[gmpi] Re: Req 76,78

  • From: Steve Harris <S.W.Harris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: gmpi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 12:07:26 +0000

On Tue, Feb 08, 2005 at 12:39:30 +0100, Didier Dambrin wrote:
> >>But what for audio? Plugins (effects or generators) that can show & play 
> >>waveforms are not that rare.
> >
> >As a percentage, they're still pretty small..
> >
> >>The GUI would need the waveform data to display it, and the process to 
> >>play it. Both can't share the same data, unless it's in an ugly 
> >>memory-mapped file. Will you be passing huge amounts of audio data 
> >>through the host?
> >
> >No... just pass the pixels you need. Could do it with very little data - 
> >less than 1KB for a typical waveform display.
> >
> 
> mmh a process sending pixel data to a GUI would be really weird, and still 
> unefficient since we're still talking about slow interprocess communication 
> and the GUI will have to send its zoom scaling to the process and wait for 
> the data to display 

I dont know how slow you think local IPC is, but were talking microseconds
here. ie. tiny fractions of the screen refresh time.

Even over local networks your looking about a tenth of a millisecond to
send 1k of data, a fast screen refresh rate (90Hz) would be 11ms.

Yesterday I ran an application in my office*, over a standard WAN link to
my desktop, connected wirelessly in someones building 100 miles away, and
the app was perfectly useable, scrollbars, redraws, typing, everying (its
an instant messaging app). It wasn't even using a partcularly efficient
link as it was being tuneled over a secure, encrypted protocol, and the
protocol sends every keypress, mouse movement, line and character
explicilty. We're looking at something more efficient than that for GMPI.

* Just FYI, I wasn't doing this to prove the point, I needed to do that
  for security purposes.

- Steve

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