Re: [LAD] [OT] IR: LV2 Convolution Reverb

> X11 hides the hardware and allows the app to be independent of it, just as do
> Jack for audio, sockets for networking, etc. Do you suggest that I should not
> use Jack or sockets because e.g. Windows doesn't have them (natively) ?

Actually yes, I am suggesting you don't use Jack or Sockets if you want your app to be
well written and portable.

Now, what has this really got to do with hardware? You design an app, it interfaces to some
libraries - you talk about hardware abstraction but all the library does is give you access
to some features you want. Applications which rely on X to 'distribute' themselves are now
totally dependent on the underlying library for that feature because they have no other
inherent method of doing it. They are totally dependent.

This is not abstracting any function, you have just moved your dependency from specific
hardware to specific software because you now need _that_ set of libraries to work. You
talk about badly written applications but with respect to distribution models, if your app
was not architected to support a feature then it was 'badly written' if you consider that
feature to be useful. Back to bristol - the engine implements its DSP code because I
considered that to be a base requirement of the product, but it also abstracts itself to
support a distributed mode because I also consider that to be a base requirement. I did
not rely on X11 to provide this feature for me just as I did not rely on any DSP ASIC or
specific soundcard to provide my audio interface.

> And how does Bristol run remotely but with a local display if not by either
> X forwarding, or having some ad-hoc code to split the app into two parts ?
> The latter has to be redone for each and every application, if you ever
> want to use it remotely.

You are getting off the point here which was the dependency on X11 but I am really
honoured that you want to know so much about my software, I truly never realised
you were such a fan. I only mentioned it because it highlights that fact that you don't
need X to distribute an app but Fons, I would be happy to start another thread if you
are that interested in blowing smoke where it isn't supposed to go and suffice to say
bristol does not rely on any archaic windowing systems.

> You're mixing up thing here. Most systems do indeed disable direct connections
> to the X server (for good reasons) and expect you to use ssh -X instead

No, Fons, you are mixing things up. Most systems do not even run X servers. Most
systems don't even run *nix.

Only a very tiny minority are still lumbered with this aged piece of code called X. In
my previous post I said that a majority of these systems were not using X in a distributed
fashion because it is either disabled, not available (firewalled) or plain uninteresting and
I stand by that statement - a few users have replied that they use this feature and that
speaks for itself, either a few users of a low volume interest list use the feature or a whole
load of people use the list and don't use the feature.

Now I like X11 but again I am not going to be a fanboy since that smells a lot like every
Apple advocate who is blind to the limitations of their beloved products.

> > > If 'a generation of users' is any reference, we should just forget about
> > > Linux, switch to Windows and call it a day. We should also eat only fast
> > > food, believe everything the TV news and ads tell us, hate strangers and
> > > homosexuals, and generally be ignorant about everything. There's probably
> > > no argument more irrelevant than this sort of populist ones.

So here I agree with Paul - something like wayland is what we will all be on in a few
years.

If you are relying on features of X for anything that you consider to be useful in your
apps then you are likely to need some very fundamental changes to what is likely to be
the next way of interfacing with your hardware. Now you did ask about models to distribute
processing and asked me to quote them: go google it, there are already plenty of
very good models out there and they are being used. If you application is 'badly written'
as you put it, relying on a given interface for a potentially critical feature then it
is going to have problems migrating. It has nothing to do with libraries that use X
window Id in their specification, nor apps that work or not with X over SSH. As you well
know, if you did not consider a given requirement before the fact then you are going to
have problems implementing it after the ract, and offloading a feature onto the X11
libraries because as a fan boy you like the way it abstracts hardware means you are likely
to be in for a world of hurt later. At least you do have a few years to put it straight but you
do need to drop the benefits of the -X switch.

Regards, nick.

"we have to make sure the old choice [Windows] doesn't disappear”.
Jim Wong, president of IT products, Acer

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Received on Wed Feb 23 00:15:01 2011