Dear All,
my view as a newbie:
a) I did download the latest package for Win10 and Csound QT seems rather stable.
b) I do like the editor, although copying code seems to be unreliable.
c) I like sound and vision and ideally i like to control my synth (including al parameters, sequences... with one or several harware controllers). Therefore i need also to set knob and fader levels accordingly. Currently using the build-in FLTK GUI set, but not sure if I get stuck soon.
d) I programmed a few thousand line of supercollider code, but found the syntax (I know several languages) frustrating to learn, will say there are several ways to express the same, which is very confusing and not straight forward
e) however, the SC package gives me all i need: Classes to control midi, GUI and of course sound
f) I guess what is required for beginners is:
- a complete easy to install, no fuzz editor with GUI elements and midi that is rock solid. People like audio and visual feedback.
- guaranteed long term support for all components

Hope that helps
Dominik

Csound mailing list
Csound@listserv.heanet.ie
https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A0=CSOUND
Send bugs reports to
        https://github.com/csound/csound/issues
Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here

Anders and Dominik: Thanks for sharing your thoughts on all of this!

Aaron: Also thanks for your thoughts!

It's interesting reading this email thread and reading through all of
the differences in opinions on what should be there out of the box or
not.  Perhaps we need more research on platform managers/installers to
figure what could be done. It seems like we all want everything to be
easily visible and accessible, but differ on what should be required
for downloading.

Aaron, regarding #4, I think the devs are operating under the
assumption that the CMake files are working for people and, it seems
to me, we've been pretty responsive in general to fix up build file
issues.  If you have a build problem, please do report it (and if no
responds, feel free to prod a little too! ;) ).  Regarding #6: there's
plenty of opportunities for contributions.  For dev, you could look
through the issue tracker for the Csound project.  For the website, it
has its own issue tracker as well.  Feel free to pick any item and ask
on the dev list (or on Slack) any questions about issues to
investigate.



