David Schuyeteneer wrote:

> A new sound language should be invented with syntax like this :
>
> I honestly have to admit that inspiration comes from "POVRAY", wich can be
> considered
> as the visual equivalent of Csound...It is a raytracer that describes a 3D
> scene the same way
> Csound does with sound.

Weeelllll I'm not so sure that Csound needs to be the POVRAY of
sound!  One thing I'm not happy with Csound syntax is when it comes
to realtime synthesis.  I'm working with the Extended Csound, and there
really doesn't seem an easy way to update parameters in a general way.
You can tie them to MIDI messages, but as experimental as Csound is
it seems that the creators of Extended Csound would be more general
than MIDI.  MIDI is old!  It has successfully dodged all all atempts at
revisions for a long time.  It would be nice to attach parameters to
realtime architecture that doesn't rely on opcodes!  Along the lines
that David was referring, POVRAY allows for dynamic behavior with
sets of equations and what not.  But the difference between POVRAY
and Csound is that realtime is a reality for Csound.  For POVRAY it
won't happen for a while. Furthermore, Csound's success hinges on it
being realtime because people aren't going to use Csound if they have
to wait ( I'm talking on a larger scale ).  Think of how most musicians work
with creating sounds.  It is a very interactive and inspirational task, and
waiting on a the machine to do a request is not condusive to this.
Extended Csound is great in a lot of ways because it emphasizes
building general synthesizer architectures and then customising them
like REAL synths.  This is a powerful idea.  However, it fell short in
a couple of ways because it limited itselft to present day.  What if I
wanted to receive information over a network and from other computers?
How about new synths that don't use midi?  Real world case in point:
The Hub.  I think musicians are starving for some interesting new
technologies.  I think Csound can stand up to this challenge.

I could see a revision of the Csound language as not such a hard project
with the right tools.  Who knows Bison and has the time? ;-)

I think it would be a real cool project if someone is really interested.

thanks
charlie