I guess it's a question of whether the composer should suggest settings that 
would work for many possible performers, for his/her piece - or not make 
such suggestions.

This latter would probably work OK for "those in the know" (such as you, 
Richard), but I think not for most of my (potential?) target audience. (Of 
course, I'm probably dreaming; but I *am* trying to make performance for 
non-Csounders as painless as possible - and to make my .csd's as complete as 
possible.)

Art Hunkins

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard Dobson" 
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 4:49 PM
Subject: [Csnd] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: csoptions idea...


> Art Hunkins wrote:
> ..
>> It isn't more or less tiresome; it's the same. But I'm all for one less 
>> file to cope with.
>> Edit  once for your system and you are good to go. I guess
>
>
> But this is the whole point. We are (well, I am) talking about 
> distributing csds to other people (and using one from other people). Sure, 
> I can edit CsOptions for ~my~ csds I am playing on ~my~ system, but any 
> time I use someone else's csd (such as yours, for example), ~they~ have in 
> effect changed my settings. I don't want them to.
>
> My .csoundrc is the place for me to store ~my~ settings for ~my~ machine. 
> That is what I shodul edit once and be good to go. Those settings have 
> nothing to do with anybody else's machine. The csd is a way of bundling 
> sco and orc files in one file, and that is a very good idea. But embedding 
> some arbitrary bunch of machine-specific settings in the same file makes 
> no sense to me at all; any more than I should expect you to use all my mac 
> "preferences" settings or PC environment settings, merely because "they 
> work for me".
>
>
> Richard Dobson
>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to this list.
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe 
> csound" 



Send bugs reports to this list.
To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"

Art Hunkins wrote:
> I guess it's a question of whether the composer should suggest settings 
> that would work for many possible performers, for his/her piece - or not 
> make such suggestions.
> 

Understood; but are the defaults Csound already has so bad? If they are, 
perhaps it is those that need to be revisited. If Csound doesn't "just 
work" out of the box on the great majority of machines (disregarding 
really old slow ones), then arguably there is a bigger issue to be dealt 
with than CsOptions. In the "average" machine, as you said, the average 
user will have a soundcard i/o, a MIDI input device, so to that extent, 
nothing further should need to be specified. And if I happen not to have 
a MIDI device, no setting in CsOptions will magically manifests one 
(wish it did).

CsOptions for example can very reasonably say "I need MIDI input" and "I 
need at least quad output" and even "I need a network connection"; but 
specifying a device (other than the system default for that machine), or 
(my pet hate) those pesky -B -b options is another matter. Those are the 
settings I have most often had to change - simply by deleting/ignoring them.


Richard Dobson



Send bugs reports to this list.
To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"

Some very interesting points here. I only brought this up because I'm
writing API hosts for different platforms. Each host can be built on
any OS but having to ask the user to change the CsOptions is a little
annoying. Just like Art I want my hosts to run out of the box, saying
that I also find the opinions expressed about the .csoundrc file very
interesting. One concern I have is with teaching. The easiest thing
for me to do in my lab is to have a .csoundrc file that sets up
optimum latency and chooses the right drivers. I set this once in a
.csoundrc file and I don't have to revisit it again, happy days. On
the other hand students who use their own laptops will need a
completely different .csoundrc. So what about this (maintainers of
installers please don't kill me), when an end-users is installing
Csound the are greeted by a dialogue that lets them choose the best
audio setting for their machine, once they are happy with those
settings the .csoundrc file is dynamically created. The setup dialogue
would of course let them test various options to see which is the
best. From then on they shouldn't ever have to mess about with their
csoptions again. Of course this wouldn't break any simplified distros
that composers have written as their compositions run out of one
directory. Either way, I'm going to investigate the .csoundrc file a
little more as I've never used it myself. Csound is and most probably
will continue to be a command line application. What's encouraging
however is the development of more intelligent installers. Mike,
Victor and Felipe have all done great work on building better and
better installer packages. If users were ready to start having fun
straight after installing Csound it would really be great, they're
already so close, but setting up the options is always something that
catches new users out. I see it all the time.

Rory.



2009/8/18 Richard Dobson :
> Art Hunkins wrote:
>>
>> I guess it's a question of whether the composer should suggest settings
>> that would work for many possible performers, for his/her piece - or not
>> make such suggestions.
>>
>
> Understood; but are the defaults Csound already has so bad? If they are,
> perhaps it is those that need to be revisited. If Csound doesn't "just work"
> out of the box on the great majority of machines (disregarding really old
> slow ones), then arguably there is a bigger issue to be dealt with than
> CsOptions. In the "average" machine, as you said, the average user will have
> a soundcard i/o, a MIDI input device, so to that extent, nothing further
> should need to be specified. And if I happen not to have a MIDI device, no
> setting in CsOptions will magically manifests one (wish it did).
>
> CsOptions for example can very reasonably say "I need MIDI input" and "I
> need at least quad output" and even "I need a network connection"; but
> specifying a device (other than the system default for that machine), or (my
> pet hate) those pesky -B -b options is another matter. Those are the
> settings I have most often had to change - simply by deleting/ignoring them.
>
>
> Richard Dobson
>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to this list.
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
> csound"
>


Send bugs reports to this list.
To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"