On Sat, Oct 14, 2017 at 10:59 AM, Aaron Krister Johnson
 wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm so glad this discussion is happening.
>
> Not-so-briefly:
>
> -1) One of these days, I'll get to a conference! They sound great.
>
> 0) I love the energy and enthusiasm of everybody here in the community.
> Csound is a great tool, and the dedication of all who come together to make
> it even better is remarkable.
>
> 1) Re: CsoundQT: while I love the aims of CsoundQT, the dedication of its
> author(s), and it has a good look and feel due to the underlying widgets, I
> feel it's a shame that many tie the reputation and stability of Csound to
> it. Frankly, it's never worked well for me, it doesn't seem to be a very
> stable tool, and as such, I've decided it's useless for my purposes, because
> I don't want something crashing on me every 2 minutes when I sit down to
> work...and I've tried it sometimes years apart and, unfortunately, it's
> always the same. I know others have had different experiences, successful
> experiences, but it sounds like my experience is common.
>
> 2) Having said 1), I'm _strongly_ for separating out the source of core
> Csound from csoundQT. CsoundQT is a front-end, and belongs in its own
> package.
>
> 3) Also on that line of thought, it would really be nice to see FLTK widgets
> actually come back or be replaced (wxWindows/wxPython?)...some way for users
> who download core Csound to be able to make their own GUI in no time without
> an extra package to compile and install would be nice. A one-man project
> like pyo (Olivier Belanger) has gone further in this regard than Csound in
> its entire history, IMHO. It's simple, non-verbose, good-looking, and very
> well-designed, because it has intelligent defaults structured into it so
> users don't have to get distracted by widget geometry unless they want to.
> Just 'thing_you_want_a_widget_for.ctrl()' and you're done....It still has
> the threading problems that I've noticed with Csound/FLTK, though. I.E., you
> can get weird buffer pauses and drops and xruns by grabbing a widget window
> and shaking it while sound processing is going on. I'm not sure the fix for
> the FLTK stuff in Csound, I've heard vague rumors that compile options can
> mitigate or prevent this, I tried to compile with them but I didn't notice a
> difference, but then also, if they work, why aren't they the defaults? But
> I've suspected the true path here is using OSC from other threads, (someone
> once posted about that here, I forget who) in which case what we need is a
> system that would auto-GUI orchestras in Python/OSC...I've thought about
> such a project, but it's a tall order.
>
> 4) Csound installation via compile has come a long way but it still, IMO has
> a long way to go. I remember wrestling with some default option about a
> MIDI-glove that had nothing to do with anything I'd ever be doing, so it
> didn't make sense to have that as a compile-time deal-breaker. I know most
> people installing with a package manager of some sort won't worry about
> this, so for the bulk of the population, it's a minor criticism.
>
> 5) A huge part of this experience is making the examples really neat-o, once
> someone has climbed the potential install hurdles.....I'd say just
> incorporate as much of Iain McCurdy's instruments as you can into the
> official docs, with some interesting score material, and you're golden. One
> idea would be to have some renaissance/Medieval/Bach/public domain music,
> EDM/IDM ditties...a standard set of scores that could be re-purposed
> throughout the manual to demonstrate various example instruments. Much more
> interesting than a sine wave doing A400 for a half-second. ;) Something like
> Thorin Kerr's "Diving" would be mind-blowing for people to be able to
> study/render...Thorin -- can you make that source available?
>
> 6) Re: need for developers and help of all sorts: I'm willing to (slowly)
> try my hand at developing Csound itself. I'm a Python developer by day at a
> major bank, though, and my schedule is tight, and I'm much more enthusiastic
> about C and experienced with it than I am with C++ (but I'm willing to hold
> my nose and dive into it -- but I do wish it were still in pure C),
> so......but, more quickly, maybe I can help out with
> packaging/documentation/build issues for starters. I also have done web
> development both professionally and personally, so I can help there, with
> the website. Give me something to do so I can give back to this community
> who has provided such an immensely powerful tool for musicians and sound
> designers for free.
>
> 7) One of these days, I'll get to a conference! They sound great.
>
> 8) Thanks again to the wonderful community.
>
> Cheers,
> AKJ
>
>
> Aaron Krister Johnson
> http://www.untwelve.org
>
> On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 10:02 AM, Dominik K
> <00000289a377b150-dmarc-request@listserv.heanet.ie> wrote:
>>
>> Dear All,
>> my view as a newbie:
>> a) I did download the latest package for Win10 and Csound QT seems rather
>> stable.
>> b) I do like the editor, although copying code seems to be unreliable.
>> c) I like sound and vision and ideally i like to control my synth
>> (including al parameters, sequences... with one or several harware
>> controllers). Therefore i need also to set knob and fader levels
>> accordingly. Currently using the build-in FLTK GUI set, but not sure if I
>> get stuck soon.
>> d) I programmed a few thousand line of supercollider code, but found the
>> syntax (I know several languages) frustrating to learn, will say there are
>> several ways to express the same, which is very confusing and not straight
>> forward
>> e) however, the SC package gives me all i need: Classes to control midi,
>> GUI and of course sound
>> f) I guess what is required for beginners is:
>> - a complete easy to install, no fuzz editor with GUI elements and midi
>> that is rock solid. People like audio and visual feedback.
>> - guaranteed long term support for all components
>>
>> Hope that helps
>> Dominik
>>
>> Csound mailing list
>> Csound@listserv.heanet.ie
>> https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A0=CSOUND
>> Send bugs reports to
>>         https://github.com/csound/csound/issues
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>
>
> Csound mailing list Csound@listserv.heanet.ie
> https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A0=CSOUND Send bugs reports to
> https://github.com/csound/csound/issues Discussions of bugs and features can
> be posted here

Csound mailing list
Csound@listserv.heanet.ie
https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A0=CSOUND
Send bugs reports to
        https://github.com/csound/csound/issues
Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here