As far as I'm concerned, there is no reason to preserve configuration
choices where a third-party library does a good job and is available on the
Csound platforms. 

As far as I know, that means we would lock Csound into libsndfile,
libportaudio, and libfltk and remove other options. 

I favor this. It would lead to another significant simplification of the
code base and again reduce maintenance and porting effort, freeing up time
for musically relevant work.

This would represent a change of direction in Csound development. You in
particular have taken pains to make Csound available on an amazing variety
of platforms. How widely used are, for example, the Amiga and Atari ports,
or Mac OS 9? What exactly ARE the Csound platforms that you want to
continue to support?


Original Message:
-----------------
From:  jpff@codemist.co.uk
Date: Tue,  2 Mar 2004 08:44:30 +0000
To: csound-dev@eartha.mills.edu
Subject: [CSOUND-DEV:4216] LibSndFile


How important is it to preserve the operation of Csound without
LibSndFile?  I am finding it increasingly confusing to have both
versions in the same sources, especially as using the library clears
away so much code.  As far as I can tell this library runs on all
platforms, and we can link it statically to provide stand-alone
binaries.

btw I am not sure how to do dithering at present with the library.
There are signs that dithering is intended in the code, but is not
available, and Erik suggests that we not wait.

==John ffitch


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On 3/2/04 9:57 AM, gogins@pipeline.com etched in stone:

> As far as I'm concerned, there is no reason to preserve configuration
> choices where a third-party library does a good job and is available on the
> Csound platforms.

Agreed.

> As far as I know, that means we would lock Csound into libsndfile,
> libportaudio, and libfltk and remove other options.

Libsndfile seems good for just about everyone: Windows, *nix, MacOS X, MacOS
<= 9.  BeOS has a POSIX compatibility layer, so it should work there as
well.  I don't know enough about DOS though to say.  And I would guess that
Amiga and Atari might be out of luck.

PortAudio and FLTK have smaller "audiences."  I wanted to download the
latest PortAudio last week and try to get it working.  I found out that
while the Legacy MacOS is on the agenda, no work has been done on supporting
that platform in v19.  v18 supported Windows (MME & DirectX), Mac
SoundManager (OS 9), Mac CoreAudio (OS X), OSS, ASIO, Irix, and had alpha
support for BeOS.  v19 is adding ALSA and Jack but MacOS 9 & X are
completely unimplemented and the OSS support looks pretty sketchy at this
point as well.

FLTK has very limited options but I don't think that really matters.  GUI
interaction with orchestras is supposed to be moving into the host
applications, correct?

> I favor this. It would lead to another significant simplification of the
> code base and again reduce maintenance and porting effort, freeing up time
> for musically relevant work.

Agreed.

> This would represent a change of direction in Csound development. You in
> particular have taken pains to make Csound available on an amazing variety
> of platforms. How widely used are, for example, the Amiga and Atari ports,
> or Mac OS 9? What exactly ARE the Csound platforms that you want to
> continue to support?

Why don't we ask on the Csound list?  It won't really tell us whether anyone
is using these platforms, but it might give us some idea.

I have been trying to keep a list of people who might be still using the
Mills port, just based on what they have said on the list.  I only have 5 or
6 people right now, but I think there may still be some universities running
it in their labs as well.

BeOS, Amiga, and Atari haven't exactly been maintained recently.  There does
not seem to be a recently compiled version for BeOS (July 2000 -- about 4.07
-- was the last that I could find).  The Atari version seems to be from
1997.  The last NeXT version was about 3.53 (1998).  I don't even see an
Amiga version on the Dream site.  And I have no idea what the "archie"
platform on the FTP site is.  I also have never seen any signs of the old
VAX port which supposedly existed.

I have to wonder how many of these platforms would even still compile.  But
I think we should ask the list to get a better feel for what platforms are
necessary.  I would ask for BeOS, Amiga, Atari, NeXT, DOS, PowerMac with OS
7-9, 68K Mac with OS 7-8.  Any others?

Anthony Kozar
anthony.kozar@utoledo.edu

I checked and I couldn't find an fltk port for OS9.  That doesn't
concern me much as I don't use OS9 but I can see how it might concern
others.  

My vote is to lock the dependencies for sndfile, portaudio and libfltk
as well.  For configuration, I think non-realtime and non-gui should be
possibilities.  

On a side note, I noticed portaudio has jack as a target build, so will
give that a try later today.  

steven


On Tue, 2004-03-02 at 06:57, gogins@pipeline.com wrote:
> As far as I'm concerned, there is no reason to preserve configuration
> choices where a third-party library does a good job and is available on the
> Csound platforms. 
> 
> As far as I know, that means we would lock Csound into libsndfile,
> libportaudio, and libfltk and remove other options. 
> 
> I favor this. It would lead to another significant simplification of the
> code base and again reduce maintenance and porting effort, freeing up time
> for musically relevant work.
> 
> This would represent a change of direction in Csound development. You in
> particular have taken pains to make Csound available on an amazing variety
> of platforms. How widely used are, for example, the Amiga and Atari ports,
> or Mac OS 9? What exactly ARE the Csound platforms that you want to
> continue to support?
> 
> 
> Original Message:
> -----------------
> From:  jpff@codemist.co.uk
> Date: Tue,  2 Mar 2004 08:44:30 +0000
> To: csound-dev@eartha.mills.edu
> Subject: [CSOUND-DEV:4216] LibSndFile
> 
> 
> How important is it to preserve the operation of Csound without
> LibSndFile?  I am finding it increasingly confusing to have both
> versions in the same sources, especially as using the library clears
> away so much code.  As far as I can tell this library runs on all
> platforms, and we can link it statically to provide stand-alone
> binaries.
> 
> btw I am not sure how to do dithering at present with the library.
> There are signs that dithering is intended in the code, but is not
> available, and Erik suggests that we not wait.
> 
> ==John ffitch
> 
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> mail2web - Check your email from the web at
> http://mail2web.com/ .
> 
> 
> 

On 3/2/04 12:03 PM, stevenyi etched in stone:

> I checked and I couldn't find an fltk port for OS9.  That doesn't
> concern me much as I don't use OS9 but I can see how it might concern
> others.  

I am personally not concerned about this at all.  We have lived for awhile
without FLTK on the Mac, and I imagine that we can go on living without it.
Anyways, Matt has been developing his own GUI widgets in MacCsound.

> My vote is to lock the dependencies for sndfile, portaudio and libfltk
> as well.  For configuration, I think non-realtime and non-gui should be
> possibilities.  

Agreed.  As long as I can compile without FLTK, I foresee no problems.

Anthony Kozar
anthony.kozar@utoledo.edu