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Digital Audio Workstation Front End Development Struggles

billydm.github.io

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Re: Digital Audio Workstation Front End Development Struggles

#131

Post by dagw »

andybak wrote: post #126
dagw wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like going into a restaurant and expecting to participate in the cooking of your meal. Lots of people expect and do this all the time. I want this cooked like this, no this, this replaced with that etc. Hell, some restaurants just put out all the food they have on a big table and say "go ahead and put together your own meal with whatever you want, we don't care", and that is many peoples favourite restaurant exp…

Are you disagreeing with my views on theming or just my poor choice of metaphor? ;-)

I personally agree with you, but I know that I'm not necessarily in the majority. Much like many people seem to prefer buffet restaurants to restaurants with a fixed menu.

Re: Digital Audio Workstation Front End Development Struggles

#132

Post by rat9988 »

wokwokwok wrote: post #127
ogoffart wrote: post #54

Slint dev here. I'm a bit disappointed to see that Slint is considered a non-starter. In fact, one of our users is currently working on exactly that (a VST plugin for an audio application) and they are about to release it very soon. Unfortunately, I can't share a link until it's officially released. The author seems to dismiss declarative UI without explaining why. From my perspective, declarative is the best way to…

> The author seems to dismiss declarative UI without explaining why. From my perspective, declarative is the best way to describe UI. …but I mean, that’s an opinion that is not falsifiable. If the author disagrees, that’s up to them right? I agree with the author too; after using xaml, my taste for declarative UIs is limited. Here’s something that is falsifiable: what is possible using declarative UIs is a strict sub…

I'm not sure where you read "wrong". Did the message get edited?

Re: Digital Audio Workstation Front End Development Struggles

#134

Post by lolrustards »

toastal wrote: post #56
zorr wrote: post #52

I have a feeling desktop development is going to slowly revert back to classic OOP paradigms just like the web world detoured from MPA -> SPA -> SPA+SSR -> back to something that looks a lot like MPA again. Classic toolkits like GTK, Qt, UIKit/AppKit, Swing and JavaFX use OOP to solve some of the problems this article talks about. However, this OOP model seems to be somewhat incompatible with Rust's strict memory saf…

I think we need other UI models instead of everything mature being object-oriented-oriented. Doing UI work in FP (or FRP) is great in many aspects until you need to integrate with these OO models like the DOM, et.al. Direct integration or a first-class VDOM-like model would be a nice step. There’s a tangent issue with all of popular game engines built around objects.

Even Lisp programmers decide to pragmatically use an OOP model when doing GUIs.

The idea of using FP for everything is about as sensible as the paradigm of using OOP for everything.

Re: Digital Audio Workstation Front End Development Struggles

#135

Post by criddell »

There’s also the option of dumping the cross-platform requirement. Which platform is most important to the author? Then narrow down further by deciding on which configuration of that platform matters. Define those things, then build the best DAW possible.

In my mind, this doesn’t rule out web-based stuff because I view the web as its own distinct platform.

Re: Digital Audio Workstation Front End Development Struggles

#137

Post by signaru »

There's a relatively new C++ GUI library literally called "Elements". Not sure how it works though, but the way it looks, and the music background of its creator makes it appear that DAW applications might have at least been considered.

https://github.com/cycfi/elements

Edit: It does mention VST and AU in the introduction:

> "It should not own the event loop and should be able to co-exist with components within a plugin host such as VST and AU."

Re: Digital Audio Workstation Front End Development Struggles

#138

Post by [deleted] »

wokwokwok wrote: post #127
ogoffart wrote: post #54

Slint dev here. I'm a bit disappointed to see that Slint is considered a non-starter. In fact, one of our users is currently working on exactly that (a VST plugin for an audio application) and they are about to release it very soon. Unfortunately, I can't share a link until it's officially released. The author seems to dismiss declarative UI without explaining why. From my perspective, declarative is the best way to…

> The author seems to dismiss declarative UI without explaining why. From my perspective, declarative is the best way to describe UI. …but I mean, that’s an opinion that is not falsifiable. If the author disagrees, that’s up to them right? I agree with the author too; after using xaml, my taste for declarative UIs is limited. Here’s something that is falsifiable: what is possible using declarative UIs is a strict sub…

[deleted]

Re: Digital Audio Workstation Front End Development Struggles

#139

Post by akdor1154 »

mort96 wrote: post #93
zerr wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Declarative UI, even when implemented coherently within the same langauge like in Flutter and MAUI/Xamarin, so there is no need for an ugly bridge between two worlds, still leads to an unreadable nested hell. Surprisingly, an imperative GUI creation code is much more easier to read and modify.

Hmm? I've written a fair bit of React, which I assume fits the declarative description, and I never got the impression that it leads to an "unreadable nested hell". You split up your big functions into smaller reusable functions, just like in all other forms of programming.

By the traditions of desktop ui, React is imperative (or maybe immediate): it's written in a declarative style, but ultimately jsx is just JavaScript.

The best analogue to "declarative" in desktop ui terms would be to have your dom templates in separate files that you don't manipulate the structure of in code.

I honestly have an overall negative view of react, but its method for letting you declare ui structure is really fantastic.

Re: Digital Audio Workstation Front End Development Struggles

#140

Post by Ygg2 »

dagw wrote: post #110
andybak wrote: post #70

> Ideally I want to support loading user-generated themes. I really hope this just means "alternative colour palettes". Otherwise they're about to make one of the hardest UI programming tasks I can imagine exponentially harder. I've never understood the passion for themeability. It's like going into a restaurant and expecting to participate in the cooking of your meal. As much nostalgia as I have for the heyday of Wi…

It's like going into a restaurant and expecting to participate in the cooking of your meal. Lots of people expect and do this all the time. I want this cooked like this, no this, this replaced with that etc. Hell, some restaurants just put out all the food they have on a big table and say "go ahead and put together your own meal with whatever you want, we don't care", and that is many peoples favourite restaurant exp…

Parent obviously meant you'd be in the kitchen, cooking. Not barking orders.
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