[gmpi] Re: 3.14 UIs
- From: Mike Berry <mberry@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: gmpi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 08:20:12 -0600
Paul Davis wrote:
Why are we worrying about providing a GUI toolkit with GMPI? Or even
specifying one? GMPI is not going to fail or succeed based on the
presence or absence of a provided GUI kit.
Joe Plugin sits down to write a GMPI version of their new convolution
reverb that runs with less than 1% of the CPU cycles available on a
Pentium 100MHz system. Cool.
The plugin comes with a GUI that is written using MFC. Not so cool.
Joe Plugin says "I don't know anything about OS X". Really uncool.
Joe Plugin says "I don't know anything about Linux". Double plus
uncool.
Joe Plugin says "Set-top box? Digital convergence? Wassat?" Triple
plus uncool.
Many plugins these days *require* a custom GUI in order to be
useful. If these custom GUIs are implemented using a platform-specific
technology (and worse still, host-specific hacks to deal with
variations in how hosts interact with said platform-specific
technology), then GMPI, while not being a complete waste of time, is
much closer to it than was my original hope. Perhaps not yours?
I am certainly not against a multiplatform approach at all. I see it as
a major, major plus to getting GMPI adopted. This is despite the fact
that my product is a single platform host.
However, I simply don't see how bundling a cross-platform GUI toolkit
furthers the direct aims of GMPI. Here are some possible plugin developers:
- Large company developing proprietary plugins to ship with their own
host. They are only targeting their own platforms and have well
developed GUI frameworks for those platforms. Not interested in
cross-platform GUI toolkit.
- Smaller company developing plugins for multiple hosts on multiple
platforms. As cross-platform plugins are their lifeblood, they have
spent a lot of time choosing a cross-platform GUI framework. Maybe they
wrote it, or maybe they chose an existing system, which they have
possibly extended. Not interested in a GUI toolkit that GMPI
chose/developed.
- Individual/very small team commercially developing plugins for
multiple hosts on multiple platforms. They probably didn't write their
own GUI framework. If GMPI shipped with one, they might use it if they
like it, but they have also been writing plugins for a few years prior
to GMPI's release, and already have some exisiting UI written, and would
probably continue to use that framework to write GMPI plugins.
- Individuals writing narrowly focussed plugins. This might be a student
writing plugins for class projects, an experimental musician writing
plugins for their own composition/performance, a hobbyist writing
freeware, etc.... In this case, cross-platform is probably not relevant,
as they are targeting the single platform and host that they use. They
may not even have the resources to compile on multiple platforms. They
will almost certainly use a GUI framework if it were shipped with GMPI.
They might also only use generic UI provided by the host, depending on
their needs. They might use GUI that came with their compiler (MFC,
VisualBasic, PowerPlant, etc...). If these were unsatisfactory or
absent, they might search out a freely-available toolkit.
- Open source projects (including academic projects with a broad
audience). These are probably cross-platform. Amongst the authors, there
are probably several strongly held opinions as to which GUI toolkit to
use. The group will make a decision, and move on. They are unlikely to
use a toolkit simply because it is shipped with GMPI, unless it is the
toolkit that they would otherwise have already chosen.
So as I see it, only a small set of plugin developers would even want a
specialized GMPI GUI tookit. And for many of them, it would only be if
the GMPI toolkit were somehow better than others that they knew about.
Only the developers who did not know of any other options would use a
GMPI toolkit without evaluation. So the GMPI website where they got the
SDK can contain links to popular cross-platform GUI toolkits. There, we
are done.
Paul, I understand that you have a particular viewpoint here based on
your efforts to host VST plugins on linux hosts. Hopefully, the fact
that GMPI is designed to be cross-platform in the first place will
broaden the number of plugins that are actually compiled for linux.
However, unless we require that all GUI for GMPI is written using a
supplied GUI toolkit (which, I hope you would agree, would be a complete
deal-killer), many many plugin authors are going to use their own
choices for GUI, no matter what we ship. And if those authors choose not
to target linux, you are still going to be in the same boat you are in
with VST, hoping to patch as many plugs as possible with an emulation
layer, but sometimes bumping up against plugins which cannot run under
emulation.
--
Mike Berry
Adobe Systems
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