For my first foray into contributing to the Canonical Manual, I thought I'd
take a look at and possibly update the Front Ends Part I Overview page. I'm
soliciting comments on the information in this page. Here are some
questions. Comments on anything and everything on this page are also
welcome, even if I didn't think to ask the right questions!

1) QuteCsound is not mentioned on this page, so I'll need to add it. My
impression is that a version of QuteCsound is now part of the Csound
distribution ... but that may well not be the most recent version. Is that
correct? Is it planned that it will continue to be part of the distribution?
Is this the case on all platforms?

2) On my Windows machine, I don't find anything called Csound5GUI in the bin
directory. The page says it's "part of the standard Csound distribution."
Where is it?

3) Briefly, how might one go about using CSDplayer? Will the material in
examples > java be clear to Java programmers?

4) Where is Winsound? I can't find it in my Windows installation (of
5.11.1). Is it still part of the distribution?

5) Is there a difference between WinXoundPro (mentioned on the Manual page)
and plain old WinXound (the app that the link takes me to), or is this just
a name change? Would anyone who is familiar with both care to compare the
functionality of QuteCsound and WinXound?

6) According to the web page for the program, Csound Editor is not being
maintained. That page is dated ten years ago. Is this still a viable
program, or should it be deprecated?

7) Cabel seems not to have been updated since 2006. Is it still viable with
recent versions of Csound? Is anyone using it? (BTW, I'm not proposing to
delete anything from this Manual page. What I want to do is simply expand
the page with a bit more commentary to guide new users toward the most
viable front ends.)

8) Will it be clear to Python users how to find the file CsoundAC in order
to import it? I don't see this file in my examples > python directory.
There's a CsoundAC.csd in the examples directory, but that seems possibly to
be something different.

9) Are there other recent developments in the land of front ends that should
be mentioned on this Manual page?

Thanks for your help!

--Jim Aikin

Here are some answers, all "afaik" (feel free to correct me, anyone) ...

> 1) QuteCsound is not mentioned on this page, so I'll need to add it. My
> impression is that a version of QuteCsound is now part of the Csound
> distribution ... but that may well not be the most recent version. Is that
> correct? Is it planned that it will continue to be part of the distribution?
> Is this the case on all platforms?

Yes, the QuteCsound packaged with Csound may be out of date.  For
Csound 5.12 it is currently up to date.  It was decided a while back
that QuteCsound will continue to be part of the Csound distribution.



> 2) On my Windows machine, I don't find anything called Csound5GUI in the bin
> directory. The page says it's "part of the standard Csound distribution."
> Where is it?

QuteCsound replaced Csound5GUI.  It can be built from source, though.



> 4) Where is Winsound? I can't find it in my Windows installation (of
> 5.11.1). Is it still part of the distribution?

Same as Csound5GUI -- replaced by QuteCsound.



> 6) According to the web page for the program, Csound Editor is not being
> maintained. That page is dated ten years ago. Is this still a viable
> program, or should it be deprecated?

It should be deprecated.  It was removed from the distribution when
QuteCsound was brought in.  Again, though, all the old front-ends can
be built from source.



> 8) Will it be clear to Python users how to find the file CsoundAC in order
> to import it? I don't see this file in my examples > python directory.
> There's a CsoundAC.csd in the examples directory, but that seems possibly to
> be something different.

CsoundAC.py is in the Csound/bin directory.  Whether that is assumed
by Python users or not, I don't know.



> 9) Are there other recent developments in the land of front ends that should
> be mentioned on this Manual page?

Stephane Rollandin has some nice emac customizations worth mentioning.
 Links  ...

csound-x:  http://www.zogotounga.net/comp/csoundx.html
muO:  http://www.zogotounga.net/comp/squeak/sqgeo.htm
surmalot:  http://www.zogotounga.net/surmulot/surmulot.html

Blue by Steven Yi is also a nice app worth mentioning in the
front-ends section, but it may not fit the definition of "front-end".

Cheers,
~ andy.f


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Hi Jim,

Thanks for looking at this. All contributions are very helpful, and
especially with your experience, don't hesitate to propose radical
changes or restructuring. I think the manual needs a lot of that.

On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 7:30 PM, Jim Aikin  wrote:

> 2) On my Windows machine, I don't find anything called Csound5GUI in the bin
> directory. The page says it's "part of the standard Csound distribution."
> Where is it?

It used to be part of the standard distribution, and is now available
only in source form.

> 4) Where is Winsound? I can't find it in my Windows installation (of
> 5.11.1). Is it still part of the distribution?

Winsound also available in source form.


But seeing how badly this page ages, makes me think it might be worth
removing and leaving that information to the FLOSS manual which can be
better suited for this kind of information. What do you think?

