Re: AU, GMPI, and music plugin APIs
Re: AU, GMPI, and music plugin APIs
- Subject: Re: AU, GMPI, and music plugin APIs
- From: Bill Stewart <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 12:33:57 -0700
I'll make some cautionary comments.
First, there is nothing inherently platform dependent about AU - in
fact I think the way we handle data formats is inherently neutral to
any particular data type (the specification of Float32 for linear pcm
is a convention, not a limitation of the API)
We are not averse to this idea and are willing to entertain and discuss
the prospect.
There is one dependancy that we believe we would require for this to
work, and that is that CoreFoundation be available. As CF is already in
open source this should not be a problem. CF gives us a number of
services that are necessary for both handling data-based transactions
between the host and the AU as well as some run time issues. The
presence of CF as well, may also provide the ability to resolve the
hosting aspect of this in a consistent and cross-platform manner.
Bill
On Tuesday, March 25, 2003, at 11:13 AM, Airy Andri wrote:
Le mardi, 25 mars 2003, ` 19:25 Europe/Paris, Marc Poirier a icrit :
I went to the first GMPI planning meeting at last January's NAMM and
I've
been on the email listserv since. I really am excited about the
prospect
of an open, standardized, cross-platform, unified music plugin API,
but
admittedly, as the process continues, I'm gradually losing enthusiasm.
The reason is because (sort of like what the Apple folks at the
meeting
said) I feel like AU already gives us (almost) everything that we all
want. And even though I didn't personally expend any energy
designing the
AU API, I still feel like it's a sort of a waste to go through all of
that
effort again when we already have what we want.
Agree.
It sounds much more reasonable to start from an existing API if one
seems to solve all the problems people are interesting in.
Of course, it does mean the owner of the API accepts a non-restricted
use of this API.
The problem for most folks, though, is obviously that AU only exists
for
the Mac platform. The idea has been offered in the GMPI discussions
that
we might just decide to choose one of the existing APIs and agree to
treat
it as our standard. But so far no one has gone any further than
simply
saying that that's an option. I would propose that we choose AU, but
I
don't know what Apple's position is on the matter, so I'm asking
first:
(1) Does Apple intend to support AU on other platforms? If not,
then is
Apple agreeable to other folks doing the work to support AU on other
platforms?
In AUDispatch.cpp, I see a lot of #if !TARGET_OS_WIN32 so I'm assuming
that this concept has at least occurred to the CoreAudio team. ;-)
(2) Would Apple be willing to give up (or share?) control of the AU
API
to a standards body? If not, would Apple be willing to write some
sort of
will and testament (please pardon my total ignorance of legal matters)
guaranteeing that AU would enter the public domain (or something like
that) if, for whatever reason, Apple discontinued support for it?
I really doubt you will have any answer of Apple in that direction...
And you don't need the AU implementation done by Apple.
Just an unlimeted right to use and change the API for other projects.
But maybe this could be done. I don't know how an API is copyrightable.
Maybe you should contact the GNUStep team. This is basically what
GNUStep is :
- taking the Cocoa API, and doing another implementation of it, on
different plateforms.
It seems that Apple did not try to stop the GNUStep project.
I hope that someone from Apple can speak on these matters. I (as
well as
many other folks) am very interested to know.
Thanks,
Marc
Airy
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