Re: [Jsynthlib-devel] Proposal: DeviceDescriptor

[Rib R. <ri...@gm...>]

Maybe instead of having a ClassName field, DeviceDescriptor should
have a createDevice(Preferences) method.  That way the XML driver (and
any other future driver that supports multiple devices) doesn't have
to abuse class names or use some other sort of hack.  At the moment I
can't think of a good way to get a DeviceDescriptor from a Java
driver, but it would be really easy to have
XMLDeviceFactory.getDeviceDescriptors() instead of getDeviceNames().


On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 19:31:56 -0800, Joe Emenaker <jo...@em...> wrote:
> I'm done with the initial work on turning the DeviceAddDialog JList into
> a JTree. Now, I'm just working on the parts that group the tree in
> various ways (ie, first by manufacturer and then by type, by
> manufacturer only, by type only, etc). I'm also considering making it
> possible to add multiple synths with a single instance of the dialog.
> 
> Anyway, my current work forced me to go into DevicesConfig an clean
> things up. While I was there, I decided to keep track of devices with a
> class I named "DeviceDescriptor". It's merely a data-holding class which
> keeps DeviceName, ShortName, IDString, Manufacturer, Type, and ClassName
> all together. Then, I'm able to just maintain a list of all of the
> descriptors.
> 
> Right now, DeviceDescriptor is only used by a few classes that I'm
> working on... but I'd like to expand it. The reason is that
> DevicesConfig has a handful of methods like "getClassNameForDeviceName",
> "getShortNameForDeviceName", "getIDStringForDeviceName", and then there
> are more for "getXxxByIDString" or "getXxxByClassName".
> 
> What I'd *like* to do is just have "getDescriptorForDeviceName",
> "getDescriptorForClassName", etc. and then the *calling* method gets the
> whole descriptor and can get whatever data elements it wants out of
> that. This will require me to go modify some classes that are currently
> outside the scope of my development on DeviceAddDialog. They're small
> changes, but I wanted to check to see if anyone had any objections first.
> 
> Ultimately, I think it would make for cleaner design if DeviceDescriptor
> got more widely used, too. Ultimately, it would be nice if this was how
> synthdrivers reported what devices they can interact with. This way, a
> single Device class could offer back an array of DeviceDescriptors for
> various synths that it knew how to control. Of course, that would be
> down the road a ways.... but I just wanted to put that in your heads.
> 
> - Joe
> 
> 
>