[fluid-dev] About documentation and code

[Bernat Arlandis i Mañó]

Hi.

I've been looking the source code to understand a bit more about it. I
discovered some features I didn't know were there and it would be good
to have them documented somewhere else than the source code. It would be
good to know every feature implemented and what not, things like midi
and soundfont controllers, commandline and shell commands.

Could we start this kind of manual in the wiki? Some of you will know a
lot better about fluidsynth so you can join me or just review what I do.

Besides, some things to note about the code so far:
- It has a disabled and (apparently) non-working implementation for
LADSPA output filters that could be interesting for some uses, specially
when embedded in other apps. Maybe even channel chorus and reverb
effects could be fully implemented as external LADSPA plugins as an
option, although feasibility and performance should be checked.
- It has a number of functions that seem obsolete, probably leftovers
from old implementations. Mainly duplicated functions that were probably
used to check changes, but also pieces of code of (old?) missing features.
- There's a feature that allows to output reverb and chorus in separate
lines to Jack. I don't think this is used very much, it doesn't seem to
work from the QSynth version I have. Some code could be disabled when
this feature is off to save some cycles. In general, it seems like some
barely used or even extinct features might have some code executing for
nothing.
- In general the code seems in very good shape for collaborative work,
except that some files have tabs and spaces mixed thus breaking the
indentation. Using just spaces and good indenting is considered good
practice for better collaboration. Submitters should configure their
editors to put spaces instead of tabs and we could fix existing tabs in
one go or along the away.

After documenting features and fixing bugs, I think the next best thing
coud be cleanning the code up a bit from all unused code. This would
pave the way for further development.

I can try to put my hands on some of these, but I'd like to hear any
comments first.

Happy new year!

--
Bernat Arlandis i Mañó