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

-----Original Message-----
From: James McCartney 
To: music-dsp@shoko.calarts.edu 
Cc: CSOUND 
Date: Wednesday, June 16, 1999 3:56 PM
Subject: Re: Csound and other synthesis systems


>At 9:53 AM -0600 6/16/99, Robin Whittle wrote:
>
>>I guess such a patching system can be done in any language - but I
>>would much rather write orchestra code than muck around with a GUI on
>>that level!  Patching instruments together, as Quasimodo does, with
>>the GUI interface for each instrument defined it its part of the
>>orchestra file . . . . yes I think can be very useful.
>>
>>
>>Personally I think the Csound orchestra and score language should be
>>left behind.  If I was writing a system from scratch it would not use
>>any special language at all - it would be a special framework for
>>writing C++ to get on with real-time sound synthesis and all I/O and
>>GUI things you might like to hang of that.
>
>Computer music software can be a lot more than just a synth engine
>of statically allocated ugens attached to a GUI. This framework is
>just too limiting compared to what is possible.
>If this is the vision of what is ideal then I think you have not
brainstormed
>enough about what the real interesting problems are.
>There is a lot more I want to "hang on" my DSP engine than a GUI.
>Once you get your ideal system how will you attach interesting behaviours
>to it? Using C++ to write intelligent players or gesture mappings, or
>list processing score manipulation would be very painful.
>
>I think many people do not still grok the kind of things you can do
>with a dynamic system like SC or Kyma which is why so many of the same
>kind of system keep coming out: GUI+DSP but no brains.
>In SC, you can write an algorithmic process to build your patch in real
>time, e.g. mapping velocity to how complex a patch you build.
>Values in your score can themselves be patches that plug into your
>instrument input. For example you could have a note in your score
>be a patch of ugens. Then that voice's patch will get built with that
>sub-patch plugged into its input instead of just a float value.
>Instruments can spawn sub patches recursively to any depth. etc..
>
>That is why I think having a language is important. There is only
>so much you can do with a static framework. Static frameworks are not
>much better than just having cheap sound hardware. A powerful language
>gives you a lot more ability to do what computers can be good at which
>is manipulating abstractions. And C++ is just not a very highly abstract
>language.
>
>
>   --- 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
>

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:






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