Re: [LAD] Non Session Management

On 03/22/2012 12:59 PM, thijs van severen wrote:
> 2012/3/22 rosea.grammostola <rosea.grammostola@email-addr-hidden
> <mailto:rosea.grammostola@email-addr-hidden>>
>
> Hi,
>
> I wonder what the LAD community thinks about Non Session Manager
>
> http://non.tuxfamily.org/nsm/__API.html
> <http://non.tuxfamily.org/nsm/API.html>
> http://non.tuxfamily.org/nsm
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?__v=ui-gC_ZMeGM
> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui-gC_ZMeGM>
> http://youtu.be/xzspJXbEoc0
>
> From a user POV I must say that it works very smooth at first
> sight. It's easy to use and one of the strong points seems to be the
> flexibility, e.g. the ability to copy and change existing sessions,
> run multiple sessions (also via network). But I cannot comment on
> the technical goods and bads of the API and how easy it will be to
> implement this in a Jackaudio application. It seems to use OSC
> messages and depends only on liblo.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> \r
>
> MHO: having a good universal session manager would be a dream come true,
> but so far i have not been able to find one that does what i would like
> it to do :
> - start a couple of apps
> - wire them together
> - add some more apps
> - save everything
> - done

This is what Session managers do, NSM, JackSession and Ladish.
Try it.

>
> for me it is rather annoying that i have to predefine a session (as is
> the case with most session managers).
> i just would like to open apps, use them, connect them, without having
> to think about 'the session', let alone 'predefine' it
> jacksession offers some of this, but not all apps support jacksession
> non session manager has some interesting features too (like
> over-the-network sessions)
I don't think this is true. You can start apps just as you like and save
the session. In NSM you do this in the GUI, but it's very easy to remove
a client in a session or add one, so no need to predefine anything.

A problem are clients without support for the session format.
At least in NSM it's easy to start any application nevertheless (the
author is also thinking about writing a wrapper for non supported apps).
At least NSM acts like a script starting clients and restore the JACK
connections (via client jackpatch). So people who prefer scripts and
aj-snapshot, will find the same benefits in NSM if the author has added
the wrapper (to be able to add arguments to a starting client).

This is also more or less possible in JackSession, all though saving and
quiting the session works more cumbersome in Qjackctl compared to NSM in
my opinion. There is a possibility to start apps without JS support, but
that's not implemented in Qjackctl yet, so atm a practical disadvantage
of JS. There is a non official supported wrapper for JackSession though,
js_wrap.

We all know that session management is hard, but if we can live with
more or less one standard it would be nice. JackSession seems to be an
option, but if I understand the situation well, it seems that Paul Davis
rather sees LV2 rise, he doesn't really believe in Session Management,
so he is probably not very motivated to help it rise. Torben wrote
JackSession, but he doesn't have time for Linuxaudio atm, so it might be
fair to question the chances for survival here.

I don't say that JackSession could not survive, but it needs support and
development. If the community can agree on a format (NSM for example)
which is supported better, then that might be a better option.

Apart from the politics it's just interesting to discuss the NSM API here.

Best,
\r

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Received on Thu Mar 22 16:15:02 2012