Subject: Re: [ecasound] update: ECI API
From: janne halttunen (jhalttun@pp.htv.fi)
Date: Thu Nov 30 2000 - 21:08:50 EET
> As some of you might already have noticed, couple of new directories have
> been added to the CVS-tree: ecasound/libecasoundc and ecasound/pyecasound.
> The first one is a C-library implementing the Ecasound Control Inferface,
> and the second a Python version of the same thing.
Yihaa! Is the Python-thingie done with SWIG, handcoded, or what?
> You can already write a simple app using the C-api. Pyecasound doesn't yet
> do anything useful, but you can compile it and install the produced Python
> module. Then pretty much all you can do is "import pyeca ; a =
> pyeca.ECA_CONTROL_INTEFACE()". But nevertheless, it's a good start.
-- >8< --
> -->
> Ecasound Control Interface - proposal 2
>
> - issue an iamode command (direct, formatted string)
> - last string
> - last list of strings
> - last integer
> - last long integer
> - last double
> - error flag (int/boolean)
> - last error (string)
> <--
-- >8< --
> What do you think?
(from my point of view) An important question: can one have multiple instances of ECI to one engine?
So that the ECIs would bombard the same engine, but have individual last_* -buffers?
eci1.command("cs-position")
eci2.command("aio-position")
a=eci1.last_double()
b=eci2.last_double()
In the above, so that a!=b would be possible..
> I still have to think about what last_* services are
> really needed, and possibly, is some type of return value missing from the
> list. This is a somewhat tricky question. The more last_* types you have,
> less parsing you have to do in apps using ECI, but on the other hand, if
> "last_string()" was the only variant, you wouldn't need to check ia-mode
> documentation all the time.
BTW, how would one find out in this ECI-scheme, is a chainsetup connected or not?
> Now I want to emphasize that I _don't_ want to turn ecasound (or any part
> of it) into a programming language. There are plenty of complex audio
> languages available (Csound, Common music, Cmix, Saol, etc, etc). My
> intention is that ia-mode commands are something that any ecasound user
> can use. The added bonus is that the same commands are always available:
> you type them in ecasound's own ia-mode (ecasound -c), you launch ecasound
> on the background and send the commands from your app, use one of the ECI
> APIs directly, etc, etc ... So if my proposals start sounding too
> weird and/or complex, please, stop me at once! :) ... (I can already see
> myself waking up, a couple of years from now, realizing that I have just
> reimplemented csound. Uhm, a terrible way to start your day. ;D)
:)
jsh
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