[linux-audio-dev] LADSPA Extension for Extra GUI Data

Hello, i'm new here,
i've been working on a very simple, backward-forwards compatible extension to
LADSPA/DSSI to allow hosts to display more meaningful gui's with a
"describe_value" function which takes the port index and a LADSPA_Data and
allows the plugin to return a meaningful description. eg.
for a waveform port it might return "SAW", "SIN", "SQR" etc
for a cutoff filter it might return the frequency in Hz
for a tuning port it might return "-4 semitones"

also wanting to add a mechanism to group ports into logical sections.
without changing the underlying APIs, only by adding more layers on top this way
preserving backwards compatibility, the host simply dlsyms for
"ladgui_descriptor" and if it's there it makes use of the extra data, otherwise
it falls back to how it previously did things

once the API is done i plan to make a reference gui
the idea behind this is that plugins will not need any of their own gui code as
a useful gui can be constructed on the fly as a part of the host or a separate
process that will work for any plugin so plugin developers never need worry
about constructing a gui and can instead just make nice useable algorithms and
test them quickly and easily.

nicknamed LADGUI for now.

API so far is at http://ftsf.technetium.net.au/code/ladgui/ladgui.h

what i'd like to know is, if this is a stupid idea ^_^
it seems like a good one to me, but when i joined here to post this i noticed
lots of talk about LADSPA2, i've tried to read up on it but i can't seem to
find much information about it, and it doesn't seem to be backwards compatible
and doesn't seem to add anything to help create guis in the host? is there a
page somewhere which explains it all?

i'm sure there's lots of useful stuff that i'm missing, what other things would
be useful in such an extension?

thanks

Jez Kabanov
Received on Mon Jun 19 12:15:01 2006