linuxaudio.org

On 02/09/2011 04:49 PM, David Robillard wrote:

quoted text
> On Fri, 2011-01-14 at 21:29 +0100, Tom Szilagyi wrote:

>>

>> Regarding LV2 hosts other than Ardour: the second in the above list of

>> fixes should help, however please be aware that IR is at the moment

>> really not usable without its own GTK UI. In future versions I may

>> manage to switch to using an external-process LV2 UI which would

>> result in the plugin UI being completely host toolkit agnostic.

>

> FWIW, I would not do this.  The external UI extension is the wrong way

> of going about this, and momentum towards it is very worrysome...  We

> need an abstraction layer (i.e. a library) to provide the ability for

> any UI to be external.  It shouldn't be the host's - and very definitely

> not the plugin's - problem to do this.  It's a difficult problem to get

> just right(*).  Even if it wasn't, we'd end up with the same code

> implemented all over the place, which is an obvious sign something is

> not right...

>

> The right way is for the plugin UI to provide whatever native UI (e.g.

> gtk) it pleases, and a library provides the means to launch it

> externally if the host toolkit does not match.  This way, the host can

> embed the UI if possible (a feature which really is a shame to throw

> away), but anyone can use it externally if this is not possible.  It is

> also possible these days for Gtk to embed Qt, and vice versa, which the

> lib could also do... in short, all the tricky business of using an X UI

> in a Y host, either embedded or externally, needs to be done in one

> place, and done in that one place correctly, so every host/plugin author

> doesn't have to repeatedly deal with the same problems.

>

> After the upcoming LV2r4 (and new librdf-free slv2) is released (soon),

> I will take a stab at making this library.  All the nitty gritty has

> been done by other people already, it just needs to be sanely

> amalgamated.

> 

your words, Dave, are wise, but... until that (yours?) lib gets ever

real, the lv2-external-ui extension won't ever be wrong. sorry to tell
what has, and still is, outrageously wrong is that utter cannot-say-what

stickiness to gtk gore over the lv2-ui interface--it's real pain (gasp)

lock-in disease--mostly due on ardour being a top reference as a plugin

host, nevermind being a gtk based one (and damn good at several other

things too;)
please, don't give me nice talks about xembed and that stuff about gtk

and qt widgets being reciprocally embeddable. it just doesn't work for

the masses. well, in practice, unless you're in some kind ivory tower

and aim for a very special case or tight coupled application, that is...
im kind of serious on this stuff. i've been there, done that, and

failed--you guess where :)
cheers

--

rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela

rncbc@rncbc.org

_______________________________________________

Linux-audio-dev mailing list

Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org

http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev