Re: Scripting / Re: [Rosegarden-user] Adding Space

[Larry T. <lt...@we...>]

On Saturday 07 June 2003 15:04, Guillaume Laurent wrote:
> On Saturday 07 June 2003 02:35, Larry Troxler wrote:
> > (Should I subscribe to the devel list? Is this kind of topic better
> > posted there?)
>
> Yes, definitely.
>

Ok, I'll keep it here for this thread just to avoid confusion, but I'll sign 
up for the devel list.

> > First, as an alternative to Python or Ruby, wouldn't it be nice (and
> > feasible) to run Common Music in an embedded guile? (Or talk to a Common
> > LIsp Common Music through a socket).
>
> I really don't think so :
>
> - we're already having a seperate process for the sequencer which thanks to
> DCOP isn't causing too much trouble but still far from none. Adding another
> is out of the question.

Well I was thinking that you would either just call guile from the GUI (its 
linked in), or talk through a socket directly in the GUI thread (although I 
can see why the later might not necessarily be optimum)

If by seperate process, you mean the Common Lisp, then ok, yes, granted, it's 
some work to get everything working, but just the usual problems. I'm not 
sure if you're suggesting that there's some kind of conceptual or performance 
difficulty with this.

>
> - I don't think lisp is at all easier to learn that Ruby of Python for
> non-programmer quite the contrary. Cakewalk's embedded lisp interpreter
> shows that this is hardly a good idea.
>

Well, like I said, it's a matter of opinion, and I could easily be mistaken. 
FWIW back in the days when I ran Cakewalk, I used CAL quite a bit. I was 
frustrated with it not because it was a Lisp, but because it was too 
primitive, slow, and limited to get anything done. I've always had the 
impression the Greg or some other programmer just threw a rudimentary pure 
lisp interpreter together just for fun, and then they deicided they might as 
well include it in the release. It was never anywhere near powerful enough 
for the really interesting uses.

> > in Rosegarden (or indeed it gets decided that it's not worth shooting
> > for), why not have a simple GUI action that pops up a dialog box where
> > the user can enter a number of generic parameters, then runs a
> > user-specified shell command [...]
>
> Tempting, but again I wouldn't implement this because a scripting interface
> really has to be extremely good, seamlessly integrated and easy to use if
> one hopes to see it used at all. A hack like this will just gather dust,
> like Petal did for RG 2.1.

I guess the key question is what kind of users Rosegarden is targeted at.  I'm 
personally more of the computer-music crowd - I like playing with PD, Csound, 
Common Music, and the like.  I did try RG 2.1, but ran into some problems, 
unfortunately. I don't remember what they were. But the point is, the reason 
I tried it is because it had a scripting language. 

I know that Rosegarden is geared more towards the mainstream musician that 
just wants a replacement for his Windows MIDI sequencers. In fact, it's a 
MIDI-only sequencer. So it could be that for most of the types that want to 
do algorithmic composition or editing, and hence would want scripting, a 
MIDI-only sequencer is too limiting. It needs to do OSC, Csound, etc, as 
well.

It's been great hearing your opinions.

Regards

Larry








>
> Anyway this is a recurring subject. I like Ruby very much because it's the
> nicest language to code in I've ever seen. It's the only language I look
> forward to use, so I'd very much like to embed it in Rosegarden. But, I
> also have to recognize that so far the interest of a scripting interface is
> very limited at best. It's the archetypical "cool" features which all
> hackers yearn to implement but that no one will ever use.