Cheers,
Andres


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Hi Stefano,

On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 8:59 AM, Stefano Bonetti  wrote:
> - no gui editor (for the moment, maybe there will be a surprise in the near
> future);

It would be great if you want to discuss your plans for this and
possibly try to make the format similar (or compatible) to exchange
widgets with QuteCsound. I would prefer if people didn't lose their
work because they moved to/from WinXsound.
Information on QuteCsound's widget format is here:
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/qutecsound/index.php?title=Xml_Widget_Format
It was an attempt to be compatible with blue's widget format (which
has actually changed a bit since I implemented this format in
QuteCsound). But after talks with Steven it was clear that interchange
between blue and QuteCsound didn't really make sense as they are based
on a completely different model. WinXsound, however could share the
format. what do you think?

Cheers,
Andres


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Hi,

On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 8:59 AM, Stefano Bonetti  wrote:
> ... Probably Andrés can help me to complete the list of differences.

I think the quick way to explain it (at least for the apps in their
current state) is that WinXsound is a light weight editor, while
QuteCsound offers Widgets for realtime control.

Cheers,
Andres


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Hi Andrés, thanks for your response ... 
I agree with you for the quick way!

Stefano



> Hi,
> 
> On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 8:59 AM, Stefano Bonetti  wrote:
>> ... Probably Andrés can help me to complete the list of differences.
> 
> I think the quick way to explain it (at least for the apps in their
> current state) is that WinXsound is a light weight editor, while
> QuteCsound offers Widgets for realtime control.
> 
> Cheers,
> Andres
> 
> 
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
> 



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I'm the maintainer of the Windows installer.

On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 2:30 PM, Jim Aikin  wrote:
>
> 1) QuteCsound is not mentioned on this page, so I'll need to add it. My
> impression is that a version of QuteCsound is now part of the Csound
> distribution ...

Please add it to the manual. It's part of the Windows installer.

> 2) On my Windows machine, I don't find anything called Csound5GUI in the bin
> directory. The page says it's "part of the standard Csound distribution."
> Where is it?

Not maintained, no longer part of the Windows installer, anyway.

> 3) Briefly, how might one go about using CSDplayer? Will the material in
> examples > java be clear to Java programmers?

CSDPlayer is an example for Java programmers and should be clear enough to them.

> 4) Where is Winsound? I can't find it in my Windows installation (of
> 5.11.1). Is it still part of the distribution?

Not on Windows.

> 5) Is there a difference between WinXoundPro (mentioned on the Manual page)
> and plain old WinXound (the app that the link takes me to), or is this just
> a name change? Would anyone who is familiar with both care to compare the
> functionality of QuteCsound and WinXound?

This is a good question. I don't regularly use front ends, so I'm the
wrong person to ask. My impression is that both are highly functional
and useful and that Pro is now just WinXound.

> 6) According to the web page for the program, Csound Editor is not being
> maintained. That page is dated ten years ago. Is this still a viable
> program, or should it be deprecated?

It should be deprecated.

> 7) Cabel seems not to have been updated since 2006. Is it still viable with
> recent versions of Csound? Is anyone using it?

I am also apparently the only person currently maintaining Cabel. I
know at least one composer who actually uses it. It does work with
current Csound.

> 8) Will it be clear to Python users how to find the file CsoundAC in order
> to import it? I don't see this file in my examples > python directory.
> There's a CsoundAC.csd in the examples directory, but that seems possibly to
> be something different.

CsoundAC.csd is a Csound orchestra that I developed to use with
CsoundAC, but it would work for any purpose. My "A Csound Tutorial"
explains how to import CsoundAC, and most experienced Python users
would be able to figure it out. However, it doesn't install to the
regular Python Lib directory, so a novice Python user could use a
helpful note about setting PYTHONPATH to point to where CsoundAC.pyd
and .py are. The same goes, by the way, for the csnd module.

> 9) Are there other recent developments in the land of front ends that should
> be mentioned on this Manual page?

I think you should mention the very impressive and useful blue program
by Steven Yi.

Jim Aikin wrote:
>
> 9) Are there other recent developments in the land of front ends that should
> be mentioned on this Manual page?
>
>   

I'm not sure if Jean-Pierre Lemoine's AVSynthesis qualifies, but I've 
been using it as a composition environment for Csound.

I don't know how far you want to stretch the definition of a front-end. 
Others that might fall into the category include Steven Yi's blue, 
Stephane Rollandin's GeoMaestro, Christopher Ariza's AthenaCL, Rick 
Taube's GRACE/Common Music, Jonatan Liljedahl's AlgoScore, Jean Piche's 
Cecilia, Mikel Kuehn's nGen, Luigi Negretti's Csmusgen, Oeyvind 
Brandtsegg's ImproSculpt, and perhaps some others listed at 
linux-sound.org/cshelp.html (no fear, not everything listed there is 
just for Linux).

Good luck, Jim, and thanks for taking on the task.

Best,

dp



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May I make a mild case ofr Winsound?  It works with text-to-speach systems
and so is usable by the partially sighted and the unsighted.  I had a
request for it last year because of this.  Otherwise i do not care much as
I never use any of th efront-ends myself.
==John ff



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> I don't know how far you want to stretch the definition of a front-end.
> Others that might fall into the category include Steven Yi's blue,
> Stephane Rollandin's GeoMaestro,

GeoMaestro is an older system. The current one would be Surmulot 
(csound-x + muO).

Stef


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