I have been browsing a bit, to see exactly what is where! 

Maybe the file naming needs to be much more distinct. I see that it is
important for people visiting the server for the first time to be able
to understand what the different versions are, especially while the
directory is not itself a web page, as such. The versions on the Bath
site are all co-ordinated, obviously, so that you know the versions for
each platform are the same. 

A distinctive web link is still perhaps the best solution, if it can be
managed. Gabriel Maldonado's RTSound is obtainable from his website, and
Michael Gogin's version from his. Both sites describe the particular
version in detail. All are pointed to from the MIT front page. It would
be convenient (faster, = cheaper) for me to get them all in this
country, but I am of course speaking selfishly there! If I do a special
CDP version (whatever form that might take), it would naturally be on
ours; if I did my own experimental Windows version, it would be on mine.
If you had a csound_linux_dev website, it would be on yours!

It is therefore a bit of a paradigm shift (not heresy!) to have
alternative non-coordinated but otherwise identical versions at the same
location, which is why the suggestion goes out to coordinate them, I
suppose. Those are the versions John maintains personally. The others
versions aren't. The difference is currently expressed by the difference
of site, which in all other respects works very well. If there were
different Windows versions on the same site, I think I might be confused
too. Certainly a new visitor would. Both John and I have a link to the
MIT Cosund page, and one further click (to select resolution) takes you
to the Csound distributions, which does list all versions very
distinctly (even points to CDP)- no confusion there. What is really
needed is a page which explains the differences between the two
versions, whch you are obviously in a good position to provide. If you
have no means of providing a website (though I would have though the
magnitude of your Linux version and work warrants it!), perhaps the
Csound Front Page could be extended pro tem?

Maybe the names can be changed to 'canonical Linux' and 'Linux
Development Group'. That sound very impressive to me!

That is really about as much as I can think of to say on this. long
teaching day tomorrow (oops, today...), and I want to start thinking
about plugins again!

Richard Dobson

Nicola Bernardini wrote:
> 

> 
> Hey! I'm ready when you are. As a matter of fact, I have been for
> some years now. Last time the issue arose, I was told I was some terrible
> mishap of nature because it would have been *sooo* difficult to recognize
> the official canonical linux sources/binaries vs. the 'unofficial' ones,
> so I did'nt even dare to think about it! Bear with me when I repeat once
> again that I don't find it heretic at all to have two linux distribution,
> as different distributions exist for other platforms too (yes, that's
> something I've been asking myself all along: what's the problem with
> linux? why all of this does not happen with Win95? I must be really bad :)
> 
> ciao
> 
> Nicola
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Nicola Bernardini
> E-mail: nicb@axnet.it
> 
> Re graphics: A picture is worth 10K words -- but only those to describe
> the picture.  Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described
> with pictures.

-- 
Test your DAW with my Soundcard Attrition Page!
http://wkweb5.cableinet.co.uk/rwd

On Wed, 20 Jan 1999, Richard Dobson wrote:

[snip]
> Maybe the file naming needs to be much more distinct. I see that it is
> important for people visiting the server for the first time to be able
> to understand what the different versions are, especially while the
> directory is not itself a web page, as such. The versions on the Bath
> site are all co-ordinated, obviously, so that you know the versions for
> each platform are the same. 

As I said, I'll (and I'm sure we'll) gladly consider any proposal. Please
note that the numbering scheme we adopted has its logic, partially borrowed
from jpff's numbering scheme. The idea is that anybody should know at
a glance what she/he is using, so for example considering 3.49.4.1b:

          3     .     49      .      4         .       1b
	  ^           ^              ^                 ^^
	  |           |              |                 ||
    canon. major canon. minor   canon. patchlevel      ||
                                                       |unoff.patchlevel
                                                       |
                                                unoff.additions

(no invention there: we just adopted one of the standard numbering
schemes in linux). So when using the unofficial distribution, you would
know at a glance that you're using a dist that has a merged version
of the 3.494 canonical sources with some unofficial add-ons which
are younger than the canonical sources themselves (and possibly
very linux-specific) (that's the last digit), and that these sources
have been patched at least once. The whole idea is to have a fast turn around
in the CVS tree so that anybody watching that
can contribute with code, fixes, etc. (while packaged distribution
may take longer to prepare and post, thus having a slower turn-around).
Furthermore, many people have access to the CVS tree and contribute code
independently in a very loose (and quick) fashion.
'merged' sources means that I diff the canonical sources against the
previous version of themselves and then I patch the unofficial sources.
I decided to do it this way to be able to work incrementally with two
set of sources which need syncing every now and then.
All of this is done with standard tools and in a pretty automated way:
I never thought it would work but it apparently does...

[snip]
> distinctly (even points to CDP)- no confusion there. What is really
> needed is a page which explains the differences between the two
> versions, whch you are obviously in a good position to provide. If you
> have no means of providing a website (though I would have though the
> magnitude of your Linux version and work warrants it!), perhaps the
> Csound Front Page could be extended pro tem?

Funny you mentioned that. There is one:

http://aimi.dist.unige.it/CSOUND/AIMICSOUND_home-en.html (in english)
http://aimi.dist.unige.it/CSOUND/AIMICSOUND_home.html	(in italian)

They do have an explanation (which can always be made better - as a matter
of fact after this discussion I'll try hard to make things clearer),
pointers, etc.. Note that I do not maintain a web site myself (no time
for that I'm afraid), and the site space (and ftp repository) has been
kindly offered by AIMI (Associazione di Informatica Musicale Italiana).

> Maybe the names can be changed to 'canonical Linux' and 'Linux
> Development Group'. That sound very impressive to me!

Well, I do agree that csound-unix-dev might be misleading as a mailing
list group. We started with csound-linux-dev but very quickly it became
clear that many of the things we were doing would apply to other unices
as well (I still am convinced that this is only partially true) - so there
was a request of changing to csound-unix-dev. Since then things have
evolved, the list is quite successeful so I don't know how feasible it
is to change names again...

Nicola
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nicola Bernardini
E-mail: nicb@axnet.it
 
Re graphics: A picture is worth 10K words -- but only those to describe
the picture.  Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described
with pictures.