Re: [Traverso-devel] Thoughts on plugin strategy

[Jonatan Liljedahl]

Nicola Döbelin wrote:
> Hi everybody,
> 
> After a discussion with Remon about plugins and how to implement them, I 
> would once more like to post some general thoughts on the topic. The 
> discussion was if gain and panorama should be implemented as plugins as 
> suggested by Jonatan, and I think this is an excellent idea. However, I have 
> some concerns as to the usability of this concept, but if we hold on to some 
> guidelines I am confident that we can maintain a flexible plugin 
> implementation without swamping the user in the first place.
> 
> AFAIK we are all linux cracks, more or less, so I guess we all know what the 
> term "the unix way" refers to: One tool for one job. This concept is still 
> popular even in the days of modern desktop environments, although there are 
> now GUIs which combine several command line tools in one apparently large and 
> powerful application. A prime example is k3b, which uses command line tools 
> for almost everything. From a developer's point of view this is very 
> convenient, because it makes use of existing and often very mature code. The 
> user is supposed to remain untroubled by all the dependencies, but anyone who 
> has tried to set up one of the DVD ripping frontends knows that installing 
> all the dependencies (transcode, avifile, ffmpeg, mencoder, etc.) can be a 
> major challenge. If cvs versions are required, installing by hand is close to 
> impossible for the majority of users. From the user's point of view the 
> "commercial way" of shipping one big application which includes everything it 
> need
s 
>  is much more convenient.
> 
> My idea for Traverso is that we should include a default set of effects which 
> are 'just there'. Of course we have the possibility of using jackrack for 
> plugins, jamin to process the master output, xmms to play compressed file 
> formats, and so on. But in terms of user experience this is horrible. In my 
> opinion the users would appreciate if things which are needed all the time 
> would be just there. I'm thinking of a gain and panorama control, a 
> parametric EQ, a dynamics section, and maybe even reverb. These are things 
> one needs all the time, and having to set up a plugin just to be able to 
> change the gain of a track is nothing but a pain in the neck.
> 
> OTOH using a plugin architecture for as many functions as possible would be 
> good for us, the developers, because it increases modularity and flexibility. 
> But how do we get the best from both worlds? Should we hard-code the effects 
> into Traverso? No! That would be way too much effort, and FWIW a good 
> sounding EQ or dynamics plugin is a piece of art by itself. But if we would 
> take one of the existing plugins (TAP or SWH for example), write a custom GUI 
> which is consistent with the concept of soft selections, ship it with 
> Traverso and load it by default into every track, it would be implemented as 
> a plugin, but it would feel like just being there.
> 
> Again, the point is that we should 'privilege' certain plugins by:
> 
> - writing a GUI for them
> - shipping them with Traverso by default
> - loading by default
> - integrating them into the Traverso GUI
> 
> The last point is particularly important for the gain and pan plugins. 
> Although being a plugin in future, they should still be accessible as they 
> are now, that is directly on the track and audio clip. 
> 
> I hope you get what I mean. (Actually the correlation meter and FFT spectrum 
> analyzer are already implemented as native plugins with custom GUIs.) Just 
> look at it from the users perspective. What's better: Having to load an EQ 
> plugin with a generic and often ugly interface (as in ardour), or having an 
> EQ with a carefully designed GUI which is just there?

I agree mostly with all you said. But one thing bothers me, I don't
think we should load any plugins but gain and pan into tracks by
default. Not even EQ or dynamics... _but_ it should be very easy to just
press a button for "Add plugin", which brings up a menu of available
plugins to choose from. The privileged plugins (shipped with Traverso
and with nice GUI's) would be at the top of the menu, perhaps with a
separator to separate them from other user-installed plugins.

Also, if the gain/pan controls (the "fixed" ones at the left of each
track) uses the actual gain/pan plugins to do their work (multiplicating
their value with the value of optional gain/pan curves), then perhaps
those plugins shouldn't be removable from the track. Or, it might be
better to let these controls do their work as they do now, no need for
plugins. But only provide _optional_ gain/pan plugins for the sake of
curve control of those parameters, which would mean we don't load _any_
plugins into tracks by default. (this would be the best way, imho)

-- 
/Jonatan    -=( http://kymatica.com )=-