[PD] [PD-announce] pd 0.44-0 test 1 released

[Jonathan Wilkes]

----- Original Message -----
> From: Hans-Christoph Steiner <hans at at.or.at>
> To: IOhannes m zmölnig <zmoelnig at iem.at>
> Cc: pd-list at iem.at
> Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2012 7:44 PM
> Subject: Re: [PD] [PD-announce] pd 0.44-0 test 1 released
> 
> 
> On Dec 27, 2012, at 5:23 PM, IOhannes m zmölnig wrote:
> 
>>  On 12/27/2012 21:36, Roman Haefeli wrote:
>>>  On Don, 2012-12-27 at 15:29 -0500, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>>>>  On Dec 27, 2012, at 2:14 PM, Roman Haefeli wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>>  On Die, 2012-12-25 at 13:00 -0800, Miller Puckette wrote:
>>>>>>  Hi all -
>>>>>>  I'm afraid to 'fix' this riht now, but will 
> look at it at least.  Alternatively
>>>>>>  I could add a message to pd to restort DSP without 
> stopping/starting the
>>>>>>  audio I/O, which I'm hoping will at least reduce the 
> need to start/stop
>>>>>>  SDP all the time.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>  The change that caused this problem is that I fixed Pd not 
> to have the audio
>>>>>>  system open whern DSP isn't running so that, on APIs in 
> which audio is exclusive
>>>>>>  (e.g., ALSA) you can turn DSP off in Pd and go off and use 
> another device
>>>>>>  with Pd remining open.
>>>>> 
>>>>>  The problem arises when there is one message trying to control 
> many
>>>>>  different tasks:
>>>>>  * switch DSP computing on/off (save CPU time)
>>>>>  * free/occupy the audio back-end (save soundcard time)
>>>>>  * mute/unmute Pd (save ears)
>>>>>  * force recompilation of the DSP graph
>>>>> 
>>>>>>  An alternative would be to have Pd automatically close 
> audio devices on ALSA,
>>>>>>  OSS, and MMIO but always keep it open when using jack.  But 
> then what about
>>>>>>  portaudio?  I somply don't know the correct way to deal 
> with this.
>>>>> 
>>>>>  I'd say it's preferable if Pd's behavior is 
> independent from the
>>>>>  back-end currently in use. Rather, I suggest to use different 
> messages
>>>>>  for different tasks. IMHO, 'dsp 0' really should only 
> turn computation
>>>>>  of tilde-objects off as this is what it means and what one 
> expects. What
>>>>>  about a new message to pd 'card 0|1' to free devices 
> which would work
>>>>>  completely independently from 'dsp 0|1'? This would 
> allow to record a
>>>>>  signal to a soundfile without occupying the soundcard, for 
> instance.
>>>> 
>>>>  I think that having a pulseaudio backend for Pd as the default on
>>>>  GNU/Linux would be the best way to solve this problem.  Pulse will
>>>>  then handle the multiple apps playing at the same time.  Then for
>>>>  people who want to skip Pulse, then can use the ALSA blocking
>>>>  implementation.
>> 
>> 
>>  pulse audio never worked for me on various debian gnu/linux setups.
>>  these days i only ever use alsa and jack, and i believe that one of these 
> (preferably the latter) should be the default for a pro-grade audio software.
> 
> Yes, jack is great, and we should make it easy to use.  Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, 
> Fedora and others all come with pulseaudio installed and setup by default.  That 
> covers probably 75% or more of GNU/Linux users.  Pd should have working audio 
> without the users having to do anything at all.  So it looks like the only way 
> to achieve that is pulseaudio support.  And no, I don't consider Pd's 
> ALSA/OSS connecting to pulseaudio and blocking all other sound a working 
> situation.

I'd like to get a timestamp from IOhannes for his comment on PulseAudio not working
on any GNU/Linux systems.  When I look at the PulseAudio docs I like what I see,
but unfortunately like Gnome 3 the lead developers of PA seemed to have pushed
very hard to get a half-baked initial implementation in as many distros as possible
so as to cause the maximum amount of flamewars for something that should have
otherwise been a solution to many of the usability problems that have plagued
GNU/Linux for so long.

In other words if there are _still_ substantial problems with getting PA to behave,
maybe we could do an Ardour-style "it just works" default to the jack server that
doesn't require the user to have to know they are even using jack.  After all,
isn't jack cross-platform (and PulseAudio not)?

-Jonathan