[Taalpulse-user] Status update

[Guillaume P. <gpo...@gm...>]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to apologize for the lack of new releases of TaalPulse. I
have not had a lot of time lately, and I haven't been playing tabla a
lot either. Moreover, TaalPulse is currently written in a programming
language (Smalltalk/Squeak) that I neither like nor master, so it's a
bit hard to get motivated to improve the software.

Several times in the last few months, when I had some free time, I
said to myself "now, today I implement those missing features and make
a new release", and each time, I spent a few hours trying to remember
how the thing worked, and then abandonned...

Writing software that can run on computers and PDAs alike, and under
various operating systems, is not an easy task. At the time I wrote
TaalPulse, Squeak was the only truly portable solution, and it still
is to this day. However, it seems that a new solution is around the
corner, with Qt 4.4 (http://trolltech.com/) soon available for free
for all major platforms, including mobile ones. So I'm following it
closely, and when it is out I'll rewrite TaalPulse using C++ and Qt.
Although I haven't programmed in C++ for years I am confident it will
be easier than Smalltalk, Qt being reputed for its ease of use. As a
side effect of switching to C++, I'll probably use a real sound
synthesis engine (http://fluidsynth.resonance.org/trac), so sound
quality should be much better.

I hope you still enjoy the now aging TaalPulse, and stay tuned for
future developments!

Cheers,
g