Re: AudioUnits and Cocoa UI
Re: AudioUnits and Cocoa UI
- Subject: Re: AudioUnits and Cocoa UI
- From: Bill Stewart <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 09:40:33 -0800
On Tuesday, March 18, 2003, at 12:07 AM, Urs Heckmann wrote:
Am Dienstag, 18.03.03, um 02:41 Uhr (Europe/Berlin) schrieb Andy:
On Monday, Mar 17, 2003, at 17:03 Europe/London, Bill Stewart wrote:
I should also make it clear that the most easily and broadly
supported
UI is still Carbon, so if any AU developer is concerned at this point
about broad usability, a Carbon View is certainly more broadly
supported. However, we also understand the attractiveness of Cocoa
for
UI development and see a great potential for the sharing of UI
objects
and widgets that can make this both an interesting and worthwhile
endeavour
...
This is good news indeed :) But can we be assured that at least the
Apple owned Logic will support this feature ?
Not much point in supporting it if Logic is not a capable host.
Although some of us are indeed writing host apps with cocoa based
front ends, Logic is likely to be the most important factor in terms
of market for individual AUs. I am very pleased that at last some
serious discussion about cocoa views can happen.
I think at least one example should be given in the CoreAudio SDK...
... maybe someone contribute it?
We have an example - but if there's a more complete one we'll gladly
look at it.
Comments are welcome.
Whilst we will eventually publish this protocol and propertyID in our
headers, this does not need any specific support from us, so if there
is a general agreement we can go ahead with this. At that time, I'll
give out the property ID number and away we go...
As is known by some, I have already proved that this method can and
does work for AUs. In fact the method I implemented is almost exactly
as you describe, (apart from your forthcoming protocol of course) and
so I am confident your proposal will work OK.
But I am concerned that some complex AUs will need more than one
window/view. We only need to look at some of the samplers that are
appearing in the VSTi domain to see that a single view really is not
enough. Perhaps before steaming ahead with the cocoa protocol we
should at least discuss this feature. Cocoa is an ideal API for a
multiple view AU. I know we need to be careful here as it could
easily get out of hand so perhaps time for discussion about some
rules for multi view AUs ??
He he, I discussed multiple view support with Emagic (it's already
prepared in the specs, see that AUBase::GetNumGUIComponents), but they
hadn't had any concrete idea about how, if and when. It may take some
time until the actual use of such will be obvious. (Like newbie view,
expert view)
The idea of the multiple views are NOT currently aimed at providing a
solution to this problem - this is more for the case where you might
have *alternative* UI views - though I must admit we really haven't
fleshed this out as it hasn't been a high priority (and noone has shown
much interest in it)
Its an area we can explore more (but at a later date I think)
But your view can easily open new windows dynamically. I
(experimentally) use a transparent Overlay Window to display "special
effects" (little explosions when you hit nasty buttons), and it just
works fine (unless your view sits inside a floater, but that's just
cosmetic stuff). I think it wouldn't even be a big problem to open a
window and ask the process to give you a description for a subview
component which you then host by yourself. On the other hand, just
installing controls and binding them to parameter schemes seems just
as easy.
One thing that I don't like on the idea of multiple windows is the
waste of screen estate. My beta testers voted for Tabbed Panes and
dynamic changes instead of multiple windows. So this is where I go.
I would definately support that conclusion as well... At some point, if
your plugin needs multiple windows you have to ask whether its really
appropriate usage, good UI for a plugin...
Bill
Wouldn't Cocoa windows provide those drawers?
Cheers,
;) Urs
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