Whatever your religious objections to Windows, if you create a
cross-platform virtual machine that works with Java, then you get it to run
on Linux (or BeOS if BeOS have a Java virtual machine) and, without hurting
anyone on those other platforms, it also runs on Windows where there are
lots and lots of musicians who could use SuperCollider.

I started on Unix and moved to Windows not for religious reasons, but
because it made my musical life happen at home and more cheaply than any
other way without really losing any vital functionality.

I personally believe that some virtual-machine system is bound to run almost
all software in the end. I think Java, its descendent, or something like it
will end up running on everything from supercomputers to watches. I think
this will happen because software is more expensive than hardware and
general-purpose software is cheaper than special-purpose software. Note how
the Ptolemy DSP project at UCB for the Navy has moved from C++ to Java in
the past two years. Also Roldan Pozo and other big guns in numerics and
supercomputing are pushing Java Grande because, I suspect, they anticipate
distributed Java apps that can do more than any single app on any single
machine.

-----Original Message-----
From: James McCartney 
To: music-dsp@shoko.calarts.edu 
Cc: CSOUND 
Date: Thursday, June 17, 1999 1:17 AM
Subject: Re: Csound and other synthesis systems


>At 5:19 PM -0600 6/16/99, Michael Gogins wrote:
>>Thanks for your response to this discussion. I remember your exhibition of
>>SuperCollider at the last ICMC and was quite impressed.
>>
>>I would love if it SuperCollider:
>>
>>(a) ran on Windows
>>(b) had plugin unit generators (or words in its language - is that even
>>possible?)
>>(c) had an external API
>>(d) ran on Windows
>
>b & c are planned and are more an issue of documentation than
>implementation.
>
>a & d are more religious things I guess. I am of the opinion recently
>that OS's are too important to be proprietary. I am on the Mac nowadays
>mostly due to historical inertia and the fact that I like the PowerPC
>chip. At one time the Mac had provable UI advantages, but those are
>becoming harder to justify and as an OS it is really impossible to justify.
>Perhaps MacOSX will make the Mac more able to be compatible with the rest
>of the posix world, but I've heard that most posix things are not a
>simple recompile on MacOSX.
>
>BeOS has some nice real time media facilities available so I like that
>too though it definitely has its own problems.
>
>I find no reason to like Windows other than market size and
>that is not the reason I'm doing this. Win has all the same problems
>as MacOS does and the UI is not as consistent.
>If I'm on an Intel machine I'd much rather be running Linux or BeOS.
>
>
>   --- james mccartney     james@audiosynth.com   http://www.audiosynth.com
>If you have a PowerMac check out SuperCollider2, a real time synth program:
>
>
>
>
>


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http://shoko.calarts.edu/~glmrboy/musicdsp/music-dsp.html

At 11:52 PM -0600 6/16/99, Michael Gogins wrote:
>Whatever your religious objections to Windows, if you create a
>cross-platform virtual machine that works with Java, then you get it to run
>on Linux (or BeOS if BeOS have a Java virtual machine) and, without hurting
>anyone on those other platforms, it also runs on Windows where there are
>lots and lots of musicians who could use SuperCollider.

Java's GC is not real time. Java is not a real time language.
Java cannot run at interrupt level in a sound card's callback routine.


   --- james mccartney     james@audiosynth.com   http://www.audiosynth.com
If you have a PowerMac check out SuperCollider2, a real time synth program:






dupswapdrop: the music-dsp mailing list and website
http://shoko.calarts.edu/~glmrboy/musicdsp/music-dsp.html