Sergey wrote:
> 
> 3) I guess there are 3 main programs for PC platform: Csound for DOS
> (csound_new.zip), Winsound (csound_win.zip) and the Gabriel Maldonado's
> version of Csound (csoundrt19.zip). What program is "The Head" or "Number
> One", and what program is the
> Csnd348.hlp about? Especially I want to know what program is the point
> "Realtime support" about.

"Csound" is the name for a primitive programming language which 
controls a mound of sophisticated audio generation and processing 
tools (coded in C under the hood). 
Csound-the-language is implemented and maintained for a number of 
platforms, but there are of course differences between any two 
implementations. Most programs which implement Csound are called 
something like "Csound-blabla" (much like Andy Warhol's fifty cats, 
all of which were called "Sam").
There are at least four publicly distributed recent versions for 
the PC platforms (MS-DOS/Windows). So, they are all Csound, but you 
obviously can't step into the same program twice.

The Bath/Montreal version seems to be the one which most people look to
to update their code or enhance their audio programming experience etc. 
But there are separate local versions for most platforms with active
Csound users. 
Bath Csound exists in two PC versions: command line for MS-DOS, and one 
with a GUI for Windows 95 (called Winsound). 
The other local PC versions (Maldonado's and Michael Gogin's, both for 
Windows 95) each have some useful extensions. You will have to look to 
their authors to get support and documentation of new features 
(note that most of Maldonado's work is finding its way into the Bath 
version, don't know about Gogin's stuff).

Csnd348.hlp contains the original documentation of Csound 3.0, as 
distributed from MIT in 1992, plus all subsequent Bath/Montreal update 
notices. These were written by the several people who have contributed 
code to Csound, so the style is not consistent throughout.

The "Realtime support" note states that "there is no realtime support 
for DOS. Winsound however /.../ can use the Windows sound subsystem."
I have not attempted to amend the present undocumentation on how to 
actually achieve realtime output from Winsound, but may try in the future.
(Basically you should make the output buffer big, like 20000+, or it 
crashes rather gracelessly.)

Lately (like yesterday) I have also added the extra opcodes available
in Gabriel Maldonado's version. They are clearly (i hope) marked as 
NOT part of the Bath version. I have not yet included the extra command 
line flags for his version though, so this is by no means complete.
Maldonado's version may be slightly better for realtime work, and
it has some extra options for MIDI.


Cheers,

	re