Re: [Jsynthlib-devel] [Jsynthlib-cvs] SF.net SVN: jsynthlib:[1116] trunk/JSynthLib/doc/synths.html

[Joe E. <jo...@em...>]

On 09/04/2011 05:57 PM, William Zwicky wrote:
> I just checked in an overhaul of DeviceListWriter that does just that.
> Doesn't work very well, cuz:
>   * There's no source for the code to get those short comments, and the long
> infoText is WAY to big for this table.
>   * Probing the device capabilities requires calling
> constructor(Preferences), which fails in a few cases.
>   * Probing for the patch editor requires *creating* the patch editor, which
> crashes and/or hangs in most cases.

Well, I was *also* thinking that, if we're going to have 
dynamically-loadable or downloadable synthdrivers, then there's going to 
need to be some kind of way to interrogate the synthdrivers to ask them 
what they can do. We may be able to get some mileage out of merely 
parsing the classnames and pulling off "BankDriver" off of the end and 
whatnot... and we can also use Java's inspection features to find out 
what each class' superclass is (ie, Driver or BankDriver, etc.).

However, one could argue that the *right* way to do it is to add some 
static identifier methods (like getManufacturer(), getSynthName(), 
getDriverType(), etc.) which would be abstract in Driver or BankDriver 
(so that every synthdriver had to define them). If we decided to do 
this, we should implement it sooner than later, because there will only 
be more drivers in the future.

- Joe