Re: Gnome-Kde libraries

[Stefan Westerfeld <stefan space twc de>]

   Hi!

On Fri, Feb 18, 2000 at 05:51:07PM -0000, Martin Michael wrote:
> A while ago I remember seeing a thread on slashdot with Havoc talking about
> ideas for applications to use both gtk(gnome) and qt(kde) whether through an
> abstraction layer or directly
> 
> I was just wondering what sort of progress is happening on this 

Well, I would like to do that for aRts. That would at least be a proof of
concept for a smaller (an thus: easier to serve) circle of audio technology.

The idea is:

Audio effects (things like: echo, reverb, flanger, timestretching) will work
the same for everybody, and virtual instruments, midi synthesis, decompression
of audio files, output to soundcard, ... will work the same for everybody.

However, if you want a plugin, you normally want to have a GUI for
controlling parameters, and the synthesis flow network, which does the work.

Sind aRts is used to build modules modular out of smaller modules (e.g. you
can build a complex virtual instrument out of oscillators, filters, mixers,
envelopers and such), the idea was to make GUI design as modular. That has
the advantage, that if you want all GUIs work under both, Gnome & KDE with
native toolkit, you only have to port the small GUI modules, such as panels,
sliders, labels, knobs, oscillators, leds and such.

The latest aRts releases (which are in the kdelibs and will be in KDE2.0),
will look like that:

- own fast multimedia transfer layer (MCOP) for IPC
- no MICO/CORBA any more
- modular GUI as described above
- toolkit independance of all effects, filters, virtual instruments, midi
  processing, etc.
- usable as library
- used as standard soundserver
- written in C++ with STL (no Qt containers)

However, I can't do an implementation of the modular GUI elements for Gtk+
stuff due to the lack of Gtk+ experience and development time.

I would really like to see that done. Its not that hard. It could be a
serious milestone for interoperability between the Gnome/KDE worlds upon
code. It would also open technology that is useful when wanting to be
competitive to DirectX, VST2.0 and the big windows audio software like
CuBase, AudioLogic,... to all the open source community. Standards and
standard facilities are things where cooperation is absolutely a good
idea, in my opinion.

But: it needs to be done. If somebody wants to work on that, let me know.
You get more infos about aRts under http://www.arts-project.org. While
porting from CORBA to MCOP I didn't yet do the GUI stuff, but that will
be one of the next things on my list.

   Cu... Stefan
-- 
  -* Stefan Westerfeld, stefan@space.twc.de (PGP!), Hamburg/Germany
     KDE Developer, project infos at http://space.twc.de/~stefan/kde *-