My BBC Master - - - getting Beeped-off.

[Richard Gaskin]

Judy wrote:

> And I for one don't think that it's because he wasn't smart enough
> to know otherwise.

Perhaps you overestimate Dr. Raney.  He's quite smart, but not 
flawlessly so.

For example, there was one time that Scott told me a certain Mac API 
call didn't exist.  I managed to turn it up in Inside Mac and emailed it 
to him.  He was surprised to find it actually existed (but equally glad 
too, and used it to add a feature which he delivered the following weekend).

If I wanted to portray him in a bad light I could say that he was
dishonest about that "missing" API call.  Indeed it is a matter of fact
that he said something didn't exist which did.  But I don't believe that
would accurately reflect his intentions, and really it seems a trivial
thing for anyone to bother staking their character on.

He may have been simply mistaken, and considering the scope of his work 
that seems understandable:

Raney brought the engine to Unix, Irix, Solaris, BSD, Linux, and then to
Windows and eventually to Mac - much of that work single-handed.
That's a lot of different API calls to keep straight.  That he might
miss one, or misunderstand one, or even believe that something being
asked of his code on one of the 12 platforms he supported wasn't
possible, seems a forgivable error.

And I may be wrong. I wasn't there, and most importantly when describing
intent I wasn't inside his head.

But I'd rather be wrong standing up for someone's character than the
other way around.

I'd risk the same for you if ever anyone dared to question your
character while I'm around. You're my SoCal homey; I got yer back. :) 
Someone would have to work very hard to prove to me that you've ever 
been dishonest with me, and until such proof I'm obliged by principle to 
presume your honesty.

Our culture got where it is in no small part because of our adoption of
the principle of presumed innocence.  On the macro and micro social 
levels, presumption of innocence is a valuable cornerstone of good living.


If we may politely move forward, back to the beeps at hand:


In recent discussion here I finally joined the converts on the value of
sound channels for certain types of playback.  While I don't need them
myself right now, I can see where others would.

It might be nice to have this in the engine, but evidently Kevin has
found no greater persuasion than Raney on this, so perhaps it would make
a great external.

In fact, the nature of the commands needed would seem to lend themselves
well to the externals API, independent as they are of the rendering
buffer, event loop, and other sticky things (though Chris Bonnert did
such a good job with AltBrowser that maybe those things are only sticky
for me <g>).

This seems an excellent undertaking for any of the folks here with a C
compiler and a passion for this this sort of audio playback.  Might even
make a good RevSelect product when it's done, and if some of the folks
who need it would be willing to prepay to have it written, it seems a
zero-risk option for someone to take it on.

One question about it: why stop at two channels?  Four seems infinitely
more useful; "Sgt. Pepper" was recorded in four tracks, so close to
anything should be possible with that number. :)  Is there anything
technically which would restrict this to two channels on modern systems?


This morning you wrote:

> Which is why we're all still talking about it years later... which is why
> Rebecca Bettancourt made a hack a few years ago to allow some of us to do
> what it is that you are saying you want to do (and you're obviously not
> alone, even if you're traveling in a very small herd).

If we're talking about a behavior that was native to HC, was Ms. 
Bettencourt's "hack" for Rev?  I didn't know she uses Rev.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  Revolution training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com