From alsa-devel-owner@alsa.jcu.cz  Thu Jan 14 00:39:31 1999
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To: alsa-devel@alsa.jcu.cz
Cc: Stephen Thornton <Stephen.John.Thornton@ericsson.no>
Subject: Re: Linux scheduler issues. 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 13 Jan 1999 12:49:46 +0100."
             <9901131149.AA22097@tele2> 
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 18:39:59 -0500
From: Paul Barton-Davis <pbd@op.net>
Reply-To: alsa-devel@alsa.jcu.cz
Sender: alsa-devel-owner@alsa.jcu.cz
Precedence: list

>Second: what do we actually want to do? Let's assume that we already
>have drivers for any bit of audio hardware we want: sound cards, MIDI,
>converters, DSPs etc. Also assume that we can do stuff like mixing,
>simple sequencing and the like. Now what?

Although what you describe sounds "like fun", I personally find the
idea of using my computer as a synthesis engine that I can redefine in
a myriad of ways to be more exciting that "assuming that we have
drivers for the audio hardware".

Your observations on languages seem strange to me. Yes, there are
deficiencies in C, C++ and just about anything else you or I could
name. But I've written some very functional, extremely complex systems
in C and C++, and ultimately, I care less about the abstract problems
of the languages than whether a library exists to fix them or a neat
hack does instead. You said:

>All the above are requirements of the language, not libraries for the
>language. The C language provides none of these: admittedly there are
>libraries providing this functionality, but they are not part of the
>(say) ANSI C language standard.

I don't see why this makes a difference *in the real world*. Yes, I'd
rather have good GC built into the language, but I'll settle for any
good GC system even if its in a library.

>Does this sound like fun?

Well, yes and no. What you describe sounds very expensive, and
unlikely to be able to run at the same as I'm burning CPU cycles
emulating an unimplementable piece of hardware. So for me, its not as
fun as it might be if for someone who wants to use sound generation
modules that exist in other hardware.

--p


