I second this idea.

Csound4 had multiple frontends, and we all had our favorite (or none). Each
had features and styles that were attractive for different reasons.

In my case, I do real-time performance pieces; I like the idea that
performers can pick the kind of frontend (or none) *they* like.

Art Hunkins

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Ogborn" 
To: 
Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2006 9:23 PM
Subject: Re: [Cs-dev] Re: [Csnd] Csound 5 GUI frontends


> Hello Michael, John and csound-devel list,
>
> I think that the fact that Csound 5 does not come with any particular
> front-end, far from representing a liability is in fact an advantage.
> It encourages the independent development of multiple "front-ends" to
> reflect the great diversity of work processes employed by a great
> diversity of electronic sound artists.
>
> I wonder what the community would gain by a certain front-end being
> declared as the "standard" front-end.  Why not distribute all front-ends
> as separate programs with Csound 5 as their major/only prerequisite?
>
> Yours truly,
> David
>
> Michael Gogins wrote:
> > I've played with your frontend, and looked a little bit at the sources.
> >
> > Basically, I like what you have done.  I like the transport controls and
> > time counter, I think this is very useful, not least because its
> > function will be obvious to musicians who are not programmers. I also
> > like the fields for adding soundfile ID tags.
> >
> > I suggest that we combine CsoundVST and your GUI to make a standard
> > frontend for Csound 5. I think this can be done in a way that would
> > please both those who do not wish to install Python and those who do,
> > reduce duplication of effort, and make Csound 5 more maintainable.
> >
> > First, allow me to point out some minor problems, then I will make some
> > suggestions.
> >
> > The first problem is that there is a black console window, then there is
> > a second console window (with a white background) for Csound messages.
> > The first window can be omitted with the right linker flag, I think.
> > Probably, you have just left this in for debugging purposes.
> >
> > The second problem is that configuration dialog has no "close" button
> > (though Alt-F4 does close it), and it's a modal dialog so when it's
> > open, you can't run Csound. This is obviously easy to fix in FLTK.
> >
> > I think it might be a problem that you construct the Csound command line
> > entirely from dialogs. Perhaps there should also be a text field for
> > additional flags by hand?
> >
> > Now for my suggestions.
> >
> > The main suggestion is to allow, but not require, the frontend to use
> > Python.  This can be done by (a) calling Python via dl_open and dl_sym
> > (or the Windows equivalents) instead of linking statically, and (b) by
> > changing the Python Csound API to permit plugging an existing instance
> > of Csound into Python (CsoundVST does it the other way round, creates
> > Csound in Python then extracts it for the GUI). This would enable Csound
> > operated via Python to print messages to the console, operate the time
> > counter, etc. In other words, if the frontend can load the Python
> > library, it will unhide a script editing button and plug its already
> > created instance of Csound into Python. If the script field is
> > populated, the script will be executed, instead of compiling and running
> > the Csound files.
> >
> > Dynamically loading Python in this way did not used to be possible on
> > Windows before Python 2.4. because the Python functions did not used to
> > be exported in the Python DLL, but they are now. This opens a lot of
> > things up and makes it possible for the program to run if Python is not
> > present.
> >
> > As Steven Yi suggested, this may possible with other scripting languages
> > as well.
> >
> > Other suggestions follow.
> >
> > I think it would be desirable to add a button that links to the Csound
> > HTML help with a configurable path. FLTK has some sort of HTML browser,
> > though I'm not sure it's good enough for this.
> >
> > I think "Seek" or "Goto" is a better term than "Apply" for the score
> > offset, which is a nice feature.
> >
> > Putting dummy widgets in so as not to break widget orcs is a good idea.
> >
> > Did you look at John Ramsdell's flCsound? He had a feature of placing
> > FLTK graphs onto separate tabs that would be nice to have.
> >
> > Anyway, let me know what you think. I am not going to make any more
> > changes to CsoundVST for the time being.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Mike
> >
> > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Istvan Varga"

> > To: 
> > Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2006 6:25 PM
> > Subject: Re: [Csnd] Csound 5 GUI frontends
> >
> >
> >> On Friday 28 April 2006 00:03, jpff@codemist.co.uk wrote:
> >>
> >>> So again my small free time is wasted.  Time to stop and go back to
> >>> writing music.
> >>
> >> Well, I mainly created this frontend to learn more about using FLTK
> >> and fluid, and also in response to recent criticism about Csound 5
> >> being "command line only". It remains to be seen if anyone actually
> >> finds it useful in practice, and if not, I will probably remove it
> >> from the CVS.
> >> --
> >> Send bugs reports to this list.
> >> To unsubscribe, send email to csound-unsubscribe@lists.bath.ac.uk
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
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>
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