[PD] jMax Phoenix

ALAN BROOKER alan.brooker2010 at gmail.com
Tue Sep 21 23:45:04 CEST 2010


Hi Maurizio

Really interesting news- Im going to check it out- Iv always kept an eye on
jmax and really glad to see it coming back !

On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 9:11 PM, Maurizio De Cecco <jmax at dececco.name>wrote:

> Hallo,
>
> my name is Maurizio De Cecco, and i am the maintainer and developper of the
> jMax Phoenix project,
> a kind of cousin of Puredata. Having release a new beta for jMax (on Linux
> and Mac OS X), and after
> discussing with Miller Puckette, i think the members of this list may be
> interested in knowing more
> about the project, and may be take a look.
>
> A bit of history: i worked in Ircam in the 90s, where i was lucky enough to
> work with Miller Puckette
> on Max/ISPW and following versions; i then worked on jMax, that was
> intended to be a 'next generation'
> Max for the Ircam projects; jMax was used in a few large productions; i
> left in 99 for pursing other
> interest (Linux Mandrake, at that time :), and forgot for a while about
> jMax.
>
> In the meanwhile, jMax was put under a GPL licence, and after a couple of
> years Ircam stopped its development
> (don't ask me why, i wasn't there).
>
> In 2008 i was getting severely bored: server side Java, quality indicators
> and software engineering was my daily bread, and no code to write; so, to
> keep my developer mind healthy, i took up the development
> of jMax, starting from the last release i worked on.
>
> Given the fact that jMax slept a few years, it cannot compete with puredata
> in terms of available libraries,
> patches, and in general maturity of the solution.
>
> But it have its own peculiarity, a number of different ideas, and having a
> code base but no users (yet, i hope:)
> allows some bold design decision to be taken; think of jMax Phoenix as a
> kind of research project in same family where Puredata is.
>
> Describing the differences between jMax and Puredata would be long, because
> it would need to go back
> to the original developments; to be very synthetic  i would resume in the
> following:
>
> 1) Architecture: the jMax user interface run on a different process, and it
> written in Java.
>
> 2)  APIs are completely different, but see below.
>
> 3) The Object Set is reduced to the old ISPW object set; jMax can also
> transparently include LADSPA plugins as objects; finally, i developped
> compatibility layer (to be completed) that allows to recompile simple pd
> objects for jMax, and possibly to load pd abstractions.
>
> 4) User Interface: there is a lot of work going on in the UI, that allows,
> between other, the used of a single window IDE style interface.
>
> 5) Packaging and configuration: jMax Phoenix support the packaging
> of complex libraries and applications in a single file, and even
> automatically grab libraries from the internet.
>
> 6) The language: jMax support the use of expressions in object definition,
> like in | int ( 10 + $foo) | so that objects in abstractions can be
> parametrised with respect to the arguments.
>
> 7) Hopefully in between 6 month and a year: an optimising dsp compiler
> and engine able to run a patch in parallel on multiple core (where multiple
> means around 8).
>
> For anybody more interested, the project site is
> http://www.jmax-phoenix.org/, and the
> binaries and sources can be loaded from the project sourceforge site,
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/jmax-phoenix/
>
> For your information, i include at the end of the mail the formal announce
> of the 0.6 beta release; it does not mention the Max OS X version, that was
> not ready at the time.
>
> Maurizio
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> After many month of development, we are proud to announce the version 0.6
> beta of jMax Phoenix.
>
> The major highlights for this version are:
>  - A first version of the puredata source compatibility kit, including the
> build system and a full example of recompiled object library.
>  - A large set of usability bug fixed; all the bugs preventing a smooth
> work flow have been fixed.
>  - Error handling improvements: most of the bugs and configuration errors
> now results in error messages, and not unexplained freezes.
>  - A set of examples and tutorials has been recovered from old ISPW
> archives; they are not updated to include all the major jMax
> functionalities, but it is better than nothing.
>
> Full release notes are available in the release notes section of the projet
> site.
>
> This release has been tested on Ubuntu and Ubuntu Studio 10.04, Debian 5,
> Fedora 13 and Mandriva Spring 2010; check the installation
> instruction on the projet site for specific caveats for Debian and Fedora.
>
> The Puredata compatibility sub-project has been *very* time consuming; in
> order to better manage my scarce time resources,
> we need some user feedback (and possibly help) to be able to evaluate the
> actual interest of pursuing this development direction.
>
> For more information and download and installation instructions go to
> http://www.jmax-phoenix.org/.
>
> For contacting the project team: contact at jmax-phoenix.org
>
> The jMax Phoenix team
>
> __________
> Maurizio De Cecco  -
> Music:    http://www.myspace.com/mauriziodececco
> Blog:     http://maurizio.dececco.name/
> Software: http://www.jmax-phoenix.org/
>
>
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