Re: [Octal-dev] porting thoughts

[Laurent de Soras]

address@hidden a écrit :

> Possibly, though doesn't CORBA require all senders / recipients to be objects?

Yes, CORBA is for OO languages (C++, Java, Smalltalk, etc.). Above
all, it's quite slow.

> I was thinking of something more modest, like a mailbox mechanism to handle
> IPC's, but sends messages as text strings (easier to debug and also not 
> reliant
> on a 3rd party platform -- not that CORBA isn't widely supported).  But then
> that's just what I'm used to seeing; I'm sure there are other ways.

It seems a good solution. More, text strings are system-independent,
thus you can run OCTAL core on Linux PC and work on a Sparc
system.

> On the other hand, deciding that this is an worthwhile goal for the future 
> still
> has an impact on certain aspects of design.  Like, I noticed that the (x,y)
> parameters of each machine instance are stored as part of the machine's state 
> as
> designed now, but if the UI is really separate then that info is irrelevant to
> the audio engine and shouldn't be stored there.  (Imagine having to pass
> messages between the UI and server everytime the user dragged a machine around
> -- ick!)

It's the main issue of such a system. Refreshing screen could
take hours for a big amount of displayed data (think about a
zoom-out of the score). Having smooth scrolling is very
important to work comfortably.

-- Laurent