John and Victor,

Thanks much for the informative replies.

I'm rather torn in two directions:

1) In order to keep things really simple, I'm still interested in sensekey. 
I've looked at the ASCII keyboard mappings, and indeed, the OLPC keyboard 
seems to put out ASCII for all keys and key combos. Any reason an expanded 
sensekey couldn't be written to handle single-byte values issued by at least 
most of these keys? (I'm not really sure why the existing sensekey has such 
a limited collection either; for example, F-keys aren't implemented. Is this 
due to different keyboard layouts for different platforms?)

2) An external controller would need to be USB so as not to require 
additional power. I'd like a set of 16 pots/sliders, not (ideally!) a 
keyboard. Probably the best, and least expensive, are the Evolution series - 
UC-16, X-session and UC-33(e). These require drivers for Windows. Does 
anyone know if these work with Linux/Alsa? (It surely would be nice for no 
additional drivers to be required, though perhaps this is not possible in 
Linux. Any ideas here?)

I really hate to get into needing an external controller that costs more 
than the OLPC. Is there any particular MIDI device that *most likely* might 
be available? (Perhaps a basic MIDI keyboard without pots/sliders - though 
likely without USB connectability as well?)

Art Hunkins

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "jpff" 
To: 
Sent: Saturday, May 24, 2008 1:35 AM
Subject: [Csnd] Re: OPLCsound Advice Request


> Art
>
> As I am awake I will attempt an answer, but Rick or Victor can give
> better answers
>
>> 1) In terms of opcodes, complexity, etc., are canonical and OPLC Csound
>> different? I'm aware that: a) FLTK is not available; that it's place is
>> taken by Python and Victor's csndsugui; b) that realtime complexity must 
>> be
>> limited. Latency will not be an issue for me, and I *assume* that if my
>> instruments are relatively simple, and their number limited, I'll 
>> probably
>> be OK.
>
> The opcode components missing are:
>
> Loris, STK, spat3d, ambisonics, scanned synthesis, the "control"
> opcodes (which I suspect are only used by me and should be removed or
> changed anyway), babo and the ATS opcodes; also no fluidsynth.
>
>> 2) I assume sensekey works; I may well try to limit myself to the ASCII
>> keyboard instead of getting into on-screen widgets. In this regard, has
>> anyone tried to do (UDO?) a custom version of sensekey for the OLPC?
>> Especially one that incorporates the OLPC's unique keys and screen-side
>> control buttons? I've no idea whether theuttons se keys/b have ASCII
>> equivalents or not; does anyone know, and if so, what they are?
>>
>
> I have not actually tied it, but sensekey should work as this is still
> Linux.  As far as i can tell at present the keys all have ASCII
> values.  My XO is currently not here so I cannot check immediately
>
>> 3) Are there any standard alternative controllers being developed for the 
>> XO
>> platform that I should know about - designed especially for the young?
>
> Do not know; the machine has USB and that seems to work
>
> Some other comments; the processor is not fast and so realtime
> performance is more limited that is commonly expected.  It uses 32 bit
> floats.  Misses a number of the less common utilities (atsa, xtrct,
> het_export het_import, hetro, lpc_export, lpc_import, pv_export,
> pv_import).
>
> ==John ffitch
>
>
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