[PD] jMax Phoenix

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Thu, 23 Sep 2010, Maurizio De Cecco wrote:

> Well, i am not the right guy for that; i am the only guy in town
> that: 1) Know deeply the jMax code.

Every programmer is the only programmer who knows a certain piece of code. 
It does not make it automatically something that is worth maintaining (I 
mean that you have other reasons that you haven't listed).

> 2) Have some (limited) time and the motivation to work on it.

If you do have motivation to work on it, that's fine, but we'd be curious 
to know why jMax is more motivating to you, than pd could be.

> So surely my personal contribution to the community can be on reviving 
> jMax, and trying to fulfils its promises.

there is no jMax community.

> But the pd core code base is do not offer a lot of help for core extensions;
> and as core extensions i mean for example a different DSP compiler, a different
> DSP execution engine, an extended object model.

You can either replace the existing one completely, or add some kind of 
if-statement or function-pointer variable(s) to select a DSP compiler at 
runtime (isn't it ?).

What would you change (or add) to the object model in particular ?

> The core code base offer little or no abstraction, direct access to data 
> structure elements and so on;

and how does this affect you ?

> jMax, at least at the source level, make things a lot easier for a 
> developer that want to hack the code base, there are less dependencies 
> between the different parts, and more abstraction in the API (that is 
> more verbose as a consequence).

Ah, yeah, that's what happens to programmes written in C. Java would be 
better for that, but C++ is even better for that... I mean, for making 
abstract code nearly as short as non-abstract code. Whereas for languages 
like Ruby, it's the other way around, as abstract code is usually shorter 
than non-abstract code.

> And the fact there is no stable community of users (yet ?) reduce the 
> fear of catastrophes :->

It also reduces the chance to any help for testing the software.

  _______________________________________________________________________
| Mathieu Bouchard ------------------------------ Villeray, Montréal, QC