[PD] Open alternative to RJDJ?

[Damian Stewart]

Derek Holzer wrote:
 >

hi Derek,

the long-term plan with RjDj is to take it on to other platforms, both open 
and closed. the iPhone was chosen as an initial platform for a number of 
reasons, one of the strongest being a built-in 12-million user market, its 
position as the strongest selling smartphone in the US at least, and a 
clearly defined, efficient, and effective application distribution system. 
but by no means is the system to be closed and restricted. most of the 
developers are as unhappy with Apple about their closed-ness as anyone else 
here might be, and the plan is certainly to take it to more open platforms.

what's more, it is possible for anyone with a non-jailbroken iPhone to 
install their own homebrew scenes onto the phone. due to Apple's draconian 
content controls and restrictions, at the moment it's not possible to 
directly transfer scenes from your computer to the phone, so you need to be 
able to host them on a website somewhere, but if this is done you can 
simply provide an rjdj:// url (eg 
rjdj://www.mysite.com/scenes/blahlbah.rj), and by browsing to this url in 
the iPhone's web browser you can install any scene you want.

> 1) Can RJDJ "scenes" run on other platforms (Palm, iPaq, Gumstix, Linux 
> iPod, whatever?)

since an RjDj 'scene' is nothing more than a straightforward Pd patch (with 
a few abstractions and externals to handle playback control and basic audio 
analysis), and since the RjDj application itself is nothing more than pdlib 
with a scene-selection GUI, then yes, RjDj 'scenes' will run on any 
hardware that can run Pd.

> 2) Is anyone working on an RJDJ-like/compatible platform which is 
> actually open and accessible?

at the moment, there is nothing that i know of. as i mentioned, though, the 
plan for RjDj is to port the application to other platforms, at which time 
the player code for these new platforms (especially for open platforms like 
the OpenMoko) will be released under the GPL. releasing the iPhone codebase 
under the GPL is also planned, but this step is still in the future.

> I will drop by the Berlin RJDJ sprint with these kind of questions in 
> mind in case anyone wants to discuss them in person.

please do, i'm sure Michael will be more than happy to talk about it.

cheers
d
-- 
damian stewart | skype: damiansnz | damian at frey.co.nz
frey | live art with machines | http://www.frey.co.nz