waveforms + more rants about Rev as a dev. tool for the future

jbv jbv.silences at Club-Internet.fr
Wed Mar 24 05:28:18 EST 2004



Christopher Mitchell a *crit :

> speaking of all this, has anyone experimented with communicating
> between Rev and Max/MSP?

To tell the truth, it crossed my mind but finally I went to the
conclusion that interfacing Rev with csound (www.csounds.com)
would be a better choice, for various reasons :
- csound is free
- csound, like Rev, has cross platform compatibility
- the source code is available on the web

And while we're at it, I'd like to discuss a bit more the choice of
Rev as a dev. tool for apps such as sound, scientific and other
critical, high end & custom apps...
As said before (in a recent post about imagedata), for the last 12 to 18
months, I find myself more and more forced to spend time on
features lacking in Rev : a PDF library, various sound file processing
(FFT, filtering), waveform vizualisation (2D and 3D), etc
while only 2 years ago I was able to do everything with Rev (actually
MC back then)...

For instance, for this custom sound app I'm working on in my
spare time, all the core (and crucial) functions will be handled by
externals, which represents about 85% to 90% of the app.
Until recently, I used to say that Rev is OK for front ends, and that
externals are OK for high end functions, and that it was a winning
team, Rev being used as a sort of "link" (or "glue") between various
elements : GUI, externals, possibly CGI scripts on a remote server,
remote databases... However, I'm starting to wonder if it's still true...

In the context of the above described app, what's left to Rev ?
Very few actually : mostly mouse & kbd events handling + files
open & save... Even crucial elements of the GUI (such as waveforms,
sonogram or FFT display) will be handled by externals...

So these days the main question is (at least for me) : is it worth adding

about 1,2 Mb (the Transcript engine) to a standalone, just to handle
mouse events ? IOW, is it worth keeping Rev as the central dev. tool
for an app, and why not used C librairies instead, and code the whole
thing in C ?
What could decide me to keep Rev (at least for such projects) ?
- productivity ? well, last week I spent a whole evening tinkering with
imagedata, just to finally realize that I'd be more productive coding
straight in C...
- cross-plateform compatibility ? well, if it's only about mouse & kb
events and files i/o, there are so many C lib. freely available...

OK, I admit that I'm doing my best to be the devil's advocate...
But really, for the last 12 or 18 months, I got the feeling that the
market
of multimedia developpement (and mostly the requests from clients for
much more sophisticated functions) has evolved in huge proportions...
In the same way, my own projects (for personal needs) can't be built
anymore with Rev only...
And therefore I'm wondering whether Rev has (or can) evolved in the
same proportions... Could it be that a peak could be reached (in the
number of built-in features that could be added to the engine) in a more
or less near future, and that we'd witness constant evolution in the
market
(and clients') needs, while we would be able to satisfy less and less
requests with Rev alone ?

I'd really like to know if other list members have the same feeling, or
if
it's just me who got somewhat wider perspectives since I put my nose
back into Codewarrior and C about a year ago ?

Thanks,
JB



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