[gmpi] Re: R: Re: Topic 1: Audience for and users of plugins
- From: David Olofson <david@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: gmpi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 17:21:03 +0100
On Sunday 02 March 2003 01.37, Koen Tanghe wrote:
[...]
> The GMPI indeed stands for "Generalized Music Plugin Interface
> (GMPI)" (note the word "music").
>
> But on the other hand, I personally would be very pleased to see
> image sequences (video) incorporated in a plugin interface. I read
> other people's opinions about why not just specify a plugin as
> having a certain number of inputs and a certain number of outputs
> of potentially different data types, and I liked it.
I used to like that idea myself, but...
> There are
> differences however in types with respect to asynchronous /
> synchronous behavior.
...it seems to have severe implications. Doing asynchronous processing
in the context of a low latency audio engine is going to be very
complicated. The only "easy" way would be to assume that every such
plugin runs the asynchronous processing in a separate thread, using
the "actual" plugin only as an interface. At that point, it starts to
look ridiculous, IMHO. Video plugins and the like belong in their own
net in a separate thread.
> But I think it is important to agree on this when defining the
> goals. If possible, I would like to see audio, MIDI (or something
> similar), images and control signals as the four basic types that
> flow around between hosts and plugins.
>
> Koen Tanghe
>
> PS
> About MIDI: one could in fact maybe think about this as a special
> kind of "control signal"
Yes, if even that. I think you're making MIDI more special than it is.
The only thing that makes it relevant at all in this context is the
fact that it's the industry standard wire protocol. It might be handy
to be able to pipe it as is through the API, but there are no logical
motivations, and only weak technical/practical motivations, IMHO.
//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate
.- The Return of Audiality! --------------------------------.
| Free/Open Source Audio Engine for use in Games or Studio. |
| RT and off-line synth. Scripting. Sample accurate timing. |
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--- http://olofson.net --- http://www.reologica.se ---
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