Jean Piche wrote:

> Friends,
>
> I would hereby propose some good cheers and accolades to the fellow who keeps it
> all going...

Here, here!!!!
I have been constantly amazed at the quality and quantity of work that has gone
into Csound
under John's benevolent and inspired guidance. I, too, several years ago felt a
great need of
standardization in the rapidly growing csound world: the version(s) I found
floating around
differed slightly from platform to platform, and I knew of several exciting unit
generators that had
been written by individuals across the world. That they all could be standardized
into a single
cross-platform compilable set of sources seemed an daunting task: and into that gap
stepped John f. fitch!  In fact, the results are *far* beyond my wildest hopes: so
many wonderful u.g.s and even
top level extensions have come out of the wood-work, and carefully added to what
is, without a
doubt the STANDARD in software synthesis tools. Now, I am awfully fond of several
other tools
(most specifically, CLM by Bil Schoettstadt), but for most computer music users,
csound is clearly
now the "sine qua non" of computer music.
Now, add to this the fact that John has been doing this as a typically under-payed
and
under-appreciated academic. Hey, I know of several very large corporations in
silly..ur...
silicon valley who would pay a king's ransom for a code control/merge job such as
John has given us:
and we , as users, got it for free!!

Now, Jean Piche and Dave Phillips have each contributed a great deal to the cause,
as have *many*
others too numerous to name; but we, as public csound users owe a great deal to jf
fitch.
I hope in our constant drive towards the perfect "bug-free" (lemme laugh for a
while on that one) csound, the effortless install, etc., we often stop to thank the
man who has done more for csound than anyone since Vercoe first published the
package.
John, your computer music karma is as deep and pure as any that walked the
earth...keep on, m'man.

Ok, 'nuf said, for me.

CharlieB