Re: [LAD] LV2 "isn't well thought out ?" LV2 in the Reaper sequencer

On Mon, 2008-01-21 at 22:08 +0100, Benno Senoner wrote:
> Justin from Reaper answered the following on the forum:
> -------
> I looked at LV2, there's a lot of stuff which I disliked.. for
> example, "ports" being for parameters and audio buffers (and
> presumably MIDI events), and all having the possibility of colliding,
> isnt well thought out.

In short this doesn't make any sense. Colliding? What?

> Also if you want to add parameters to a new revision of a plug-in,
> then you have to change the URI? ick.

This is for compatibility. To be more accurate, if you add ports to a
plugin which /must/ be used, then you need to change the URI, otherwise
upgrading a plugin would break patches (think about it, it's obvious).
There are trivial solutions to future "versions" of a plugin that are
incompatible as well, noone's defined it yet because noone cares yet
(this is the whole point of all that RDF stuff...).

In short: updating your plugin collection will NEVER break existing
patches, if things follow the rules. This sounds like a complaint about
LV2 being well thought out, not the other way around...

> Or what if you want to change the I/O of a plug-in on the fly..

The solution to this is "multi-ports", ie ports with several streams in
one. You'll almost certainly see this show up at some point (there is
an existing extension that sort of does this for "parameters", but it
needs to be generalised).

LV2 has been thought out an awful lot more than any other plugin spec.
Any concerns Justin or anyone else has can be resolved without having to
break the spec, because it's extensible (chances are somebody somewhere
already has a good idea of how to do it). A lot of people have put a
great deal of thought into making sure this is true.

Can you say that about VST? VST3? AU? Any of the others? No, you
can't. I can say with almost complete confidence that anything VST3 or
whatever can do, LV2 can do too (with the appropriate extensions). LV2
can do pretty much anything.

What isn't well thought out again?
>
> I think LV2 and Reaper developers should join forces because together
> perhaps it will be possible to impose a new open plugin standard
> which will get adopted by other commercial applications too and
> supersede VST2.4 over time.

[ Obligatory sidenote: I don't think anyone currently working on LV2
things gives a damn about proprietary software. I for one put a lot of
effort into LV2 to further free audio software, not the proprietary
competition to free audio software. Sure, Reaper 'joining forces' with
the l-a-d community would be great. Show us the code, then we'll talk;
until then, Reaper is the enemy as far as I'm concerned ;) ]

That said, if the Reaper developers look more closely at LV2 they will
see it can be whatever they want it to be... You want flexible IO?
figure out how, and just do it! You want an elegant scheme for
upgrading plugins that break compatibilty? figure out how, and just do
it!

See the pattern?

Cheers,

-DR-

P.S. there is now an LV2 development mailing list preferred to l-a-d for
LV2 specific stuff, everyone with an interest in LV2 development hop on
board: http://lists.lv2plug.in/listinfo.cgi/devel-lv2plug.in

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Received on Tue Jan 22 04:15:04 2008