Frank Barknecht                               _ ______footils.org__


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